Moving on from atheism, Commitment-Phobe toured churches and tried God. Now, as a new Christian, the journey continues

‘Interregnum’ it’s called. When you are waiting for a new vicar to be appointed. It is a period of mourning, of waiting, of contemplation. I am finding it quite exciting.

By the time you read this, a new vicar will have been licensed at my church and a new era will have begun, for better or worse. In record time for any denomination, but especially for the Church of England, we have found a vicar in under three months.

Right now, I am glad that we will not be losing our recently ordained deacon, who has been an inspiration, and, due to rules I struggle to understand, would not be able to remain without a vicar in post to continue to ‘train’ her.

In the Anglican Church, there are various stages of vicar training. First, ordinand. You study theology, and in your last year of studies you are affiliated to a church and become an active part of its leadership team. Second, you are ordained and become a deacon. Now you can lead the peace, preach sermons and give a blessing, but you cannot give Communion. You must wait for a year to pass to reach the third stage and qualify to perform this sacrament. I presume you must wait a bit longer to do some of the other things, like baptism, weddings, funerals etc … but, I admit it, I have indeed lost the will to research the details in any great depth. You get the idea though: there are stages. But the point of it all for me is that our deacon is staying, because a new vicar is arriving. Hip hip hooray.

And yet, for other reasons, I wish this period of time were not over so quickly. …

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This is an extract from the September 2016 edition of Reform.

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