Exciting times on the curacy front, as my training incumbent has now moved on to a new post, leaving us in a vacancy at the church.

We are blessed to have a “full time” associate minister, another training curate (who is “full time”), and several other “part-time” clergy kicking about, so in terms of both supervision and workload it’s not a insurmountable stress to have lost the vicar. Obviously it’s not ideal, but on the plus side it will be really good experience to go through a vacancy and appointment process, and I’m fascinated to see what happens both over the few months, and once the new vicar has started.

One interesting side effect, is that our SSM associate minister is going to take over my supervision. He has been ordained for 25 years, and has always seen the workplace as the main focus of where he is called to minister, and as an SSM myself this is a great opportunity to reflect together and for me to learn from him and sharpen my thinking a bit.

In case the acronyms don’t mean anything to you; SSM is “Self Supporting Minister/Ministry”, which is the current term in vogue for ordained ministers who are not paid by the church, and who therefore usually have a secular job to pay the bills. This is contrasted with both stipendiary ministry (which is typically parish based – a stipend is paid to the minister so they don’t need to earn money, and can therefore minister “full time”) and chaplaincy (where the minister either has a stipend, or is paid, to minister in a non-parish context; such as prison, hospital, airport, football club, …). In both these cases “ministry” is that person’s occupation and income; as opposed to the SSM, where it not their income, and usually not their main occupation.

There is a further distinction in SSM between those who feel their primary ministry/calling is to parish ministry, and those who feel the primary focus of their ministry is the workplace while they do their (secular) job – usually referred to as Ministers in Secular Employment, or MSE. An MSE is not paid for their ministry (unlike chaplains), and don’t usually have an official position as an ordained person in their workplace. In terms of job roles and function they are indistinguishable from the person in the next seat – i.e. paid the same amount to do the same job. Of course, it would be perfectly possible to be an SSM and also work unpaid in a voluntary position (e.g. for a charity, or being a house-wife or house-husband). The point is that you do not have any income from your ministry activities, hence you are – purely in the financial sense – “self supporting”.

So far in my curacy I have been mainly focussed on parish ministry and church life, and have not really thought too much about what it means to be an ordained minister at work. To some extent this is only right and proper – I need(ed) to “learn the ropes” of parish ministry, whether or not it ends up being my main occupation. But at the halfway point of my curacy – 2 years in, with 2 to go – it seems to fit very nicely to refocus my thoughts and reflections on the 4 days a week I spend in the office writing mapping software, and more widely what non-parish based ordained ministry looks like and means.

One of the things that has been tripping me up is that I have a high theology of baptism, and a relatively low theology of ordination and the priesthood. I have been a Christian and a minister at my work place ever since I joined 11 years ago – and I would hope that every single baptised believer sees themselves in full time ministry as Christ’s ambassador to whichever context they are called to. This incidentally is why I put quotes around “full time” and “part time” above. To that end, there is a sense in which ordination doesn’t change anything.

However in many very real sense it does change things, and it is part of ongoing reflection to try and identify and explore these. From the “better ask the vicar” office banter, to genuine questions of faith and church life, I have had conversations with colleagues as a direct result of being ordained that probably wouldn’t have occurred otherwise.

I’m also trying to develop a better theology of work as worship – that when I’m sitting at the computer writing code, or in meetings, or whatever, this is somehow good and an offering to God. It’s very easy to see that being a doctor, or a teacher, or a vicar is a godly vocation – I find it a bit harder to see this connection about writing mapping software, or being in banking, or mining, or being a pilot… I suppose I’m not willing to accept that office work is just about provision (i.e. making money), or even just about having opportunities to be good news. Both these things are good and true and important, but I think my sights are a little higher.

Anyway, what really prompted this post (500 words later!) was an article in this week’s Church Times about worker priests. The worker priest movement is slightly different from SSM, in that with worker priests there is the definite sense of being a priest in manual labour and the working class. Never-the-less many of the principles still apply. One quote in particular grabbed my eye:

“The expression of religion in daily life is not an extra, but is of the essence of Christianity. It therefore seems right that some clergy should be fully in the strains and stresses of daily life to the extent of earning their living in secular work.” (Worker Church Group Statement, 1959. As reported in Church Times 8174, 6 September 2019, p. 20.)

My thinking so far has probably three aspects:

First, there is no doubt that working in an office 4 days a week gives me a different perspective from my stipendiary colleagues in all sorts of ways. And equally, perhaps I can relate a little more readily to people in the congregation who are out at work all day? To my mind there is immense value in this, and one I am still learning to recognise.

