Vocations Sunday: It's time to hear God's call
With Vocations Sunday coming up on 8th May and our Ministries Fair taking place Saturday 14 May, the time is right for you to explore your calling to ministry. Rev'd Andrew James, Interim Director of Ordinations shares his journey to priesthood.
The arrival of Vocations Sunday each 4th Sunday of Easter leads me to reflect on the first tentative steps I took towards ordained ministry some 30 years ago. At the time I was a first term first year Psychology student living in Church Village, a Yorkshireman living in a strange foreign land.
The truth of the matter was that although I was new to Wales, I felt God calling me to serve in ordained ministry here. On reflection this must have seemed to my friends and peers to be a rather preposterous notion. I’d been attending church in Huddersfield for less than a year and had only been confirmed for four months!
Nevertheless the then Diocesan Director of Ordination (Rev Philip Masson) visited me in my student digs. This first (and subsequent visits) were challenging and supportive but I always felt that I was taken seriously and treated with respect. I knew little about what priestly ministry meant, hardly anything about what it meant to be an Anglican and I new nothing about the Church in Wales apart from the feeling that God wanted me to work within it.
How I was made to feel at that vulnerable time has never left me and has drawn me towards working in the vocations team.
Ordained ministry has undoubtably changed a great deal over the past 30 years but the need for faithful priests, ministers and pastors (call us what you will) with a heart for mission is as strong as it has ever been. Although I have little idea of how ministry may evolve in the next 30 years, I do know that accepting your call to ministry in the church will lead you towards a full and dynamic life. It won’t always be easy, there will be compromises to be made and you will have to surrender some control as you place yourself and your future into Gods hands and step out in faith.
Life in ministry is filled with meaning, challenge, sadness and hope where God calls you to be the best you can be.
If you feel called to ministry (either lay or ordained) I would like you to talk to your local parish priest, or perhaps you would like to drop into the Ministries Fair in Margam Abbey on Saturday the 14th May (link below) to talk to me or to others in the vocations team.
It would be good to see you, your journey may start here.