The Vicar’s Secret Wallpaper: Moments, Meanderings and Meaning In Christian Ministry

By Malcolm Nicholas

This book tells of the reluctant response of one called from a scientific career to ordained ministry in various settings. It will encourage Christians on their own journey, and inform those wishing to understand ministry life.
Jeffery Heskins, Lincoln Diocese Director of Ordinands writes:
" . . . This is a sort of ministry experience 'Thought for the Day' book that is well worth having on the shelf ans well as the coffee table.
From the start it has the ring of authenticity about it. What follows are stories and insights from multifarious contexts . . . Would I recommend this book? I surely would."
Crosslincs 2016

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326585686

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The Vicar’s Secret Wallpaper: Moments, Meanderings and Meaning In Christian Ministry

The Vicar’s Secret Wallpaper

Moments, Meanderings and Meaning in Christian Ministry

By

Malcolm Nicholas

Copyright

Copyright © Malcolm Nicholas 2016

eBook Design by Rossendale Books:

www.rossendalebooks.co.uk

eBook ISBN: 978-1-326-58568-6

All rights reserved, Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention and Pan American Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author. The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to

Christine

wife, best friend, lover, soul-mate, confidante,

fellow-pilgrim and picker-up of the pieces

and to

Mark Hurley

the priest who gave me permission

to be myself

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to many who have helped me on this journey. To family members for their interest; to friend and author Michael McMahon for guidance and encouragement; likewise to Bishop Tony Foottit. To fellow Companions of the Northumbria Community who have encouraged me to bring this book to completion. To my brother Dr David Nicholas for his many helpful suggestions and comprehensive proof reading. My thanks also to Vincent at Rossendale Books for invaluable help in bringing this project to completion’.

Most of all to my wife Tina, who by her company across almost fifty years has done more than anyone to  form and enable me;  and to colleagues and parishioners for allowing me to share in their lives, and find within them helpful themes and thoughtful reflections.

Preface

It is always good to catch up with friends over a coffee or a beer, yet over the years my peaceful Americano or bitter has too often been hijacked by conversations about all that is wrong with other people’s vicars! I do not question the validity of some of these niggles, but one thing has been consistent: they have all been expressed without a context - probably because there is little understanding of what that context might be.

In The Vicar’s Secret Wallpaper I have tried to show something of the backcloth against which a minister’s life might be lived. All the accounts are true, although names have been changed and sometimes locations masked to preserve anonymity. They are drawn from the experience of just one Church of England priest who has worked in paid and unpaid situations - here rural, there commuter-belt, there again on a large local authority estate - in the East Midlands and the south of England, but they will have resonance across a spectrum of church traditions. Of course the minister’s life contains much that is ‘routine’; much again that has to do with his or her family and personal interests. These have been largely omitted, but I hope any impression that this is simply ‘selected highlights’ has been countered by the longer reflections that expose a wider picture.

The ‘wallpaper’ is personal to each minister. It includes his or her own spiritual journey, sometimes almost becalmed, sometimes frantic with activity and sprinkled with sudden surprises. It is littered with joys, sadnesses and emotional roller-coasters. It is peppered with discoveries about the delights and failings of the clergy-support systems and the idiosyncrasies of the Church. Some of it is too raw to share with others; much of it is too personal and confidential to express to anyone in the locality. So the wallpaper is often hidden from view of parishioners and congregations, and held in a deeply private vault.

I hope these tales and the reflections that accompany them will be enlightening for any who may be feeling a call to ordained ministry or who have recently embarked upon it. I hope too that they will give insight to those who would understand their minister a little better. And finally, but no less importantly, I hope, as my own witness to nearly thirty years of life seeking (and often failing) to serve God in ordained ministry, it will be of some help to those making their own pilgrimage in faith, whatever the details may be. The journey has been, and continues to be for me, a complex mix which has sometimes seemed a pretty big mess, but I have come to realise that God seems to work with mess ... really rather well! 

Malcolm Nicholas. Norfolk. September 2015

1.       The Call

On a warm summer Saturday I left behind the train journey from London and boarded the passenger ferry for the Isle of Wight. It was August 1964, and aged eighteen I was travelling for what was to be our first family holiday on that island. Whilst locals went below for coffee and comfort, land-lubber holiday-makers remained on deck to test their sea legs and sample the pleasantries of watery journeying amid the distinctive scent of engine diesel laced with ocean spray.