Second, Paul in the New Testament used secular employment (tent-making) in order to fund his missionary endeavours. The SSM tradition therefore is as old as the church itself.

Third, there is also something about being – and being known as – a priest in the secular workplace. It is this aspect which perhaps most intrigues me, especially as I am not prepared to accept SSM as just being about the above two aspects.

Just in the last few weeks, I’ve realised that I think I’m over the “hump” of my curacy.

Curacies are strange beasts – perhaps even more so as an SSM curate doing one day a week (cue “but vicar’s only work one day a week” joke) – in that so far I have spent the vast majority of my time doing new stuff. Now, I love doing new things, and learning new skills, starting new projects, and so on, but it’s also an exhausting place to inhabit.

The upshot is a huge sense of being de-skilled, and a very low return on investment. So, for instance, I might spend hours and hours and hours preparing to lead a Book of Common Prayer communion (with all the “Thee”s and “Thou”s) for the first time, and the result is something which is fine, but nothing special – and certainly what I would normally expect for the amount of effort I put in. Similarly baptisms, weddings, funerals, pastoral visits, leading other services, civic occasions – the list goes on.

It ends up being a bit of a double whammy – not only am I not doing things which I can easily do (and do well), but I am doing things which I don’t know how to do (and therefore don’t do especially well, despite having spent ages preparing).

The sense then, at least at times, is of a bit of an uphill slog in the early days. You don’t really know the people in the church, you don’t really know how things are done in that culture/context, and you’re doing new stuff, a lot of the time from scratch. There is no shortcut; you just have to go through it.

To be fair I have also probably been trying a little too hard! But I am very conscious of having to cover all the bases on only one day a week. Obviously the goalposts are different to a stipendiary curate – I am unlikely to go to lead a church straight from my curacy for example, but the basics we have to cover in terms of ministry bread and butter are the same.

Anyway – just in the last month or so, thing have started to feel a bit different. With my recent wedding I’ve now ‘done’ at least one of everything. And when I led our big family service the other week, I was actually quite relaxed and even enjoyed it! There’s just the earliest inclination that I’m starting to get the hang of this vicar thing, and that it’s not perhaps going to be quite such hard work all all the time.

The other interpretation is that it’s all downhill from here!!

I had the amazing privilege of solemnising my first wedding a couple of weeks ago. I genuinely could not have asked or hoped for a more lovely couple and congregation, and it was a joy to play a small part in the new life were were choosing and vowing to start together.

I am still slightly coming to terms with the fact I actually married them – that I pronounced them man and wife, and signed the registers and certificates. I feels like the first “proper” legal thing I’ve done as a Clerk in Holy Orders (aside from Ordination and Licensing).

Anyway, before I met them I took a straw poll about whether or not I should mention that it was my first wedding. There seem to be two schools of thought here.

The first says “No – what the couple want and need is a confident and competent presence, who will guide them through a major life event with a minimum of anxiety and stress.” This is the same argument that applies to pilots on their first flight, or surgeons on their first procedure. It’s not necessarily helpful for people in your hands to know you haven’t done it before.

The other school of thought says “Yes – be completely honest, and recognise that it’s (hopefully) the first wedding for all 3 of you, and you’re in it together. Take the whole thing lightly, work through it together without feeling the need to have all the answers.” This is a similar argument to a magician or stand-up’s first gig. It can help bring people on your side, and release any pressure or tension, allow for some humour and of course makes any little hiccoughs part of the occasion. It is meant to be a joyous as well as a serious and solemn affair.

I think part of the problem is that it’s very easy to equate “I haven’t done it before” with “I don’t know what I’m doing” – whereas in reality this relationship doesn’t necessarily hold at all.

In the end, I opted for the first position. Be a calm, non-anxious presence who would instil confidence in the bride and groom, and enable them to relax, enjoy the day, and fully enter into the solemn vows being made – no need to let them know it’s my first one.

It all went beautifully well at our meeting – I answered all their questions, went over the vows with them, etc (they had already done marriage preparation, so it was more about getting to know them and planning the service)… Until I was just standing up to leave, when the groom asked “So how many weddings is this for you?”

BUSTED!

It all worked out for the best; I was actually quite relieved they knew, as I felt it took some of the pressure off me, and they felt that it made the day even more special, knowing that it was a special day for me too (if that makes sense).

In the end it was a lovely service, which I’m certain was legally correct (which was my top priority!!), I was able to share something of the love of God with those present, and it went more or less according to plan.

Just as a postscript, as the mother-of-the-bride arrived at the church before the service, she took me to one side and said “Don’t worry – I’m sure you’ll be absolutely fine.” 🙂

One of the main aspects of the curacy for me has been about growing in confidence – but not perhaps in the way one might think.

