PEOPLE who’re being ordained this Petertide are using social media to discuss their sense of calling, to encourage others to think about their vocation.
About 100 ordination services are going down this month in cathedrals and bigger churches. Twelve short movies are being posted this week on the C of E’s national social-media channels, alongside the hashtag #NewRevs. These will include an “explainer” about what happens during an ordination service, posted on TikTok by the Director of Ministry in Blackburn diocese, the Revd Anne Beverley.
The Revd Lorna Heatley, Assistant Curate of Richmond with Hudswell and Downholme and Marske, in Leeds diocese, was ordained priest on Saturday. She says in a video posted on TikTok that serving as a deacon has been “some of the wonderful years of my life”.
“There has been something so special about having the ability to walk alongside people through every stage of their life, whether I’m seeing them often on a Sunday, whether I’m just seeing them around town, baptisms, weddings, funerals, Easter, Christmas — having the ability to be with people and spread the word of God to them has just been a privilege that I never thought I’d have.
“So, when you’re hearing God’s call to ministry, I absolutely recommend you follow it, since you won’t regret it.”
The Revd Sam Watkins-Smith, who’s serving his title at Trinity Church, Nottingham, and is to be ordained priest on Saturday, says that, through the past yr, he has witnessed “a bunch of scholars coming to faith . . . for the primary time or recommitting to Jesus for the primary time in an extended time”.
In one other film, the Bishop of Hertford, Dr Jane Mainwaring, who chairs the Ministry Development Board’s Discernment Team Advisory Group, recalls her own ordination, 25 years ago. “On that day it felt like coming home; that I’d finally discovered what God wanted me to do for the remaining of my life,” she says.
“It’s considered one of the best privileges of being a bishop, to journey with people through their vocation, through their discernment of that vocation, and, as we ordain our deacons this yr, it’ll be the culmination of that discernment journey.”
The Bishop of Loughborough, the Rt Revd Saju Muthalaly, says in one other video: “As an adolescent, I didn’t see God’s call upon myself. Somebody asked me an easy query, ‘Might God be calling you towards ordination?’”
He invites people who find themselves considering responding to a call to ordination: “What can we do that may make us gladdest?”
