“This is God calling.. .?’

 

Revd Guy Donegan-Cross. Curate, Christchurch, Old Town, Swindon

 

It was dark, all was still and quiet as I lay in my bed. Suddenly a breath of wind brushed my cheek. I stirred, becoming slowly aware of an approaching light permeating the sluggish limits of my consciousness. “Get up! You are on holy ground!” a voice seemed to be telling me. In a flash of holy inspiration I realised I was face to face with God! I fell to the floor of my bedroom in awe, brushing socks out of the way. God spoke: “Listen carefully... I want you to become.. .a vicar!’

 

If only. I am afraid the truth of how I have got to the point of being a curate in Swindon is far more mundane, and would probably never make a great Hollywood movie. That’s not to say it hasn’t been exciting, and that I don’t have some confidence in God’s calling (and the process of selection that has accompanied it). But my understanding of how God calls us to anything, whether it be wearing a dog collar, creating art, building roads, or nouveau cuisine, revolves more around how we work out what he’s saying to us in the rhythm, warp and woof of the stuff of everyday life, than through moments of Spielberg-type revelation.

 

But how does God call us to something like the ministry? It’s different for everybody, so don’t look at my story as a yardstick for yours. However, there are some general pointers that might be helpful.

 

The jigsaw effect. There was never one particular thing that did it for me. It was more a sense of the pieces fitting together - what other people said about me, where I felt my talents lay, what motivated me and made me excited, how I felt before God in prayer, the appeal of wearing a cassock (joke)...

 

Recurring vibes. After a particularly gruelling year working in a church aged 19, I put the idea of ever getting ordained firmly to the back of my mind, and asked God to bring it to the front again when and if it was the right time. Generally speaking, if you’ve been trying to ignore something, and it keeps coming back to haunt you, God could be trying to say something... For people for whom the thought of being ordained fills them with terror, this could be important.

 

Wise guys. Talking to people I respected, who wouldn’t just tell me what I wanted to hear, was always helpful. My wife and I also went on a vocations weekend (like the one run by Trinity College) to explore deeper. They seemed to want to put everyone off - there were a lot of depressed vicars giving seminars! But it was useful, and made us delay applying for a while to do other things.

 

Holy dissatisfaction. I don’t know if this is just my temperament, but if you suffer from the “dis-ease” of frequently feeling things could be done better by

the Church, you could quite easily see this as a symptom of being called to do something about it yourself (although you don’t necessarily have to get ordained, of course!). To put it in more spiritual language, if you have a vision, or a “burden” for God’s people, then what is the best way you can help to put that vision into practice?

 

“I think that, as far as I know, I may be called...” It’s always good to maintain a healthy humility about the limits of your own capacity for understanding God’s will. That’s not to say we don’t want to hunger and thirst for words from God, but that when we get them, we need to remind ourselves that, for now, we are seeing “through a glass darkly”. This helped me never to throw all my eggs completely in the one basket, and more importantly, to make God himself the focus of my search, and not the “calling”.

 

Being myself. At the end of the day, whatever you think God wants you to wear around your neck, you are being called to exercise any ministry through your own personality, your own talents and your weaknesses. Don’t let going through a selection process mould you into what you think they want you to be. They assure us that it will show anyway! On the other hand, if it comes to a selection conference...

 

Be prepared. Again, maybe this is just my temperament, but I found it useful to work through some of the basic questions and issues that I might expect to have to discuss at a selection conference, and jot down some notes. Not so I could fool anyone, but just to give me the confidence to know that I wasn’t going to freeze up, and that I would be able to give as full a picture as possible of where I was at.

 

More on ABM . With the selectors, it’s a game of trust. They tell you that they are on your side, and you really have to believe that - otherwise you are just off on the wrong foot (as far as I know, suspicion is not a gift of the Spirit). There are legendary scare stories, and one selector started the interview by saying I had a split personality (Oh no I haven’t! Oh yes you have!), but basically, if you go in expecting the best, you will be more able to be yourself.

 

The Bible, prayer, experience, gut feeling and common sense all tell me that God has a calling for everyone, and it’s probably a cocktail of these that he has used to prod me to ordination. If there’s a final piece of advice to chew on, it’s probably the old cliche, “Push the door and see if it opens.” Life is short, there are lots of opportunities ahead in the kingdom of God. Hearing God’s call for me at least has been more of an active process than a passive waiting around. Even if I sometimes wish he would shout at me in bed...

Back to sermon index