Video for April 24th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I’m at Lambeth Palace this week. I can park here when I come up to London for the House of Lords, which is convenient. I am mercifully too old and incompetent to be considered for the current vacancy. I am praying earnestly that the Lord will call the right person to take on this vital but almost impossibly challenging role. I hope you would join me in that.
The question of call, in the sense of what we should do next, is in several of the resurrection appearances. In the aftermath of the crucifixion everything seemed lost. The first encounter with the empty tomb provoked bewilderment. The initial meetings with the resurrected Jesus were joyful but still yet to re-configure their purpose. There are elusive references to Jesus’ continued teaching ministry between the resurrection and ascension, on one occasion appearing to 500 at one time. Some of Jesus’ final words on earth were recorded in Matthew 28. “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age”. This was to be the new shape of their life’s work, empowered by the Spirit to be poured out at Pentecost. The Apostle’s calling is for the Church and therefore for all of us. Whilst we may not have a specific evangelistic call like they did, we are all called to be witnesses of our experience of Christ, prayerfully hoping that such witness will draw others to him as well.
A vital strand of our diocesan strategy is to encourage vocations to church leadership. We don’t have nearly enough people doing that nationally. On current trends, even if money wasn’t a limiting factor, there simply won’t be enough clergy go around to provide priestly pastoral ministry in every benefice. But asking people to consider God’s call on their lives isn’t just a pragmatic solution to filling gaps. I firmly believe that every baptised follower of Jesus has been given spiritual gifts which when exercised give a deep sense of fulfilment and bless the communities they are called to serve. I was hugely encouraged when I returned from sabbatical to see the numbers of people who are beginning to explore ordained ministry within the diocese. Many of them began that journey through some of the lay ministries Elizabeth Wild and her team are encouraging. A lack of confidence is understandable. Perhaps we clergy are partly responsible by surrounding our activity with a sort of sacred mystique. In churches where several people have begun the lay ministry journey a sort of virtuous circle is created. People see someone like them doing something up front, or with a new confidence in the wider community, and the gulf between what they feel they could do and what they could actually do with God’s help doesn’t seem quite so wide. We often grow spiritually when we push (or are nudged by the Spirit) outside the boundaries of our self-judged competence and find the Spirit there already. I met a minister in New Zealand who was extraordinary in all sorts of ways but had a dreadful fear of flying. He had prayed about it many times but experienced no change. On one occasion he felt the Lord say to him a simple phrase, “I’ll meet you there!” This seems to be the way it works in the divine economy. No rucksacks full of every provision financial and psychological one feels one might need for the journey. A simple sense of call to do something new or different and the divine promise, “I’ll meet you there”.
May 11th is vocations Sunday across the Church of England. Each one of us is part of the body of Christ. Each one has a role in fulfilling the great commission of Matthew 28. Not all are called to ordained ministry of course. But some of you watching this might be, and you’ve tried to run away from it. I know what that’s like – I did that myself. Maybe its time to say yes to discerning with others whether that is right for you. Some of you watching are being called to step up into more public lay roles in the church. You may be overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy, conscious of your own frailty. God knows that. But he promises, if you start to step out and step up, he’ll meet you there. God has a calling on this diocese to witness to and for Christ where we are. What part is God calling you to play in that proclamation?
+Richard