Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 April 2012 10:19:11
Regular readers may as well stop reading now - one way or another you've heard it all before. People who are going to be there Sunday evening you may as well stop at this point - you'll get me delivering this brief testimony to you then. So that just leaves the person who commented on FB that she'd like to see what I'd written and the person who liked it. So S and C I hope you enjoy.
I think, in retrospect, my call to preach can be traced back many years but God took me on a journey which meant I heard that call and was in a place where I could put it into practice in 2009 when I was doing the Extending Discipleship and Exploring Vocation course here at North Road led by Julie and Norma. I began EDEV around the same time I did a much shorter membership course largely to find out more about Methodism basically….oh and try to make some sense of what on earth I was doing with my life. I didn't for one minute expect that it would lead to me doing my local preacher training.
You have to appreciate that back by 2009 when I started EDEV I’d come to the conclusion in my own mind that it was best for all concerned if my acts of service within church buildings were confined to moving chairs and doing washing up. I’d become quite the expert in resisting the urge to scream at or burst into tears on those who were suggesting God might have other plans for me in terms of what I did at church. Just to clarify here washing up and moving chairs are both important tasks and equally important ministries to preaching – however just like everything else they have to be done out of the right motives. My desire to avoid possible conflict or responsibility were not the right motive for only doing these things.
But God wasn't giving up on making me move out of my comfort zone that easily. He had/ has a plan for me which I have the choice to accept or reject at each stage and 2009 was going to be one of the years when he took me on a whole set of adventures which – had I known about in advance – I would probably never have had the courage to embark upon.
As the weeks went on I discovered that EDEV was more about facilitating and equipping you with tools and information to do your own exploring and journeying with God. There was an emphasis on reflection and discernment and thinking stuff through with God using the bible. For me a session we did looking at approaches to theological reflection was an important step on the journey of this calling. That was the session where I first encountered the Methodist Quadrilateral and the idea that you use scripture, reason, tradition and experience together. Reflecting on experience makes you look at your own story and seeing God’s grace working our in your own life. I have to say that if I had to identify a specific moment when God released the healing into my life which was required if I was ever to be parted from my world of chairs and washing up - that would be it. Suddenly I found I didn’t have to view my experience as oppositional to scripture and tradition, and have reason as the referee in the middle trying to keep me sane when I found I couldn’t square the circle.
A key part of the reflection that night also involved looking at our gifts and skills (and being honest about what they were). It actually gave us ways to do this rather than just saying “identify them”.
So moving on we delved deeper into the bible, looking at how God spoke to people within the scriptures. This got me back to some stories I had too often ignored.
The more I looked the more I saw that not only did most of these people say, “me God, no God, can’t do that God” they were also all very human and messed up. They had infirmities, they had pasts and they all had labels. This was important because it bought me to a point where I came before God with my list of “excuses” as to why I wasn’t a good enough Christian to do x,y or z within any church community. As I looked at my excuses within the light of scripture I found that if the reasons I were giving were legitimate nothing would ever have happened for Gods people. I couldn’t use the labels or not being good enough as an excuse anymore.
God had moved me into a different mind space but it was a misunderstanding and a facebook picture a couple of months later which meant I couldn’t ignore the fact the specific calling I was getting was to become a local preacher. A calling which scared me because of the sheer weight of responsibility it gave.
In June 2009 I was going on retreat at Buckfast Abbey down in Devon with a group of like-minded Christians from around Europe who I’d got to know on the internet. They’d asked for volunteers who were willing to lead a session on this retreat. Well I’d led a session on creative prayer at another retreat previously and so volunteered my services without stating clearly what I thought I was volunteering for.As it turned out that what I’d volunteered for was quite different to what I thought I had. I found this mistake out when I logged onto the computer one day and found a message giving the set of bible passages for the retreat together with details of the hymn book we would be using and asking which session I wanted to lead.
At this point I had a choice apologize for the misunderstanding and say no way was I doing that or get on with it. Well, it was one of those situations when I knew God was saying just do it and I also knew a bit about the current workload of the person who would end up having to do an extra session if I didn’t.
So it was I prayed hard, went up to the library at St. Johns and took out a couple of commentaries and borrowed the hymn book in question from Methsoc. At this point I thought the service I was planning would be a one off – after all it is one thing saying alright God perhaps the sky isn’t going to fall in if I do this once with a bunch of people who are like me but quite another to consider doing the same thing back home . Anyway the retreat came and went and inevitably the photo’s went up on Facebook afterwards. One of them was of me standing up there at the front preaching. When I saw it all I can say is I nearly heard God laughing, there was certainly a very clear sense of the Holy Spirit saying you’ve got the photographic evidence you can do it what more do I have to do to get you to listen.
So that was the beginning. I went and spoke to Hope who was my EDEV mentor and said I think I’ve got this calling. Hope, unsurprisingly, told me to go and speak to Julie. Now, at this point I thought I was going to get off the hook. Julie knew quite enough about me I thought to say no way on earth was I the right sort of person to get anywhere near Faith and Worship. Didn’t quite work out like that though, Julie was soon packing me off to speak to Neil – the superintendent at the time. Before I knew where I was I’d got a note to preach, Ann Offler was my mentor and I was being sent off with my folders to Mary and then Mark. God had decided it was time for my excuses to end and me to move forward into this ministry. As I end I just want to say thank you to those people I’ve named over the last couple of minutes. They all helped me listen to God and act on what I was being called to despite my fears which were numerous as well as reinforcing the responsibility involved in becoming a local preacher.