Some of my readers will know that at Sarum College we form and train women and men for authorised lay and ordained ministry for the Church of England. They come to us from across the region and each have their own story to tell. They bring into our learning and formation space a very wide variety of gifts and experiences. They have been shaped and misshaped by life experiences. They bring skill through the experience work and contributing into their communities. They have also been shaped ( and misshaped) by a variety of life experiences which have been both life giving and life changing.
To hear their story is to know something of the irrepressible life of God present in the moment and in every strand of the fabric of our lives. It is amazing how God is at work in our world. Despite the shifts and changes of the fortunes of organised religion, our students show us a deep sense of the agency of God’s love.
I am not entirely sure that our Society quite understands what ministry is about. The lapel Cross or the dog collar are curious symbols and for some this provokes both ambivalence and suspicion. Who we are and what we stand for is becoming increasingly marginalised and misunderstood. Those of us who work in and for the Church must bear some responsibility for this.
Welcome into this space Magdalen Smith. After a conversation with a recent visitor to the College, I was asked about a book that captured something of the charism and life of ministry and vocation in the Church of England. Without any hesitation, I lifted off the shelf a copy of Magdalens Steel Angels ( https://www.anthonysmith.me.uk/2015/01/04/steel-angels-the-personal-qualities-of-a-priest/ ) and it did not disappoint my European colleague. “It resonated” was his clear resounding summary of the narrative.
So welcome into this space a new book by Magdalen! I have read it a particular time here in Salisbury, which has been very much taken up with a number of conversations relating to the future shape of ministry. Those of us whose vocation is ministerial formation are properly ‘beset’ with a number of expectations.
I remember some years ago a former Diocesan Bishop being surprisingly clear about what he expected us to do – ‘ I want you and your colleagues James to produce ministers who will grow churches’ was an opening line that I shall probably never forget. Of course we are anxious about ourselves as an increasing number of people turn away from organised religion seeking truth, fulfilment, and purpose from other places. But we should not lose heart as Smith shows us in this book.
Here are some of the words and concepts which both challenge and inspire the work of formation for ministry today at Sarum College: resilient, articulate, entrepreneurial, adaptable, visionary, hopeful, enabling, facilitating and so the list goes on. Against the backcloth of this canvas – this book landed on my desk at the right time.
Men for the large part overlook the arduous journey that women have travelled towards ordination. We simply don’t understand what it has been like and what it continues to be like for women in a patriarchal culture of entitlement and unchallenged assumptions .The legacy is not a good one. The culture we collude with is not altogether healthy !
This collection of 27 interconnected pieces charts the voice of one of those women who were first ordained into the Church of England. This came after decades of contestation and a blindness wrapped up with ‘polite prejudice’ that still exists in abundance. It shapes many of the narratives about power, privilege, leadership, ecclesiology, missiology, ethics and human identity in our structures and practices.
A friend, with her feet firmly rooted in the soil of life, expresses it rather sharply
It’s no wonder that fewer people are coming to church – just look at yourselves and how you talk about stuff and behave towards towards those longing for a glimpse of the holy …..
Sometimes in order to understand ourselves and our life we need to listen to different voices. Magdalen Smith is one of those voices that we might open our hearts to !
Magdalen Smith, shares with us her story or parts of her story in Reverence. Part of the book belongs on the shelves of my library which contain volumes of autobiography. Part of it is firmly in the area of books exploring ministry. Part of it might belong to my spirituality ‘section’. The fluency, integration and wisdom flow across her pages are perfectly constructed paragraphs and offer us the humane, curious and searching ‘invitations’ to pause, notice and think. It is like walking through an art gallery and being captivated by the texture and colour of abstract art. Smith draws her reader in and in takes them into places that are deep and nourishing, wide and perplexing. It provokes, stimulates, entices and expands our small worlds !
The chapters take the reader on a journey through her life. We learn about what shaped her growing up in a vicarage and see something of how God has been at work in her life. Her priestly calling is described with humanity, good humour and realism. Smith names things and very little is left off the table! She is prepared to be vulnerable and real and truthful. Her reader is taken into all kinds of places.
There is conviction without the hard edges of ideology. There is realism that is liberated from shallow pessimism.There is a naming of the mess without any abandonment of hope. She is a searcher after truth. These pages are full of hope as they invite her reader into discovering what kind of God might hold us in the mess that we make of life and that it makes of us.
Magdalen Smith celebrates this goodness in so many different ways. She shows her reader how prayer and ritual and worship sustain discipleship. She invites all those thinking about vocation and exercising a ministry to step over the threshold and beyond their own self dramatisations to see gift of people. If we stop and are present for the other we might learn from what they share with us if you we are prepared to listen. This is the minister as pastor, as artist, as parent, as sinner, as Pilgrim, as contemplative, as storyteller, as celebrator of all that is good and wholesome and full.
Let no one imagine that my proper fullsome praise for this book does not come with one or two health warnings. In a sacred and secular ecology that demands strength and clarity uncertainty this book invites Her reader into the nurturing the gift of vulnerability. There are tough questions asked of us. Smith holds the cost and the rewards of ministry together in creative tension.
It asks future and present ministers of the gospel to be enthusiastic about people. It invites us to consider ministry as a means of care through our support and encouragement. To do this we need to open hearts and minds, to notice and be curious about the other. Above all in our presence we are offered the privilege of connecting with the pain, ordinariness and humanity that is always present in our comings and goings.
This of course takes us back to the beginning. I think it is possible to embody some of the shape of the way in which we nurture and form a deep love for people as we discover and rediscover a sense of the divine. This informs some of our work at Sarum College but we need to go deeper into formation. This will mean our readiness to be formed and reformed spiritually, pastorally and theologically. This will need for us all to be less defended and open to challenge and ( sometimes unwelcome) questions.
We shall need to be able to be wordsmiths that can capture and express something of the extraordinary gift of the gospel. We shall need to be able to show people how to pray and how to nurture their souls in love.
But above all, as Magdalen Smith shows us in this book, we shall need to be able to love people and their lives, their contradictions and their hopes. We shall need to model formation for ministry that shapes sensitive and creative pastors that are present, open and ready to listen.