Discerning the Spirits

It's been a long, long time since we had a meeting of the Local Vocations Advisors, and even the prospect of nice sandwiches in Church House yesterday lunch-time couldn’t drag out more than three of us in addition to Ciaran the Diocesan Director of Ordinands and Tina who co-ordinates the whole process, matching enquirers up with LVAs and making sure all the right bits of paperwork are filled out. But, as she ruefully pointed out, while the number of LVAs on paper is quite healthy in fact quite a few of those aren’t at all active, and there’s a distinct geographical imbalance with most being in the east of the diocese (‘I suppose they’re just holier over there’).

The discernment process is undergoing quite a change, with what was once the scarifying ritual of the ABM or BAP or whatever it was called at the time you went through the process – a residential ordeal of interviews, exercises and checking whether you tried to eat your soup with a fork, as Fr Gooley maintained someone at his did – now split into two. The first stage will be done online, a quick-fire series of conversations with different interlocutors now focusing on the ‘six qualities’ applicants are supposed to evidence, which we couldn’t resist comparing to speed-dating.  The second is more like the traditional way of doing it but with an effort to make it less like a university entrance exam. In between comes a very in-depth examination of where an applicant is in personal and spiritual terms, questioning everything from sexual habits to substance abuse. It crosses my mind how legal some of this might be – the kind of thing, in normal circumstances, any prospective employee would be justified in telling the organisation they were applying to was none of their business – but somebody must already have thought about that, surely? The intention is clearly twofold; first, to do something to diversify the base of ordained ministry away from middle-aged, middle-class people who are used to writing essays, and second, to try and make it less likely that deeply damaged souls will be let loose on the Lord’s flock without at least flagging up ‘areas to work on’.

People sometimes complain that the modern Church is becoming too homogenous and we have lost so much of the creative eccentricity that made it work in the past. I suppose there might be some hazard in expecting people to have got themselves completely sorted as human beings before they begin their ministry: even for the ordained, a degree of holiness is usually a hard-won prize reached after years of pursuing the spiritual life, not a base position from which to start. Here I am, 52 years from my baptism, 27 from my conversion, and 17 from my ordination, and I’ve barely begun. At the same time, you don’t have to delve very deeply into the history of the Church of England, or any denomination, to come across lots of ordained people who were not just flawed souls (as are we all) but broken ones who then went on to damage others, and the tremendously laissez-faire process of discernment in the past barely did a thing to stop that happening. We were very often sending out pastors who would not so much reap the Lord’s harvest field as burn it, trample on it, roll around in it, and pee on it. A little less of that is probably all to the good.

Church House is a less bustling place these days than once it was: the axe has cut its way through the diocesan staff and all those meeting rooms and offices still gleam, but are denuded and quiet. I wonder whether the Diocese will stay once the lease is up, whenever that is.