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Ordained Ministry

All Christians are called by Jesus Christ to be his followers and to serve him in many different ways. Our calling can be our career or employment, our care for the home we live in and the hospitality we offer, our involvement in the wider community, what we do in the local church, and so on.

However, some people are called to a particular kind of ministry – namely, the ordained ministry as a deacon or priest. This is not a ‘higher’ calling than any other; and neither is it simply ‘a good idea’ for those who want to do ‘more’ in the Church. It is a particular calling to be set apart and to be given authority by the Church for a sacramental and functional leadership role of service.

A call to ordination can come in a sudden moment, but more often than not it is something that develops and grows over years until the person experiencing it can no longer set it aside. When this happens, the usual best starting-point is to talk to your parish priest or vicar. Following on from this, if it seems appropriate your parish priest should then contact either the Diocesan Director of Ordinands (Philip Bourne) or the Diocesan Vocations Officer (Moira Wickens) to introduce you to them and invite them to meet with you. (You can make contact with them directly for an informal conversation, if you would like to, but they shall eventually need to communicate with your vicar.)

What then follows is a journey of discernment (finding God’s will) and formation (allowing your call to take on an ordained shape), involving a lot of reading, writing, appointments with a number of people who assist in the process, perhaps completing a ministry placement and meeting others who might be appropriate for helping with your exploration. The discernment process take an average of 18 months to two years – and when you look back at the journey you have made, it is easy to see why!

The discernment process culminates in sponsorship by your area bishop to attend a national three-day Bishops’ Advisory Panel. A number of tools of assessment are used to discover the degree to which you fulfil the nine selection criteria for ministry in the Church of England. A BAP report is then sent to your sponsoring bishop who makes a decision about whether or not to send you into training of a further two or three years.

A perceived calling to ordination is one that should not be taken lightly and it requires an enormous commitment to see the discernment process through to a conclusion, which may of course not result in training for ordination. However, if you are experiencing such a call, please do not suppress it, but respond in humility and faith to what you think God may be calling you to.

Contacts

Diocesan Director of Ordinands
The Reverend Canon Dr Philip Bourne	01273 564057
Diocesan Vocations Officer
The Reverend Moira Wickens	01273 592591

Philip and Moira are assisted by a team of 70 Vocations Officers and Examining Chaplains.