Discernment


On a previous post I was asked how the process of discernment worked for me.

Just to provide some context, just in case you’re reading this from scratch – it’s a reference to my process of determining and assessing a call to a currently-vacant charge (parish) in the Church of Scotland. It’s also worth adding a little bit of background for anyone reading who is unfamiliar with the CofS’s vacancy process. Ministers are never ‘sent’ anywhere by the CofS. One responds to a ‘call’, both in the sense of God calling a person to a particular ministry and also in the sense that it is a congregation’s jealously-guarded right to determine who their own minister shall be and not have one imposed upon them. (With the caveat that presbytery has a right of veto if the called minister’s life and doctrine are deemed to be inappropriate.) There are other ins and outs that can complicate things, but that’s the general idea.

So this splurge of thoughts is ‘call’ and its discernment from my perspective – that of someone seeking to determine where I shall be ‘ministering’ for the next five years at least (you are expected to stay at least five years in a first charge).

I suppose I should also say that whatever I write here is probably a much too neat description of what, for me anyway, is a far from tidy and obvious ‘process’.

I guess the process started a few years ago. A large element of the ministry formation training and preparation is about knowing your self (and I’ve become a huge advocate of the professional journalling/reflective practice ‘thing’). But that’s not about self-centred, navel-gazing. It’s a genuine process of understanding the type of person you are, your strengths (without the false humility that we Scots seem to revel in), your limitations (genuinely understood), your passions, your challenges, and so on. There was much grumping at times during the preparation stage, but let me say (and I say this from only a personal perspective – I can’t speak for anyone else) that it is now that the various activities and exercises and self-reflection all become enormously useful.

When I first started at university (and wasn’t yet a candidate for training), a number of my fellow students who were candidates had a very clear picture of where they would be ministering and of the type of ministry they wanted to do. I didn’t have that and it caused me to question my call on a number of occasions. Now, I don’t know if those people just happened to know themselves really well (I’m not convinced) or had simply been given a different form of call from me (a more convincing explanation) but it is now, knowing myself so much better, that I have that sense of call to a particular ministry.

So that is the first element of discernment for me – knowing ‘me’; the gifts and talents I have, the passions which enthuse me, the challenges which don’t, the people I like to work with, the environment I can flourish in (again, not in a self-serving way, but simply being able to live and work effectively so that I can serve others). It is knowing that piece of the jigsaw that enables me to see if it might fit into the various ministry opportunities which are available. I suppose it’s not really any different to anyone else who is job-hunting, but I suspect there are more and different factors at work than come into play when one is simply ‘looking for a job’.

But that also opens up the question of whether the available ‘job’ has appropriately-shaped jigsaw ‘holes’. There’s only so much information to be gleaned from parish profiles and mission statements and ministerial profiles. And much of it has to be taken with a degree of scepticism; a nominating committee is not in the job of making their charge look unattractive. So that means other avenues of research need to be opened up. Talking to people works wonders. There are times when the Church of Scotland seems like a very small world. Everyone seems to know someone who knows someone. And there are even a few people who seem to know everyone (and every congregation, and every minister who has been through the door, and where they came from and where they went). So word gets around about places. If I’ve learnt nothing else over the last several years, then I’ve learnt that it is very often through what people say to me, almost unintentionally, that I can often hear a prompting from God. So I listen carefully (or try to) and try and pick up the clues from what I’m hearing. This makes the informal chats and emails with interim moderators interesting. They seem to expect me to come laden with questions about a place. Actually, I just want to listen to what they have to say and pick up what’s being said and not said. I may then be prompted to ask a question, but often I’ll just take time to reflect on things.

What else is in the mix? Visiting a place; seeing it in context and seeing what its context is. Simply stopping, in a place, and ‘listening’; feeling its ‘vibe’ (the church building, the manse, the town, the churchyard, whatever). There’s more too, but the more intangible it gets, the more difficult it is to put into words. There are also very personal considerations around family which are part of the discernment process but are not appropriate to mention here.

You’ve maybe wondered why I haven’t mentioned prayer. It’s there in the mix, of course, but, as I’ve said, I’ve learnt to listen for God through what others say more than anything and so the riposte “have you prayed about it?” tends to grate on me a bit. If ‘praying’ is about listening out for God’s guidance then the answer is yes. If it means closeting myself in a quiet room, getting on my knees with an open Bible in front of me, then the answer is no. All of the above ‘methods’ or process elements are, for me, a form of prayerful, spiritually-reflective activity.

So, is it working? I’ll let you know when the call comes and it is still coming 5 years into ministry.


3 responses to “Discernment”

  1. I find what you have to say about the relationship between prayer and listening interesting and resonant. I’m currently in the United Reformed Church’s process for initial settlement of ordinands, being in my final year of Education for Ministry 1 (what we call the initial training period). Our process is much more mediated than the CofS’s is. I (and all other final year ordinands) will be offered introductions discerned by our synod moderators at their monthly meetings one at a time. Each time I will have the simple choice to accept or refuse introduction to a single pastorate which has been identified by the moderators as appropriate. I can (and have) ask that they look at particular vacant pastorates that I think might be suitable but they are under no obligation to offer me an introduction to any of these. 
    The more I think about this system the better I like it (perhaps I’m experiencing one of my occasional bouts of “URC patriotism”). The knowledge, experience and expertise of the moderators is brought to bear on my behalf and the difference between this process and “job hunting” is accentuated. I don’t envy you at all in your having to find God’s call to you without assistance and wish you all the very best in it. 

  2. Hi Nick,

    Thanks for commenting and my apologies for my tardy reply.

    I can see that the URC method may be appealing. It certainly takes some of the uncertainty out of the process. I suspect there’s a lot of ‘under the radar’ discussion going on even in the CofS system, but there is the reality of a congregation guarding its right to call that I need to live with.

    I wish you every blessing with your own journey into ministry.

  3.  
    John—
     
     
     
    I am so sorry I missed this posting back when you were thinking about it.  I don’t always come back to blogs in any sort of predictable manner.  You can always poke me to ‘pay attention’ at lamontgoodling at gmail dot com.
    One of the thrashings I did at one point in my past about schooling and work went along this sort of self-discernment:
    Who am I?
    What do I want?
    What do I believe in?
    What are my convictions (beliefs I’m willing to act on)?
    Who do I know?
    Who do I trust?
    What are my assets?
    What are my skills?
    What are my beliefs about the future?
    And as I worked through them, I realized how one-sided this list is.  The same discernment you use on your own self is also is appropriate for the charge you are looking at (or in my case, the job opportunity I was looking at):
    Who are they?
    What do they want?
    What do they believe in?
    What are their convictions?
    Who do they know?
    Who do they trust?
    What are their assets?
    What are their skills?
    What are their beliefs about the future?
    It seems you’ve done a good bit of the self-discernment.  If you think the self-discernment is tough, I wish you the best of luck in the charge-discernment…
    All the best.
    Lamont

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