When I first started leading services at St Mark’s (especially the informal ones) to be honest I hated it – I felt like I had no idea what I was doing, I didn’t know any of the people I was leading, I didn’t know how services we’re “supposed” to be done. It didn’t help that on the very first service I led the projector screen fell off the wall 10 minutes before the start of the service!!!

The strange thing is that, by the time I was ordained, I already had quite a bit of experience of preaching, leading worship, and so on, and my outlook generally is to go for stuff and learn from my mistakes. I’m not particularly phased by standing in front of a large crowd and doing my thing. I’m confident in what I’m good at, and I know what I’m not so good at.

What I do struggle with though is when I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing (the “concious incompetence” in Bradwell’s terms), especially if I believe that there is a “right” way to do it, or that there are expectations I might not meet. This can create a lot of  anxiety and insecurity for me, and was very definitely my initial experience of being a curate. I felt hugely self-concious and exposed, and that I was a fraud who was going to be called out at any moment.

What I think I might be starting to finally get is that isn’t actually about me at all. I did already know this, but there’s knowing and there’s knowing.

The extraordinary privilege I have, as a Christian, and especially as an ordained representative of the church, is to offer an alternative narrative. To be a reminder of what’s actally important. To be the non-anxious presence, who can say “It’s ok – God’s got this”.

I’m learning to be secure in who I am in Christ, as a person and as a leader. So that I don’t need to think about myself at all, much less what other people are thinking of me. Instead, let’s all of us think about Jesus. The measure of if I am doing my job well is not “did I say all the right words”, but “was it all about God”. Within that context, I think I’m learning to trust my own instincts and experience a bit more. To be comfortable with the part I’m playing, even if I get that wrong sometimes. So that when I’m thrust into a new situation, rather than panicking or fretting about the “right” thing to do, I can do my best, listen to the Holy Spirit, and make it all about Jesus. In short, to look outwards, not inwards. My experience so far of being ordained is that you never know know quite what’s going to come at you next, and I suspect the feeling of “winging-it” never fully goes away. But that’s ok – God’s got this.

Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking about being complacent, or not preparing properly. I’m not saying we need to give any less than 100%, or that we don’t need to learn from our mistakes, or stop trying to improve. But I am saying that our “performance” (for want a better term) isn’t actually the important metric.

Of course it can also be nerve-racking to do something new. I remember the first time I lead (musical) worship outside my home group. It was an Alpha 2 day, and there were maybe 200 people. I was absolutely terrified! My legs were literally shaking, my hands were sweating so much I could hardly play the guitar. I strongly suspect that it was as painful for everyone else as it was for me! But, 25 years on, I just love leading (musical) worship, whether it’s with 5 or 500 other people. And part of why I love it is that it’s not about me – I am just helping us all give Jesus his worth. I do also think a little bit of stage fright is no bad thing – after all it is the King of Kings we’re talking about here!

Part of the joy of serving Christ is the freedom it brings. Freedom from anxiety. Freedom from being self-concious. Freedom to have fun, enjoy ourselves, and – yes – to sometimes completely stuff things up. Freedom to laugh at ourselves and give glory to God.

So the confidence I’m growing in is not primarily self-confidence. If anything the opposite. I’m learning to be more confident in God, in who He is, and what He’s calling us to be. It’s ok – He’s got this.

The following is the text for my reflection during a service of 3 hours at the cross today. The theme is “approaching the cross”, and we start “from the outside looking in – the view from the edge (the crowd)”

Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” (Mark 15:29)

We start our journey towards the cross at the edge, amongst the crowd, looking in. A bit like the crowd in our reading, we are faced with the temptation to pass by – in our case to get to the happy ending of Easter Sunday (not that it was all that happy at the time, incidentally, if you read the gospels carefully). Or perhaps just to pass by the crucifixion bit..

Maybe the fact of Jesus being crucified offends us or upsets us? God couldn’t come up with a better plan than the bloody and humiliating public execution of his son as a state criminal? How can this be the act of a God of love? Come to that how can a God who can’t even save himself save us? Best not to think about it too much. Much better just to pass on by and leave Jesus hanging there.

Or maybe Jesus being crucified scares us. The last thing a 1^st Century Jew would want is to be associated with an insurrectionist – no shortage of wood for another cross. Far better to keep our heads down and stay in the crowd. Just keep quiet about knowing Jesus. Don’t want to stand out, don’t want to stick up for Jesus. What would our friends say? I could lose my job. I certainly don’t want to end up on a cross myself! No – safer to just pass on by and leave Jesus hanging there.

