What They Don't Tell You at Theological College

If you want to know about Ernst Troeltsch, immanence, the correct means of ringing a chapel bell before Evening Prayer on a Tuesday in Epiphany, how so many people are phased by a healthy Mariology, what Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησου Χριστοῦ means, or indeed the greater joys of the latest Kevin Mayhew assassination of a good tune, where do you go? 

Theological College innit. 

You will get all of those things there, served (in the case of my college, Gawd Blessit) with fine food, alarmingly cheap liquor (I recall setting the prices one year) and the company of lovely ordinands - natural leaders called to work almost completely alone for the next four decades or less (which is short hand for that fact that ordinands are a suspicious bunch not fond of being led because they are the leaders, innit). 

You go to your Vicar, tell him/her that you feel The Call (like the Force felt by Jedis but with less Yoda). S/he sends you to the Diocesan Director Of Ordinands where you shalt be grilled until thee be verily dead of the exertion  and with any luck a season ticket to a BAP (not a flour topped roll, but a secret panel where you will be stared at by people who will smile at you while they do it). If you pass the flour-topped bread roll, you will be invited to give up your salary (or much time after work) to study the finer recesses of the psychology of Dr Troeltsch (sat next to some lovey who will have all his books under her pillow already, and will thereby make you feel like a pilchard). After that, you have your pretty new stole blessed, clip on the collar and launch forth into the unsuspecting world of Christians and all their enormities. 

Then you make some discoveries. 

During your curacy (if you are lucky like I was), you will blessed with a training incumbent who will walk you through the 300 million things you didn't learn at college in a meaningful and organised way. You have three years for that - no time at all. 

Then, if that is your Yoda Force, you go on to be the Landlord Spiritual of a lump of London or somewhere else. Semantic prestidigitation on the Application Form will discreetly hide that fact that you were only a curate when you applied and know sod-all really. Day one - all alone except the "to do" list (which will have grown since six months before the interregnum started that you just ended).  

This last few months, I have wrestled with the the parish finances. I have just escorted a very nice man indeed through his redundancy. I have just drafted a Person Specification for a job role that I have just been called to create, and will venture down the fraught road of employee rights and human resource frivolities. I have had to manage border disputes, manage those who don't wish to be managed, be the chairperson of a charity which I needed to register with the Commission (automatically becoming bound by the law in such things). That is before having to find the words to comfort a mother to a baby who may be dying, the woman who sees no hope in life any more, or the man who seeks absolution after a lifetime of alcohol abuse. I have had to be the nice man, the polite man, the man who takes the hits and hides the bruises. I have to have a sense of absolute certainty in all that I do, without apparent personal weakness or the human scuffles that emerge for us all. I have overseen a significant building project blessed as I was this time around that I had a gifted and qualified parishioner to take the lead. Then we come to the stuff of eternal life and salvation - much of that is communicated by me, in my own frailty and oft doubt. I have been on the telly, the radio and am a public name in some places - that requires a certain amount of edification, but is never going to form part of the College Curriculum. 

I don't blame college, or indeed the system. If theological college launched a course that covered all of the above, I'd still be at college or worse, I would have run a mile before applying. The world of the Vicar just isn't what you might ever expect in your wildest or worst dreams. We are, in a very real sense, the jack of all trades and master of none. I thank God daily that he forced me through the world of work that preceded my ordination by fifteen years, because there was the training I use now. Right there. 

Though, to be sure, it is still be best job in the world. Deo Gratias. 

Oak Trees and Greenhouses

I existed in a greenhouse, and my friend existed under an oak tree. The presence of the oak tree and the greenhouse have had an effect on us, and quite possibly how we behave on a day to day basis. 

The difference between oak trees and greenhouses is in the experience of those in the space closest to them. The thing is, you have no idea what I am talking about!

Since becoming the 'lead' in a parish, I have been given an opportunity to move from the curacy position of thinking about my own ministry to the incumbency position of thinking about the ministries of others. I have thought hard about this transition over the last few months, and have come to the conclusion that I can characterise ministries in two ways (among the many ways that surely exist) - as oak trees or greenhouses. 

In thinking about oak trees, I think of a something mighty, deeply rooted, long lasting, visually significant. The oak is the focus, the thing that artists paint or picture. It is an iconic plant that speaks of longevity. In thinking about greenhouses, I observe that they are modest buildings that are an important part of the garden, but rarely the focus. These are not the characteristics that I (necessarily) focus on, however. 

