I am what is often called a ‘cradle Christian’. I was born and raised in the faith and have been a life-long Anglican. I didn’t have a call to follow Christ as many can describe, but I did have an epiphany of sorts about chaplaincy.
I was serving in the military when I met my first Chaplain. I actually met two at the same time, an Anglican and a Roman Catholic “padre”. It was the first time it occurred to me that you could have a meaningful ministry and be hysterically funny and warmly approachable at the same time. I was immediately drawn back into my faith which had become rather bland and unchallenging.
Years passed, but it was those two chaplains that informed so much of my faith journey, until one fateful day. I was at Spring Harvest, a British jamboree of music, teaching and worship to which I had taken a Parish group.
I went to a leadership forum, and we discussed youth ministry and ways of recruiting young people into the Church. Tales of table tennis tables and donuts abounded, but there was a sense of slight despondency that overtook that forum as we all acknowledged that our youth groups remained small.
Then came the epiphany. I thought back to the Service chaplains I had met, and I realised just how many fresh faced 18-year-olds they had met. School chaplains too; perhaps thousands of young minds sat on their hard pews and had become infected with Christ. Prisons, universities, hospitals. I thought of Paul mending tents, deep in conversation like a first century Men’s Shed.
I suddenly knew the answer, and I shared it with the leadership forum.
It did not go down well. We should go to where they are, I said. All the donuts in our club houses will stand as nothing before the might of a cup of tea in a foxhole, or an ICU ward, of the days after exam results come out. We should throw off our hard wooden pews and sit in the dirt and make an altar out of what we can find, and honour God in the meeting and not the place.
It did not go down well at all.
So, I joined the Navy six months later. I visited people the morning after the hurricane came through. I had sandwiches on the beach with men and women who hours before had been on the front line. I talked to the anguished submarine commanders who realised what destructive power they had been prepared to unleash. I married men and women in our Base Chapel because they couldn’t afford a ‘proper one’ but were desperate to be together. I gave out small metal crosses to Marines to hang next to their dog tags, just before they deployed.
And I met the Christ in every one of them, as I prayed, they saw the Christ in me.
Now I’m at a School, and I am sharing the rumour of God with thousands. I am telling them that despite what they might believe, or be told, that God loves them just as they are, and made them to be just as they are. I am showing them that faith is important, and sometimes even fun, and always friendly. I am, in other words, showing them what my two inspirational padres showed me.
It’s not about table tennis and donuts, though I like a donut as much as anyone. It’s about walking along the shore, meeting people where they are, engaging them as they are, and loving them unconditionally. Just like Jesus.
And if they end up in Church (as I pray they will!), then that’s great too.
