I was ordained by mistake, or at the very least, the result of a big misunderstanding. There lies a tale and because the main events happened 50 years ago this month it would seem a tale to be told. So here goes, and as you will discover, it has God’s fingerprints all over it.
I guess I’ve always had an inkling even as a child that God wanted to use me somehow, a missionary, a vicar even. But there again I’ve always had the sense that I would be player-manager for Everton. That option, incidentally, is still on the table.
Finishing university in 1970 was a difficult time –the tramlines had come to an end and I was now faced with an open choice of going virtually in any direction. I found this entirely unsettling and it didn’t help that I was beginning to go out with Jacqui.
Strangely – there lies another tale - I found myself being taken on as an unqualified child care officer by the Liverpool Social Services Department. Goodness knows why, because my degree was in economics and I had no background in social work. However, I had an excellent senior social worker who held my hand.
It was a hugely formative experience – I learnt a lot, especially from my colleagues in District H. Looking back I thank God for the experience.
Gradually I started to think of social work as a career and so I applied to Bangor university for an MA in social administration. It was a remarkable interview and I owe a lot to the skill of the person who interviewed me because as it progressed, it became increasingly clear that social work simply wasn’t for me. I said as much at the time.
Which left me where I had started, at the end of the tramlines. By this stage Jacqui and I were about to get married and I could see us acting out the closing scene of the Graduate, as Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross as the snatched bride sit at the back of the bus, bewildered, with no idea where they were going!
It was a difficult time – and looking back, this was clearly God at work, unsettling and re-orientating us. I recall saying at the time that I felt like the physics experiment as iron filings are bounced up and down on a card on top of a magnet. Gradually you begin to see the magnetic field.
Our former vicar Ian returned to St John’s for a special service. Now on the staff of the Cranmer Hall theological college he invited Jacqui and I up to Durham for the bank holiday weekend at the end of May, just to talk things over and review the options for ordination.
However, I then decided to return to economics and so applied for my dream job as an economist for British Rail. This meant yet another interview, this time at Euston. And amazingly I was offered the job.
However, we didn’t tell anyone, not no-one, of this appointment. I would have to work my notice with Liverpool Social Services. And now I knew where I was going.
However, the weekend came for our trip to Durham and so we decided to go anyway – a lovely place to visit and an opportunity to stay with Ian and Mair. After breakfast on Saturday Ian suggested that Jacqui and I go over the road to have a conversation with John.
I didn’t know at the time that John was the principal of the college. We had a leisurely chat and as the conversation came to a close, John said: “Ross, I can offer you a place in the college in October!”
Stunned, I hastily explained that our whole conversation had been at cross-purposes. He thought he was interviewing me for a place at Cranmer: I thought we had just popped in for a cup of tea and chat! And I hadn’t even applied for a place – I hadn’t even applied for ordination. Totally embarrassing.
Undaunted John proceeded to try to persuade me to consider ordination. He explained that as a vicar you see the whole of life (he was right) whereas if you go and work for British Rail you encounter just a tiny segment in great detail.
Now the point is that John did not know about my job offer from British Rail: no one did. He just pulled it out of the air, so-to-speak. I was stunned by this (as we say in the trade) this “word of knowledge.”
The effect was the same as my interview in Bangor, except in reverse. The more we discussed ordination, the more obvious it became. So I decided to burn my bridge and withdrew my application to British Rail.
At this stage I found myself in the strange situation of having a place at a theological college, a three year course incidentally, but not yet accepted for ordination by the CofE.
Things were different in those days. I simply had a single interview with the retiring DDO, the Director of Ordinands at Liverpool, in the cathedral in the days when you didn’t have to pay for car parking. That was early June, 1973. Just six weeks later I travelled to Surrey for the selection conference.
Finally, it was Friday 31 August, the last day for giving my notice to the Social Services Department and a new DDO, again at the cathedral. He phoned London and told me I had been accepted for ordination. And within five weeks there we were in Durham.
When you decide to follow Christ, anything can happen. It usually does.
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