There may be those who have a firm plan regarding what their ‘career path’ might look like… but I’m not one of them. For me, it’s felt more like making it up as you go along! But of course, it’s been deeper than that; it’s been about trying faithfully to respond to the gentle inner nudges of the Spirit.
I’ve just started reading Justin Brierley’s new book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God and it seems to me that my life in ministry has been like that; surprises galore! When starting my training in 1986, you’d have caused me to laugh out loud if you’d suggested my probationary period would be spent at Christ Church on the Island of Bermuda. And upon returning from ‘My Island in the Sun’ (as their national anthem puts it), it was to Dundee. Compare and contrast! I’d never been to Dundee other than to watch Rangers playing against the two Dundee teams!
But if it hadn’t been Dundee, perhaps Elaine and I wouldn’t have been open to the call that came next. I was as sure as sure can be that my ministry would be in Glasgow; my home town and the city I loved deeply and still do.
Arbroath? You must be joking!
And yet Arbroath it was and though it would never have been in my plan, as the years unfolded it became increasingly clear that it was the right place at the right time. At the end of my 31 years as minister of Arbroath’s St. Andrew’s Church, it was nothing if not heart-breaking to leave after what had been the most wonderful, enriching season of ministry.
Now, after serving the Church nationally for the last 2 ½ years as part of the People & Training Team, there comes the biggest surprise of them all; a return to Bermuda for what will, in all likelihood, be my final ministry chapter. When leaving Bermuda first time around, we had always wondered ‘Might we ever return?’ but never for one-minute thinking we actually would. We really do serve a God of Surprises.
There’s a sense in which we’re understanding it as the completing of the circle; finishing where we started. But there are other ways in which the second time is going to be entirely different from the first.
For a start, I was 25 when first going and 61 this time. I’m not the same person I was then. Life has shaped and moulded me in a myriad of ways. And beyond that, the world has changed dramatically in these intervening years. I didn’t own a computer back then let along a smart phone. And generally speaking, the Christian Church was in a much healthier place back in the early 90s – in many places still thriving (certainly in Bermuda and in Arbroath) rather than surviving as in much of the western world today.
So ministry is, by definition, going to be different but isn’t that the way it should be? The aims of the role may be essentially similar but the approaches must adapt according to the circumstances.
How am I feeling about that? Surprised and excited and very much looking forward to being an old minister doing a new thing!
By Very Rev Martin Fair