Or, frankly, perhaps we don’t really care that much? We’ve got a busy and full life, things to do. Need to get to market to buy supplies before the Sabbath. What’s another criminal strung up by the Romans? We have money, security, we can come to worship whenever we want to, do our duty, pay our tithe – what do we need a saviour for (especially one who gets himself killed)? Sure there was a lot of excitement about this Jesus, but I’ve got a job, a family, my parents need looking after, the garden needs weeding. I’m sorry – I haven’t got time to stay, I need to pass on by and leave Jesus hanging there.

Or just maybe we feel too ashamed, or unworthy. This is God we’re talking about, after all. Dying for me. I put him there through my sin and disobedience. How can I meet his eye, how can I watch him suffer? I know that it’s all alright in the end, so better just to pass on by, leave Jesus hanging there.

After all, it is not a pleasant place to linger, a crucifixion. How much less the crucifixion of our Lord and saviour. It is offensive and upsetting. It is scary. It is inconvenient and disruptive. It is a place of guilt and shame.

But linger we must, because the crucifixion is also an invitation. It is an invitation to wonder and awe. It is an invitation to having our hearts broken. It is an invitation to participate in God’s rescue plan for the whole of creation. It is an invitation to costly, self-giving, death-defeating love. In the upside down kingdom of God, slavery and death is an invitation to freedom and life.

And above all else it is an invitation to worship.

So my sisters and brothers, the invitation is to not pass by. Dare we linger? Dare we, for the next few hours, stay with Jesus, hanging on the cross? Dare we allow it to offend us, upset us, scare us, disrupt us, shame us? Dare we accept the invitation to worship and be changed?

As I have written before, in the Church of England we have three orders of ordination; Deacon, Priest (or Presbyter), and Bishop. The usual pattern for those expecting to be ordained priest is to serve the first year as a deacon, and then be ordained priest the following year. The diaconal year is an opportunity to focus on the servant aspect of being ordained, which is, in many ways, the foundational aspect of ministry, and never changes.

That said, I found it a slightly odd year, which felt for me personally to be more about what I wasn’t allowed to do! From a purely functional perspective, there wasn’t an awful lot to distinguish what I was doing as a deacon compared with what I’d been doing for the last 20 years!! I could spend the next 5 or 10 posts unpacking this, but even I would find that boring – so I’ll move on. Suffice to say for now that I am in no way diminishing the ministry of a deacon, or suggesting that the year was wasted or pointless.

What did catch me out a bit though was just how special my priesting ordination felt. In fact, at one point on my priesting retreat, late on the Saturday evening, I was a heartbeat away from phoning up the bishop to tell her I couldn’t go through with it!! But it was just a wobble, and after much prayer (and tears!) I finally went to sleep, and did indeed turn up at the cathedral the next day.

Reflecting upon it, I suppose there’s a number of elements going on which combined to make it feel the way it did.

Firstly there’s the sense of completing a journey (or at least a leg of the journey), of passing a milestone. Becoming a deacon had a temporary or transient feel to it, whereas last summer was reaching a waypoint to which I had been journeying probably since I was 19 or 20. It’s not the end of the journey by any means in terms of ministry, but it almost certainly is the ‘highest’ Order I will receive (I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d be ordained bishop!). There is no “next step” in that sense – this is now my life.

Secondly, on the day itself I felt a strong sense of commissioning and authority, in a way that I didn’t as a deacon. That I was receiving the full authority of the bishop (and the church) to minister, serve, and lead in the parish, as a Clerk in Holy Orders, and a Priest. That I can bless, absolve, and preside at Communion in Jesus name. Wowzers! I know a lot of this happened at my deaconing, but somehow last summer it felt a lot more real than the summer before, and it was scary, humbling, and exciting. I suspect a part of it was having had a year of being a “rev”, and coming to terms with what the means in practice. Which is in itself still very much a work in progress.

Finally, it was amazing and wonderful to preside at Holy Communion the following day. In one sense, the Eucharist is what sets us, as the Christian church, apart from all other religions and social clubs. That we break bread and share wine together in Jesus’ name is to my mind the defining characteristic of who we are and what we do. And be able to lead us all in this act of worship is an incredible joy and privilege.

I’m not wild about the term “priest” (except when it is used to mean the priesthood of all believers), and I am deeply uncomfortable with any cultic undertones or suggestion that my role shares anything other than name with the Levitical priesthood. I am not offering sacrifices, making atonement, or mediating between humanity and God – that job is already done. But I am perhaps helping us remember that this job has been done, and to help us pass on this good news to the world.

