How does God speak?
Is it in the words of a CV or by judging the style in which it has been laid out? Would one font convince you to put someone on a shortlist and another make you put the application in the reject pile? Is it through the checking off of tick-boxes on a pre-prepared statement of needs and expectations? Is it likely to be someone who doesn’t surprise you or the person who completely astonishes you? Is it the name murmured on many lips or someone that no-one has ever heard of? Does it come down to the random good (or bad) looks that good (or bad) genes have bestowed? Or are quick judgements made about dress-codes? The colour coding of clerical shirts is one thing, but brown shoes with a black suit… quel horreur!
Most months I get to take part in conversations at one level or another about church appointments. Mostly that is low level stuff where I’ve not got much input, simply hearing about congregations that are becoming vacant and hearing a little about what they are looking for. And then some time later hearing about whom they have appointed. Sometimes there are surprises. Sometimes there are not. Sometimes there’s no appointment to be made.
Currently, the congregation that I serve is looking for a new priest to work alongside us and that heightens one’s ponderings about the whole business considerably.
And of course, just recently, everyone in this diocese has been involved in the business of electing a new bishop. That, somehow, is simultaneously both exactly like the process of finding a new priest and exactly unlike the process of finding a new priest. Looking for a bishop is like looking for a priest but with the process on steroids, ten times the number of people involved and the angst levels rising heavenwards faster than our prayers can keep up.
There are two things that are clear to me about all of this. The first is that everyone involved seems to believe that God too is deeply involved. The second is that almost no-one would be able to give a coherent explanation of how God gets involved.
Here in Scotland, when we are looking for a bishop, we expect all the candidates to express the view that God is calling them to the position that is open but we can’t proceed to an election until we’ve got three candidates. Theologically we behave as though we are looking for at least three candidates, one of whom God is genuinely calling to the post of bishop and the rest of whom, God is completely deluding. Having seen the process from just about every perspective possible, I have to say that I’m completely unconvinced that God is in that business.
As I have listened to all of these processes work themselves out in different dioceses and in different local contexts, I find myself amazed at the sheer variety of reasons that people use to justify the decisions that they make about candidates for different positions.
Sometimes it does feel as though the mental processes involved in making such decisions seem more similar to the way dating apps are used than anything that could be thought of as the deep work of discernment. Swipe left for unsuitable. untenable and unlikely. Swipe right for God’s anointed one.
(I’m still talking about finding clerics at the moment, before anyone points out that searching for God’s anointed is unlikely to find me husband material.)
The truth is though that some of our language about vocations and God’s choices can get in the way. God only ever provided one saviour of the world, after all, and yet many a search committee behaves as though they are still looking for one. We often behave as though we are playing some kind of heavenly inspired dating game.
People do make judgements about vocational appointments at many different levels. Some of those judgements come from a deep consideration of someone’s gifts and skills. However, that sometimes goes alongside much more superficial decision making. I’ve known people change their mind about a candidate for a position simply on the basis that they’ve been there a long time and they just want it to be over so that they can go home.
Notwithstanding all this, there may yet be ways of trying to imagine the Holy Spirit being involved within human processes and the fickle changes and chances of human opinion. The main way that I can conceive of God being involved is to think of the many and various ways in which we make up our minds about clerical appointments all sparking off one another. We conceive of the Holy Spirit being a fire, sometimes a blazing fire. When an appointment is made which seems undoubtedly to fall within the boundaries of divine joy then it is easy for me to imagine all those sparks coming together to blaze as some kind of new holy fire which will bring warmth and excitement and life to all who encounter it.
It often seems to me that those who believe the most in Divine Providence are those who most get themselves tied in theological knots when trying to appoint a priest or a bishop. I’m rather wary of Divine Providence myself and rather hope that God is wary of it as a concept too.
Here at St Mary’s, we’re right in the thick of all this at the moment as we’re advertising for a Vice Provost. It is both exciting and nerve-wracking. Some people think we’re being too specific about some things in the job description and no doubt others think we’re not being specific enough about different things. I’m aware that the request for a video sermon with the application will put off people who might otherwise put in an application, but then we probably are looking for someone for whom using new tools in the Glorious Work fills them with life rather than dread. I’m also aware that we’re looking for someone who will enjoy being in a congregation that is very musical. We’re looking for someone who won’t feel like a fish out of water in a congregation that revels in using music to spread the news that the love of God is real though rather than looking for a Precentor by another name. The job itself is attested by both of those who have held the post before to be one of the most exciting jobs in all of God’s holy church – deep pastoral and theological conversations, often with younger people, are the stuff of life here. Helping to create worship that challenges, comforts, inspires and provokes is at the heart of what we do. And I often think that the congregation is perhaps the most interesting group of people who meet under one roof in all of Scotland. We’re a people who believe in trying to become ever more open, inclusive and welcoming – and if you want to know what I think that means, pick up the phone and give me a call.
I’m one of those priests who likes working with colleagues and that’s not true of everyone. But collegiate patterns and styles of working are the stuff of normality in cathedral contexts and I’m glad they are.
Just as people have complicated reasons for assessing whether they would appoint a cleric, so clerics have complicated ways of assessing whether it is for them. More than once I’ve known people say that they would like to come to work here but that they (or more often their partner) can’t cope with the idea of working in Glasgow as it is the Murder Capital of Europe. And the trouble is, no matter how many times I explain that Glasgow has one of the best stories in Europe for turning around knife crime and that we are a long way from deserving that title, they still keep running Taggart on the TV and people find themselves believing it. (It isn’t helped that some of the locations in Taggart were in the leafy West End – ie in and around the cathedral itself). For all its historical grit though, Glasgow goes on being green, gorgeous, gallus and gregarious.
How we make decisions about these things can be deep, trivial, thoughtful, shallow, inspired, sometimes stemming from ignorance. sometimes from knowledge and yes sometimes because our heart simply stirs within us and there’s no other way of describing the work of God.
And so we keep on watching, hoping and praying. Somehow, I think we all believe, God gets on with it.
Just don’t ask me to explain exactly how.
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