How did I end up as a Reader?

This article original appeared in The Reader magazine Spring 2014 issue, and is reproduced with permission.

From one point of view, I am not too unlikely a candidate. I was brought up in a nurturing Christian environment. I have always been an active member of a church. I have a good level of education, and I am fairly articulate. I have been a Sunday School teacher and a Home Group leader. I have led Bible Studies, and even preached.

On the other hand, I am a geek, not a social worker. I have a degree in Computer Science, twenty-eight years of IT experience, and still earn my living using computers. I am good at abstract structures, programming, flow charts, databases, and information in electronic form. My first response to a problem is to switch it off and reboot it. What I am not good at is people. I find it harder to remember the name of the person I have just been introduced to than to remember a password I was told last week. I can listen to someone’s life story, but I’ll forget it by teatime. People are vague and incomprehensible clusters of random acts; I can get on with most of them, but I have little understanding of how they tick.

So how did I end up as a Reader?

The story I give here is not a complete description of how God made me a Reader. Bear in mind that God’s purposes in these events are not limited to making me a Reader. These events are only the more obvious steps that God has taken in my life, and while I see them as important in hindsight, there may be many more important things that I have not noticed or do not yet see as significant. After all, one of those confusing people that I do not properly understand is myself.

Local Authority

Perhaps the first step came when I stopped working for a computer manufacturer and moved to local government. In my new job, I actually had to talk to people who were not interested in computers except as tools that might help them do their job better. My job was to understand their business requirements, to plan and develop a solution (usually involving a computer) that could help them, and then to show them how to use and make the most of that solution.

Gradually, I came to appreciate that I am in a privileged position. People trust me with the details of their business. They rely on me to understand it well enough to translate it into computer-think. They consult me about possible changes, and even listen to me when I suggest changes to them.

I also have to find ways of explaining the abstract objects and functions of software to people, and relating them to whatever job the person needs to do. It is a ministry of mediation.

And once even the most technophobic clerk learns that I really am on their side, there is another step. I discovered that there are three little words that mean a great deal in a working relationship: “While you’re here...” Those words often mean that someone is about to share something that they wouldn’t bother to log a support call for, or even pick up the phone to tell you, but “while you’re here” can you advise them, check on some little annoyance, solve some mystery or do some other IT magic to make their lives better?

So working in local government taught me that I could get on with people who were not geeks, and build professional relationships that were not entirely about computers.

Gideons

I was invited to join the Gideons by another member of my church. Gideons spread the word by, well, spreading the word. We place Bibles and New Testaments in hotels, hospitals, waiting rooms and other places, and we present them personally to school pupils, members of the police and similar organisations. When I joined the local Gideon branch, I found that the biggest job was schools. Every year, I visit several schools for a Year 7 assembly, stand up and talk to anywhere up to three hundred pupils for ten minutes or so, and then offer each of them a New Testament.

It might be designed to keep us humble. What can you say, in ten minutes, to a young audience who is largely ignorant of everything biblical except, perhaps, the Christmas story? Perhaps it doesn’t matter, as long as we don’t put them off. Some of them do read their little red books. Ten, twenty or thirty years on, we hear stories of how those testaments were instrumental in somebody’s journey towards faith.

It was also ideally designed for training me to stand in front of an audience not guaranteed to be sympathetic, and deliver a ten minute talk that kept their attention until the bell went. Not directly relevant to the average parish communion, maybe, but not a skill to be sneezed at, either.

Gideons helped me to talk about my faith. I usually assume that these strange beings called people won’t be interested in what I feel and believe about Jesus Christ, but Gideons provided a structure, and a reason to be somewhere, that was sufficient to permit my introvert nature to share things that I found so important.

Preaching

There was another, unexpected, aspect to the Gideons. We visit churches to tell them about our activities on their behalf. Often a church will also ask us to provide a preacher for the service – quite a compliment to the Gideons, when the church may have no idea who the preacher will be. I was willing to preach on these occasions. I had preached occasionally while a member of a Christian choir at university, and now I continued to develop gifts of presentation and explanation, mixed with a leavening of humour. One church in particular, being without a minister for a period, asked me back every so often without the excuse of having the Gideons too. This gave me encouragement that I must be doing something right.

I not only preached, but I enjoyed preaching. I not only enjoyed preaching, I also enjoyed preparing a sermon, sharpening up my ideas and focusing my presentation. Similarly, I found that I wanted my listeners to enjoy the experience.

My family

When I first met the lady who would become my wife she was a mental health nurse, a job a million miles from anything I could conceive of doing. However, perhaps God felt that those were the skills needed to deal with me, as we got on well and married. She has been a very encouraging voice in my life, as well as teaching me more about those incomprehensible things called people, and even a little about myself. My wife noticed – and told me – that my people skills were not as bad as I thought. I might not be a world-class psychoanalyst, but I could work with practically anybody. I could talk to anyone, given a pretext, and understand their point of view. I could even teach some reluctant computer users to press the right buttons and to be confident of getting the right answer.

God also gave us a daughter. To have a child is to learn a whole new appreciation of God’s fatherhood.

Reader Training I

Being curious, and feeling responsibility even as an occasional preacher, I looked for some form of training that would help me to serve congregations better. A friend suggested the course run by York diocese, primarily for Readers in training, but open to anyone. I joined, and spent two happy years studying part-time. But when the two years finished, so did I.

What may have seemed like a step towards Reader ministry was nothing of the sort – in my opinion. To those who suggested that I might go further on that road, I would reply that my gifts as a preacher were outweighed by my lack of gifts as a pastor. I felt very strongly that anyone who preached regularly to the same congregation had a pastoral responsibility to fulfil. I did not see that pastoral ability in myself. Anyway, I was not even a proper Anglican; despite spending twenty years attending an Anglican church, I had never felt it appropriate to be confirmed. Having been brought up in a thoroughly non-conformist church, I cherished my non-conformity. I had been a Pentecostal, and then a Baptist, but I did not feel it necessary to be an Anglican, other than by participation in a local church.

Priscilla and Aquila

We visited the Keswick convention, and my wife and I, seeking some understanding of where we should move forward as a couple, attended a talk on Priscilla and Aquila. Afterwards we repaired to a tea-shop in the town, and I had to confess to her my feeling that God was nudging me towards a more regular use of my gifts. We discussed the possibilities, and one that presented itself was indeed becoming a Reader. We talked and prayed further, but the possibility refused to go away.

From there, the story moved forward on conventional lines. I saw my vicar, who agreed to support me. The PCC (church council) also supported me. I was confirmed. I went to the selection committee, and was recommended to the bishop, who approved me for training. And then I dropped into the third year of the training course – having done two years already – and two years later I was admitted and licensed as a Reader.

How did I change so quickly? Actually, I suspect most of the change happened over decades, and I just didn’t see myself changing. I still see myself as a lacking in pastoral skills, so I have to work harder to recognise and use the skills that my wife assures me are there. I am still a non-conformist by inclination, so I must discipline myself as a Reader to conform – as I have promised – to the Church of England, while trying as a Christian to be conformed above all else to the mind of Christ. I am still a geek by profession, so I play to my strengths in understanding and verbalising my faith, not just in preaching but also in using the liturgy.

The most important change – the only important change, really – was the realisation that God was pointing in this direction. Despite all previous hints and encouragement from friends that I should think about becoming a Reader, I do not think that I had been ignoring God’s guidance. Only when he had all his preparations in place did he show me the way to go. I have to trust that he knows what he is doing, for my sake and for the sake of the parish where I work.