What is true to say is that under the wide arms arms of a mature oak, nothing else grows. There is no light and very little nourishment in the soil. What is true to say about greenhouses is that their sole aim is to give life to other things. In its modesty, it is the place of germination and new life. The oak tree is in centre stage; the greenhouse is not, it is the new plants and not the building itself. 

I believe that ministries hold some of these characteristics. They may be individual ministries or wider concerns, but the effect upon the ministries of others is largely the same, I think. The only way you can live in proximity to the oak is in being an oak too. The greenhouse doesn't choose its seedlings, it just gives them the best start. 

If you are a tree, mightiness is a favourable condition. In ministry, I fear that it is not. When a ministry is about a name, a personality - it is an oak tree ministry. If you are a greenhouse, success in the area of horticultural nurture is a favourable condition. In ministry, it is the same if that nurture is of new ministries or the enablement of other ministries within the same space. 

As I reflect upon my training experience as a curate, I learn much about how I must be as a Vicar. I was afforded all the warmth and opportunity that a greenhouse grants a seedling. In other words, I was given a new life often at the expense of the silent effort of another person. It was about me, not him. My friend, sadly, experienced the opposite; it was about his trainer not about him, and so he feels under-developed and weedy in ministry. As a Vicar, I have a duty to be the same as the one who gave me my chances. I can be an oak tree and soak up all the light, or I can be a greenhouse and channel it. 

Curacy ... a Guide

The Oxford Diocese Beauties - June 2008

For what are, I hope, obvious reasons (if you are more than a passing acquaintance to this blog), I have been thinking a considerable amount about the last three years and the profound honour of the ministry entrusted to my care. I can confidently claim my curacy as being a success - perhaps one of the most successful, not a claim I make lightly or carelessly.Within a breath of time, I will be a curate in a vicar's clothes, and a new and very different ministry will have started. I want, therefore, to consign some thought for posterity, as a tool of reflection for me, and maybe as a helpful tool for someone else later.

So, my Vernacular Top Ten Tips for a Kicking Curacy. 

1. Reaping and Sowing - the absolute truth of this ministry in training is that we get out in direct proportion to what we put in. We are called to work hard, to graft. A finicky over-focus on time off or study-time is not, I believe, what it is about. Those who have had the better curacies are the priests who have had to be reminded on many occasions about life/work balance. After all, ours is the best job in the world. We are not in sole charge of anything except perhaps our diaries, but get to go out do some vicaring and enjoying the rich blessings of ministry without some of the stresses and responsibilities of incumbency. 

2. Loving them into the Kingdom - the phrase taught to me by my Incumbent, this just about sums up every moment of any ministry. In this case, I refer to the level with which curates must fall in love with our ministerial field, its people and its life. I am passionate about Aylesbury and I have set my heart to do whatever is in my power to add to its life. Our communities (parish or wider afield) are the greatest gift in the world to us. Any lesser a view means you can't fully embrace them as brothers and sisters. 

3. The grace to learn - curacies are training posts. We are always fledglings to one level or another, and a heart to learn and the grace to accept a lesson can only be the winning ways in this life we lead. We may arrive good at some things (by God's  grace), but the minute we forget that we are beginners is a moment of great peril. Only someone with a heart to learn can be taught. 

4. The Boss - I have spoken of this elsewhere, but it is still worthy of note here. To my mind, and in all normal circumstances (there are always exceptions, of course), our Training Incumbents know best. Even when they don't (and it is conceivable), their choices and directions are made for our development. Graciousness is about the best way of showing appreciation for that person who has or will devote a considerable proportion of three years to our specific personal growth. Rarely in any walk of life are any trainees so blessed by the experience, time and prayer of one person in such a complete way. If they seem to act like they know best, it is probably because they do. 

5. The people - often passive or unknowing in this, they are much of the source of our learning. Our first clumsy bedside encounters, the first funeral, the first assembly, passing comments that stick to us, feedback (there is a little in curacy) - all of these things improve us. Even conflicts (as there are in churches) are a source of a rich education, all the while remembering that we are part of the encounter. This speaks, I think, of loving the people into the Kingdom with a grateful heart. Even the most talented Training Incumbent can do nothing with their curate in an empty room or field. 

6. The unexpected - three years I would have stated confidently that I was not cut out for ministry in schools. I would have done an assembly a month as a box-ticking exercise and let those who I perceived to be better than me do that bit of the job. God knows better than us, and I thanks God for that because I couldn't have been more wrong about that first assessment. This is but one of a myriad examples that I could give you. Conversely, some things that I thought were "my thing" have become the things I gain least pleasure from now. A heart to accept the unexpected will, I believe, be regularly surprised. 

