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Now, there was no burning bush moment for me, but I do deeply sympathise with Moses’s protestations in Exodus as God asked him, a humble shepherd, to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, because, although I am not totally “slow of speech and tongue”, I do struggle to share my story verbally.
I guess that we are all blessed with one skill or another and called to use whatever we have for the greater good.
Church: My Cunning Plan That Backfired Spectacularly
“Apparently, it’s a low birth year so we should be OK. We’re in the catchment area after all, but it wouldn’t hurt to make doubly sure and tick the “church attendees” box. There’s a new vicar, so as long as we show our faces once a month, get him to sign the papers, job done!
So went our discussion back in 2019 as we ruminated on how best to get our four-year son into our preferred school: Wath CofE Primary.
Summoning the Courage
And so, once a month we showed up, mumbling through the hymns, shuffled grudgingly through sharing the peace, keeping our hands firmly by our sides as we kneeled at the alter to receive a blessing (would we be struck down for our sin if we made a mess of this and inadvertently accepted the bread and wine reserved for “real” church goers? The struggle was real!). Until, one Sunday, I plucked up the confidence to seek out the powers that be in the vestry, thrust the requisite papers under his nose, and beat a hasty retreat, job done!
The whole saga had been akin to visiting your Great Grandma in the nursing home as a wee nipper: you know you have to go monthly, you don’t know anyone (not even your Great Granny) it’s full of old people and you would rather be doing anything else. Now to execute stage two of the master strategy: the slow disappearance!
So as not to draw too much attention to our impropriety, we planned to gradually ease our regularity of attendance, once a month would become once every six weeks, and so on. We would indeed become James 4:14: a mist that appears for a little while then vanishes!
Now, I never categorised myself a staunch atheist. I starred as Joseph in the nativity, belted our “We are climbing Jesus Ladder” in assembly, offering up prayers as a last resort in times of trouble and even ticked the “Christian” box on the census form. Aged 14 my mum was diagnosed with MS and gave her life to Jesus at that point.
Religion Wasn’t Cool
I vividly remember her reciting healing scriptures each night and her angry protestations upon returning from church each Sunday (“I leave church in perfect peace and then within five minutes of getting home……”) Leaving me feeling a little like Satan for leaving my cereal bowl unwashed. It’s just that, as a young man, it wasn’t very cool to be religious.
Those ages were, in all honesty, a blur of beer, clubs, gigs, football and questionable romantic relationships, hazily experienced through a cloud of cigarette smoke. I cared only for my own enjoyment, somehow picked up a wife along the way, tempered my ways slightly; then came a child, tempered my ways a little more, and if God was to come into my life, now was not the time!
I was nowhere near getting into gardening, quite the opposite: our new home in Manvers had come complete with a small garden. My first experience of mowing that garden ended in me cutting through the electric cable and me gingerly approaching my wife: “Erm, something bad has happened!” I certainly had no intention of knitting, attending coffee mornings, singing in a choir or anything else I conceived as compatible with the life of a Christian.
Something Changed
I guess my plan for salvation was to use the thief who died on the cross besides Jesus as blueprint: have no interest in Christianity until the very last minute where I would confess my sins on my deathbed and squeeze into the heaven bound lift, just before the heavy steel doors of eternal bliss slammed shut forever.
So, what changed? Well, call it fate, a nudge from the Holy Spirit or the rumblings of conscience that I had developed at some point, but one Sunday (during stage two: my plan to disappear like a mist), I sat alone throughout the service as my wife accompanied my child (just as begrudging as me) to Sunday school.
At the end of the service, the vicar invited anyone who wanted to invite God into their lives to see the curate who would say a prayer for them. To this day, I don’t know what prompted me, but I recall mumbling something to my wife to “hang on a moment” because I had to go and see the curate.
“I wanted to WANT to come to church!”
It felt like a revelation. It was suddenly clear that I had to make amends. I didn’t know how it would work. I didn’t know IF it would work. I didn’t even know WHAT it was that I wanted to work. I just knew that I had been physicallythere during the services, but somewhere in my soul I wanted more. I wanted to WANT to come to church! No obligation, free from ulterior motive.
From then on, I have always thought of myself a little like a piece of pottery being shaped by God’s hands. No radical chopping out of my imperfections, rather a gradual, caring smoothing of my rough edges as I spin slowly around on my journey.
Moulded by God
Although the refinement of this piece of clay requires patience and will undoubtedly last a lifetime, I guess I enjoy the bliss of being glazed by hands of the Father rather than fired in the kiln below! And anyway, I’ve learned to relax, enjoy the process and peace that comes from being a Christian.
Admittedly, some days the alarm goes off, and I fancy a lie-in more than communion – that’s when I switch from the “done and dusted” 9am service (followed by a Greggs sausage sandwich on the way back) to the lengthier and hymn strewn 10.30 am edition (no sausage sandwich).
I’m not suddenly Super-Christian —I still swear when Rotherham concede in the 90th minute and I’m rubbish at sharing my faith with others. But the difference is I now want to be here. The same building, same hymns, same slightly weird peace-sharing, except now it feels like coming home instead of visiting Great-Grandma.
God, then Jesus took shepherds, fishermen and tax collectors and put them front and centre thousands of years ago. With me, he took a fraudulent lump of clay and turned it into… well, we’ll see. If he can do that with me, trust me, he’s got more than enough grace for whatever brought you through the door today.
Back Pew Bloke
First published online at: https://medium.com/@jasongossop/conning-the-local-vicar-01bc34cde8ec
Featured image courtesy of Unsplash