Likewise the polity of the English Church is such that, at least in its better moments, the parish knows that in its priest it does not have a hireling in its employ, to be hired or fired at its bidding, but a pastor who by the conditions of his institution is free enough and secure enough to be a true shepherd of souls. The priest who is not financially beholden to his church council is a shepherd who can talk straight to his flock.
Take note that the shepherd spends a great deal of time alone, out in all weathers, unmindful of others or of creature comforts. He lives literally on the edge, putting his own life at risk, in order that those in his charge might rest secure. At night he lies across the doorway of the sheepfold to ensure the safety of his flock. Nothing will get past him, even if he should perish in the process.
The most obvious clue to our true calling, that will distance us from the hireling, is the ability to stand alone. When you arrive in your first parish, the warmth of the welcome by the people, the readiness of the lay leadership to serve alongside you, the willingness to give you headroom to do your own thing, all this will take you by surprise and give you great heart. Remember that sooner or later the test will come when, having exhausted all other options, you will be required as a true shepherd to stand alone, sometimes utterly alone.
The church council will vote your project down, the faithful churchwarden will say one thing privately and another in public, and the supper invitations will dry up. You will be left standing in an empty hall wondering what on earth you have done in coming to this place.
If you stand firm, it is precisely at that moment that you will win your spurs as a true shepherd. The people of God long for courageous leadership but don’t always know it. Whatever the vicissitudes of the journey, the whole community of God’s faithful – sheep and shepherd – will be mighty glad and very grateful when we are all safely back in the fold, snug and safe. But to get there they will need a fearless loner, with the courage to continue the lonely walk even through those times when no one will give you the time of day.
My wise first vicar used to say, ‘A popular priest is a lousy priest’, and he was right. Immense courage is needed for this lonely path, but once we become enmeshed in special relationships with this group or that, in friendships within the parish, compromised by assurances given or rash promises made, we will be robbed of our calling to be a true shepherd, and will become the most miserable of men and women.
As always, the words and word pictures of Jesus are not meant to make us religious, but simply happy in our work and at peace with ourselves and with God. We shall never know fulfilment or peace of mind if we fail to live out our calling to the best of our ability, standing apart in order to embrace all without fear or favour.
‘Teacher’s pet’ is not a flattering epithet for a classmate, but neither does it say much for the teacher. A teacher with favourites is unable to assess a class accurately, to discern good and bad in all, to stand aloof when need be. Such a teacher has surrendered her ability to teach. She is compromised and to some extent thereafter will be ‘played’ by the class.
We need not go out of our way to stand alone, or make a big deal of it. The moment of decision will come soon enough. The ‘honeymoon period’ enjoyed by any new parish priest is so called because it is intense and comes to an end.
It is of little consequence whether the presenting problem is large or small; the basic issue remains the same. It may be a trivial detail in the first week, e.g. a showdown with the flower arrangers who would reduce the altar table to a flower stand, or it may be a mighty whopper – like ‘letting go’ (to use that delightful American euphemism) the director of music after months of sabotage from the organ stool.
Like the new teacher in the classroom, who must in the first few minutes establish who is the boss if the class is ever going to become a community of learning, the new parish priest must establish her credentials in the parish as the person appointed and commissioned to be in charge. This is not in order to parade the exercise of power (there’s precious little of that to be had!) but to create the kind of community where everyone, not just the people who have run the show for the last 20 years, has a voice and a place in the process of building up the Body of Christ.
We are not talking here about control freaks. The priest who truly shepherds will do it with such a light touch that hardly anyone will notice, and those that do won’t try it on again. Good shepherding doesn’t require a loud voice, or a hectoring manner, and sometimes it will require only the giving of ‘the bad eye’ (as they say in Yorkshire) to quell the rebellion or cut out the nonsense.
Serving is not servility but, in the pattern of Christ the Good Shepherd, strong leadership which is firm and fearless and which is concerned only for the welfare of the whole flock, stray sheep and black sheep included. Only service of this kind will develop into the self-emptying love out of which is born a willingness to lay down one’s life for the sheep.
Anything less will cause us, when the chips are down, to slink away with the impostor or make a run for it with the hireling. The people given into our care will know the difference, and so will our Lord. ‘I know my own and my own know me,’ says the greatest shepherd of them all.
2. Co-Workers
With their bishop and fellow-ministers
Authorized Text of the Ordination Services
But we beseech you, brethren, to respect those who labour among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.
1 Thessalonians 5.12–13
In the long-gone days of black and white TV, those in Britain who could gather round the flickering screen were gripped by the weekly series Gunsmoke, in which an embattled US Marshall kept the lid on a lawless town of the Wild West.
His name was Mr Dillon, and he was wise, strong and true, but was always in danger of being upstaged by his faithful Deputy, Chester Goode, an eager young man with a pronounced limp, often to be found putting on the coffee pot when not shoring up the walls of the jail. Chester was always ready for the next hail of bullets from the boys of the Crazy Y ranch who liked nothing better on a Wednesday afternoon than shooting up the town.
When any of us is called to be a presbyter of the Church of God, we should never forget for one moment that we are merely deputies of the bishop; faithful Chesters to his Mr Dillon. Whereas bishops and deacons have an undisputed place and a clear role in the pages of the Christian scriptures, presbyters remain murky and indistinct, stand-ins and workhorses for those above them. Only gradually, as the Church evolved, did the presbyter acquire definition as a distinct order.
Deputies we remain, however, and as such we must be content to make a lot of coffee and shore up many walls. We are the best the Church can manage when the bishop is too busy to show up. Let’s not get ideas above our station.
I served for 12 years in a West Yorkshire parish, and I often think the Church should make part of basic training for all ordinands a spell among the moors and mills, where ‘not impressed’ is the most common verdict on practically everything. The coal merchant contacted by Alan Bennett, illustrious son of Leeds, responded to a request for further supplies with the words: ‘Well, I don’t care how celebrated you are, you’ll never be a patch on your dad.’2 That’s the way it is in West Yorkshire, and it is a fabulous place for priestly formation.
One way we can get ideas too big for our boots is to bang on about being ‘priests’. The designation ‘priest’ is seductively attractive for its mystique of cultic powers and is immediately translatable into many different cultures and eras of world history. There is a tingle down the spine to be had from thinking of oneself keeping company with the parson whom Chaucer so admired on the road to Canterbury, or with Teilhard de Chardin or Maximilian Kolbe, or even Zechariah,