Disposable Laity

Someone very close to me wrote a blog post recently about the fact that she is, after six years, laying down her role as Churchwarden. If you want an interesting perspective on life in church, please read Doorkeeper's post here. It is a simple post, expressed well and offers a side to parish life that many experience. 

The nice thing about being "the Vicar" is that (Common Tenure allowing) we can hover around in a parish like a bad smell for decades. Because we feel called to? No; because we enjoy it and it works for us or our families to stay. Let there be no illusion there. We stay for us most of the time.

In a well run parish, this is broadly where it ends, unless the small matter of a wage or salary is brought to bear - but again, very often those people stay not because of calling, but because of economic reasons. It is our wonderful laity who step forward to do jobs around church who are called to it. They are there through that calling, with any luck take some pleasure from it, but in all cases do it in the context of their freely given spare time. This is the case for the lovely person who might polish a brass every month, who serves at the Altar on a rota-approved basis, or the kindly person who simply prays for the parish and her life. It is the same for Churchwardens too. 

Churchwardens, in most parishes I think, have a tenure. That is to say that they can hold office for a given period of time, having then to relinquish it and give to the next person. This is a good thing on many levels as we all know of Wardens who were in post six or seven years after they were clinically dead. Accounts of Warden who gripped steadfast to their staffs for decades are not uncommon, and rarely accounts filled with glee and happiness. 

So, dear reader, we have members of our wonderful laity who give their time freely, as a result of their sense of God's calling who - in the end - have to stop that work and give it away. Many have no choice at all in that, including Wardens. 

Reading Doorkeeper's account is helpful because it reminds people like me that such transitions are not painless. When you give your all to something, it is difficult to stop if those years have been good (as they were in Doorkeeper's case). What do they do afterwards? How do they re-integrate back into parish life in a revised way after a period of holding much authority? How do they fill the many hours that they previously gave, not to the parish in question, but to God? Vicar's (myself included) preside over these moments, and I will do so this session with a Warden of my own who ran her own Interregnum. Doorkeeper's post is a timely reminder that it isn't just puffed-up priests who hurt when the job stops or has to change. We forget that to our peril and to the pain and cost to our vital lay volunteers. 

Hardcore Calling

If you say "vocation" in a church, chances are people will think priest 'minister'. If someone comes forward claiming a sense of calling, invariably they are saying "I think I want to be a vicar". Vocation and ordained ministry have become synonymous (more often than not).

Oh that it was that simple. 

I don't deal with vocations in the way some of my colleagues do. I don't have to read the fine print and the words between the lines with those who feel that inexorable pull from God. Maybe one day I will, but not now. Now, I regard it as a tough job and one where I would struggle. 

Today we remember Simeon ('the Righteous', for there is a panoply of Simea), the old geezer of Candlemas, the fella who just happened to be stood there when Mary and Joseph carried in that peculiar little bundle of out-of-this-world new life. With Simeon, we then witness a hardcore calling, an extreme vocation. 

The thing with Simeon, is that his calling was there from before his birth, placed within him by God as he was formed in his mother's womb. This is, I believe, where all callings are placed - whether we care to take any notice or not. His calling was not to pop down to the nearest clerical outfitters for an array of Fairtrade poly-cotton tunnel-collar sky-blue shirts. His calling was not to move into a generously proportioned vicarage or take the keys to a marvellous edifice. 

Simeon was called by God to receive that Christ child - and then, basically, to die. For Simeon, his vocation to was wait an entire lifetime for the moment that may or may not happen in his dying days. When we think "vocation", we think beginnings, new directions. For Simeon, "vocation" meant fulfillment, accomplishment and endings. God, having filled the old bloke with the Holy Spirit, had kept him alive so that his eyes may see the child, the Messiah. We know that it all worked out perfectly for Simeon, for our Bible tells us so. But imagine waiting seventy, eighty or ninety years for a single moment that may or may not happen - a moment that you feel called to enter. 

Callings are universal - which is to say that all people have a calling placed upon them from God. Some listen, some can interpret that, many mis-interpret that, but some are the hardest callings of all. May Simeon become your Patron Saint. 

That is My Job

Blogging has been an interesting thing, but the thing it has done most frequently is to cause me to face up to my identity as a priest. In my 'former life', it was easier - I was a shopkeeper, married happily to a wonderful woman, lived a simple life, went to church, liked fast cars and planes, liked a glass of wine and a single malt, then I went to bed and the cycle started again. I could do all of that - it was eminently do-able.

Priests enjoy many blessings (no pun intended), but we live with something of a curse - the 'why on earth am I doing this?' conundrum. We are priests by the intervention of God (as we believe), and such a rare and precious gift is very often too much to cope with unless you have the ego of an aircraft carrier. Without a blog, I didn't have to think about it much. I did what I always do - put my head down and graft hard so that in some measure I could cause myself to be worthy of this precious gift by effort alone. Pah - as if....

Sometimes the angst and dissonance overflows and as I read back over some these posts I can see how often I wrestle with this stuff. I guess I will have to learn to live with this calling. Don't get me wrong, I love it. However, if someone walked up to you in the street and gave you keys of an Aston Martin DBS and said, 'Here, this is yours' you'd be glad, thank them, have some great times driving the thing, but always wonder how that came about - the 'why me' thing. I doubt you would ever fully resolve it. I haven't, but I have to get on with it. That is my job.

Yes, I am different. That I am sitting here in a dog-collar listening to yet more heavy metal as I write this is odd. That I may be the only sacramental priest in my geographical area (or so it feels) beyond my own Incumbent is tough for me. That I am more traditional in my style and all the while acknowledge the rightful calling of women, homosexual people and anyone else that God sees fit to call to any role in the life of His church makes me a very small minority.

As a new friend from Twitter said, this is my calling. I am sick of stressing about it, and so I am just going to concede that I am here for some purpose, perhaps as yet undisclosed, and just get on with it. This isn't a job that I can stop doing, it is a state of being - a 'new me' in one sense. In fact, I have to also accept that there are beer swilling, heavy metal loving,  sacramental yet tolerant car loving plane admiring Christians out there - and they too have a right to be ministered to. That is my job (among others)