7. Pecking Order - the 'Curate in Ministerial Raptures' will always get this wrong: (1) Family (2) Self (3) Ministry. The second speaks not of the very thing I denounced in Point 1, but of a need to ensure that the battery is charged before it energises others. This is place for retreats, prayer, reading, study, or just a little of that elusive thing in a ministerial life - sofa time. However, the lesson it has taken longest to learn (if indeed I ever did), is that my family overwhelmingly trump every other thing. Yes, of course there are exceptions and missing meetings or key services in favour of baby-sitting just speaks of poor organisation. This Point refers to taking them as seriously as the work, and both need careful organising to exist (or even stand a chance of existing) side by side. 

8. Have Fun - I have known some curacies to founder, or to remain stunted and never to fully grow. They were all characterised by a lack of fun and enjoyment (that is not to say that such a thing was the cause of the 'issues'). Laugh with people, laugh at yourself, even laugh at and with you Incumbent - it's allowed. Ministry is not an opportunity to be professional poe-faced, because that is as attractive to the world as flatulence. Yes, some of the things we do or witness are just ridiculous, as are we at times - largely because this is a theatre of human-beings doing our best together. 

9. Trust God - perhaps the one that should have gone at the top, but the statement of the obvious that is often the obvious understatement. Those of us blessed with an ordained ministry will know how many hurdles we have hopped through to get to this point. If we think for a moment that we got here by own efforts alone, and not within the calling that carries us in our lives, then we are stupid and conceited. God got us here, and God will guide us on, if we let Him.

10. Ministry is Us, but different - emerging from three years of this, I can see that I am fairly well the same bloke that was trained, but that I have a few tool more to help me along the way. I have not turned into some Angel, become a better man, acquired a more robust conscience or made me any less able to make mistakes than I was before I took this collar. If anything, I am 'me', but in the right place. What I was good at before I am still good at, and what I knew I was poor at, I am still poor at (notwithstanding Point 6). I put this here because I wish I had known that at the start. Early ministry was, for me, characterised by a deep sense that I was failing to meet a standard that I had always assigned to priests. Early blogs posts here will confirm that. Now I am, finally, at peace that I was formed in a greater part by the life I lived before all this started, and that I must embrace that formation accordingly (and not shun it as I had been tended to do). 

There is so much more that can be written and the experiences of others will vary, of course. I fail to see how I could have been more blessed, by the life, company, training and experience that I have had here in Aylesbury. More specific thoughts and thanks will be written later. 

Curacy and Being The Seed Sown

Garret Walker - 'The Sower'

It's a funny time. In the same day I was signing forms that 'assessed' my curacy I was also visiting my new parish to sort out some things there. The drive to Whitton gave me time to ponder where I had come in my ministry and how I had got there.

The first sermon that I preached after ordination was based on the parable of the sower, and in the church quickly became known as the "So What" sermon. In that sermon, I expressed my view that being a deacon involved being at the thorny/rocky/choked soil to attend to the needs of the seed that was apt to perish when cast upon them.

Curacies - those periods of 'on the job' clerical training   are wonderful things in most circumstances. However, my mind is taken to my first Aylesbury sermon and how my perception has changed. In many ways, I thought my job was to tend poor soils, when in fact my job was to be the seed.

It is possibly a fruitless comment, but I wonder if a seed knows what it will grow into. I am of the view that it is simply a ball of potential, poised to receive the first drop of water and the first mote of sunlight. In the earliest stages of discernment it is a little like being in the 'refining process' of selection and theological education. If those called to ordained ministry are like seed, then those years before ordination are about grading and judging, receiving their coating to make them deliver the greatest yield. Receiving our curacy is not unlike being a sack of grain simply delivered, ready for our Training Incumbents to sow us. 

A seed, in most circumstances, will grow into the herb, bush or tree that it was created to do. In the process of training, the soil in which we will plunge our first ministerial roots is that chosen by the priest who oversees our development and training. Then we are sown, or (as it feels at times) thrown in at the deep end and encouraged to do as seed does, and work it out by our own instincts. Seed gets no more of a course of lessons in how to grow than curates do. Training is not about that sort of direction, it is about being given the richest opportunities and left to do the work, in a controlled and 'safe' environment often. 