Sometimes I deeply dislike computers, especially when they try and be too clever. It’s actually a little bit scary (The Terminator‘s looking less and less far fetched!).

Recent incident – true story. My website now runs on my own server at home, at the end of my broadband pipe. Despite what the provider claims it really isn’t fibre, but it is 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, which is far more bandwidth than the traffic I generate. So far so good.

Last week, I suddenly started getting e-mails from Google’s search bot telling me the number of 404s on my site has suddenly increased. Oops, think I, must have bust something when I moved it. I look at it – strange, all seems fine. I also found out that my sitemap XML hadn’t updated itself since 2006, but that’s another story.

So I try from Google using the “view as Google” thing – 404s, 500s, cannot access, requires authorisation. Really weird.

So I forget about it for a bit, and then try again from work. Suddenly I can’t see my website at all, just errors. I go to the homepage, and am presented with the login screen for my NAS drive!!

Eeek – that drive has got all my photos, filing, backups, etc, and it’s being exposed to the Internet?!?!?!

Turns out that my Broadband hub had turned on UPnP by itself. It then also turned out that the NAS drive will aggressively try to find a router on the local network, and ask it to forward ports 80 and 443 to itself. And the broadband hub will obey, even though I had manually set up those ports to be forwarded to my hardened server. I didn’t see the problem from home because I was accessing the server directly (even though I thought I was going through the router).

Thankfully I could SSH in from work, which meant I could access the hub admin site, and turn off UPnP and the port forwarding, and put some measures in play to stop it happening again.

One of the things I have learnt from my spiritual director is to try to incorporate some silence whenever I pray. By which I mean inner as well outer silence (which is much harder!). I sometimes feel like Chidi from The Good Place, who says his mind is like a waste disposal unit with a fork in it, constantly grinding and grinding away. Other times I feel like Dumbledore, who needed to syphon his thoughts off into a Pensieve. I don’t really know if everyone feels like their head is “full”, or if I’m just a bit odd, but my guess would be that most of us from time to time feel like this?

Anyway, as I was trying to still my mind recently, the image of a snow globe came to me – you know one of those globes with a house (or whatever) inside, and the globe is filled with water and glitter. When you turn the globe upside down, the glitter all swirls up and spins and eddies, completely obscuring the scene inside. However, if you then put the globe down, the snow starts to settle, and slowly the water clears, until eventually everything is still, and you can see the house again – indeed, you can see all the way through the globe.

It struck me that being silent in prayer is a bit like this. At first my mind is a complete flurry, with thoughts spinning and whirling. I must remember this. How am I going to solve that? Did I send a card to them? When’s our anniversay? Have I packed the swimming kit? And so on. Sometimes the drifts are deeper – where is life going? What does the future hold? Am I bringing up my children well?

But then, as I just sit, in silence, allowing these thoughts to fly around, they do begin to settle. It’s not a process that can be hurried. Sometimes I use the Jesus prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy in me a sinner”). Sometimes I just wait and allow the blizzard to rage in my head.

Either way, eventually the snow does settle. The thoughts stop flying round quite so violently. I can begin to see a bit more clearly. I can begin to think a bit more clearly. I can begin to hear God’s voice a little more easily.

Very excited that I’ve relocated my website and my photo site onto a Raspberry Pi, which is sitting on my desk looking at me as I type!

I purchased said Pi for this purpose over a year ago, but somehow didn’t quiet get around to doing anything more than having it as a Linux box I could SSH into should the spirit move me. This is more useful than it sounds, as Linux network tools are good, it’s immensely useful to be able to test things from outside my work LAN while at work, plus SSH tunelling is the best thing since sliced bread.

I know that, by saying all this I’m potentially revealing details about the server running stuff, which is a security vulnerability. But I reckon anyone who’s serious about trying to hack me will already know what OS and hardware I’m running, and the chances are they aren’t reading this blog either!

I love it when I come across verses the the Bible which I’ve never really noticed before.

In this case, it’s from Acts 9:31

Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.

In general Acts paints a very dynamic picture of the early church – this great explosion of community and faith, with thousands being converted, daily growth, healing, miraculous escapes, signs and wonders. With the possible exception of the “Toronto Blessing” back in the 90s, this has not been my personal experience of church.

So it’s nice to reminded of an alternative model – that of a church at peace, living in the fear of the Lord and full of the Holy Spirit… and growing. This is certainly closer to my everyday experience of church life, and it’s easy to think of it as a second best. Don’t get me wrong; I long and pray for revival; that God’s spirit would sweep through our land again – goodness knows we need it.

But until She does, maybe it’s ok to live in peace, in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Spirit… and maybe even grow?

Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.