‘The Boat’, for that was the local affectionate name for this steamer ship, had slipped her moorings some minutes earlier, and taken her several hundred passengers beyond the outer reaches of Portsmouth Harbour, when I ‘heard a voice’. Let me make it clear this was nothing audible – yet in every other way it was indeed a voice, for every word was clear and specific: thus whilst being ‘spoken’ internally into my brain, it was not an inner conviction, less still a non-specific concept or idea. The words were formed into a simple sentence: You are going home.  Logic declared them to be a nonsense, since I had not been within sight of this island before and had no contacts there, but the reality of these words could not be denied.

It was perhaps ten minutes later when, in mid-Solent (as this stretch of water is known) the ‘voice’ came again: This will be your mission field. Forgive the quaint words; it is tempting to rephrase them – to make them a little less old-fashioned and improve their ‘street cred’  - but I cannot. Once again they were quite clear and specific, and I can do no other than recount them verbatim.

Such experiences were new to me, and just what I should do with them was far from clear. I did not feel an impulse immediately to move house and settle on this island, nor to don a pith helmet in imitation of earlier missionary activity to remote lands! Yet I could not deny that something had happened which I knew I had not generated for myself, and seemed very much to do with God; who else could have ‘spoken’ such words with such clarity? To add to my confusion, I had already embarked on a career in medical science which I had firmly come to look upon as a vocation - a ‘calling’ from which I had no sense of cancellation or exit. What then could this talk of ‘mission field’ be? With surprising incisiveness I resolved to file these two experiences in the deeper recesses of my mind and enjoy my holiday. I did the latter very effectively, and the former, thus filed, troubled me no more for some years to come.

While this was the most easily identifiable starting point upon the call to ministry, there had been earlier possible indicators. My childhood upbringing had been in the Brethren Church (‘The Gospel Hall’) in east London; then following a house-move I found myself in the Baptist Church in Essex. It was here one Sunday evening that, aged fifteen, I listened to a visiting preacher. I do not remember the subject of his sermon (perhaps I never understood it!), but I do remember my reaction when he stopped: I could have done better than that! immediately followed by Well, why don’t you, then? This had all the characteristics of a mental conversation within my brain, generated no doubt, by the arrogance of youth, but it stayed with me. Was there, even then, some sense of ‘call’ or challenge? Many years later I would be told by an older relative that when I was only eight or nine, he thought I would grow up to become a missionary! Apparently he could see something then of which I was totally unaware.  

The Island holiday was indeed enjoyable, for I met a local young lady to whom I was very definitely attracted (albeit quite unsuited – a truth more discernible with hindsight than in the present). So it was that correspondence, holidays and visits spanned the following two years. By this time I had taken my first set of professional examinations and was ready to move on. When an appropriate job vacancy came up in Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, I successfully applied.  The relationship had pretty much ended by the time I moved to the Island, but it had certainly done a good job in getting me there! I hardly thought about it at the time, but the first of those ferry-deck words had now come true: the Island was indeed my home!

The next twelve or so years were busy ones with significant happenings: completion of professional examinations ... promotion at work ... courtship and marriage ... establishment of our home ... birth of our son, and then of our daughter ...  new friendships ... further promotion at work ... church and community involvement (server; eucharistic assistant; school governor; treasurer of the Residents’ Association). And to top it off, I was halfway through a part-time degree in Biochemistry and Physiology! I had plenty to fill my time, and more.

At some point during this time my vicar dropped a question into the conversation over a sink-full of washing-up: Have you ever thought about training for ordination? My "No!" was so emphatic (I still considered my medical work to be my vocation) that he did not expand upon it, nor did he ever revisit the possibility. As I look back I am amazed that I showed no further interest in his enquiry, but at the time I was totally single-minded, and ordination was not on my conscious horizon.

I was around thirty when some sense of ‘calling’ again began to make itself known. No ‘voices’ this time, just a gentle but persistent nagging. I told it to go away, but it seemed not to hear. I told it I was already committed to my clinical work, but it seemed not to notice. It was time to make my position very clear. I waited until my wife Tina had gone to bed and then, just to show I meant business, I knelt down and made myself comfortable against an armchair – this might take a while. I informed God (since it seemed this interference in my life must be something to do with Him) that I would not be giving in easily. First off, I loved our home and had no intention of giving it up. Second, I was enjoying my degree and determined to complete it. Third, Clinical Biochemistry was my chosen work and I was not willing to give up my job. In short, I said emphatically, "if you