The early days of curacy are like those tense days of germination. Will the seed send forth leaves like flags of victory into the light? Will that specific seed wither and die? Curates are not one seed of course, but many. Some are 'sown' into work with children, others into the liturgies of our lives, others into pastoral encounters never previously experienced. Some seeds do not and will not ever grow. That is the wrong soil. However, there will be other seeds that will send forth their seed-leaves, those tentatives specks of green that suggests that life is about to explode. The early days are hard and seem to last an age, but very quickly those seed leaves are superseded by the shaped and familiar leaves of a growing and developing plant, ready to yield fruit in due season. 

Our training incumbents are not just there to sow in soil judged to be right. They have to assess their own choices in that, especially when those seeds die. I am blessed that I cannot think of such a soil, but I know friends for whom much effort was spent in quite the wrong places. Our mentors are called to support our new stems, prune our more exuberant branches. After the germination days when we seedlings dream of becoming mighty oak trees, our incumbents are busy reminding us that a sparrow may yet flatten us! 

I look back on three years and I am not the priest I had expected to be. If I had written down the description of the priest I thought I would or should have been, and then offered my description now, the two would have few overlaps. I marvel at what my training incumbent has achieved with me. I do things now in ministry that I would never have dreamed of before (and that would have caused me to blanch and shudder). I have discovered weaknesses in things that I would have portrayed as natural strengths before. In the end, I am the plant that God had intended. What we have never been is a graft, a seedling or a young plant - not at the start. We were just little balls of potential that, in the right training incumbents hands, with a little Grace from God and a following wind, have grown into fruit-bearing little plants. What a precious gift to one called by God to do a job that I have never believed is within my capability. 

Guide Me, Oh Thou Training Incumbent

One of my small claims of success in my former business life  was that for the company in the area in which I worked - London in this case - I was responsible for the identification of 40% of the staff newly promoted to management roles. This ranged from noticing, identifying, promoting, training and developing these individual men and women. This is something of which I am perhaps proudest, as I regard training and development to be a key duty of management. A decade later, no small number of these people are in full manager roles in large stores around London. I regard it as one my natural skills and one that I was called to use for the betterment of others in their careers. 

I am in a training role now. I am subject to training and development, and I consider it to be a God-given gift. Nothing less. 

To the best of my knowledge, in the Church of England, everyone who wears a dog-collar (notionally or in fact) has been the worthy recipient of a curacy. The role of curate (or more accurately, 'assistant curate' as the Incumbent is always the curate, having 'cure of souls' with the Bishop) is broadly a training role. Some retain this position after training, but on the whole, curates are those being trained into their ministry and out towards self-sufficient ministries such as incumbencies, sector chaplaincies, armed forces chaplaincies and so on. Curates are trained and developed by their 'Training Incumbents' - those priests of experience and relevant skill who are designated to oversee curacies. If I listen to some curates, Training Incumbents appear to be either woeful or wonderful - never occupying the middle ground. I am blessed with the latter. 

If I may be so bold as to say, for I am am manifestly not a training incumbent, the job of one is to receive a raw deacon, discern the skills and talents that they bring (often buried in soft soil during theological education while the Bible and Moltmann are discussed at length), apply them to things that are outside of the experience of the cleric in their care, and with any luck, hope that this discernment was right. In the case of my incumbent,   I work with a man who gives up many of the 'cherries' from the tree that I may enjoy them. Some things energise priests, and a good number of those things are placed in my hands, leaving him a lot of the hard-slog stuff. I do not under-rate or under-estimate the kindness of this, and as a result, I enjoy a very good training experience. The fellow that I work with has worked me out very well, knowing how it is that I tick - and has even found a way of doing the thing I don't normally take well, and 'putting me straight' on occasions. We both fill a large space by virtue of our personalities, but I sense that he stands aside many times to let me bask in the light and enjoy the experience of curacy. I have been exposed to such a wide range of experiences - school, civic, armed forces, church financial, techy - and so the list goes on. I have been given every chance and opportunity to discover things that I seem to have a gift for - and without the wisdom of my incumbent, not one would have been made manifest to me. I am truly and richly blessed by him.

Curacy is a rare gift in life. It is an extended period of on-the-job training. It needs to be received with generosity (for as natural leaders, we need to be generous enough to accept that we are not already the perfect priest). It also needs to be received with gratitude and humility, and for this reason I have a very considerable issue with curates who want to run the show at diocesan level or even higher. To be trained acknowledges the need, and to have the grace to receive it while it there. I believe that while not a universal thing, most curacies are good and positive, and surely one of the most significant sacraments that a priest could ever receive.