Rose Jones.

“Are you some sort of nun?”

The breakdown recovery driver shot me a side-eye as he shifted the truck into fourth gear. I’d been in the cab approximately five minutes and we’d just moved beyond ‘yes your motorcycle is definitely conked’ and into the small talk stage. What he’d clearly judged to be a safe question had melted rapidly into uncharted waters.

“… No.”

Good luck trying to explain this one, I thought. People tend to associate vicars with weird robes, weak jokes and getting a cold bum at Christmas. Frankly, so did I until I started training to be one. I’m often pretty bad at explaining what it means to be one because I don’t know how to make it sound as exciting as it feels – and I don’t want people to think I’m just in it for the weird robes.

‘The plan was music, always, and the plan was going pretty well up until God messed it up.’

It certainly didn’t seem exciting at first. I never wanted to be ordained. The plan was music, always, and the plan was going pretty well up until God messed it up. I was 24, living in London, working social media for indie labels and playing music in any and every context that I could. That didn’t mean my life wasn’t full of God. God had always been there, always the driving force, always the platform from which I leapt and the arms I fell into. But I found him most clearly in music, and never more than when leading worship, hammering out chords on the guitar and using every particle of breath in my lungs to sing praise.

Which is how, sneakily, he tricked me into it. This whole priest thing.

I was worship pastor at a church in London, and discovered to my bewilderment a growing longing to be more involved in church leadership. Instead of writing songs, my creativity sparked with daydreams of ways to help nurture the church community in discipleship, unity and reaching out to the hurt and lost. The yearning was so persistent that I started praying more deeply about it, and talking to wise friends. It was they who suggested God might be calling me to ordained ministry.

‘I couldn’t see where I fit – a gay drummer who spent most of her time tweeting or listening to punk. I found the answer in what seemed to me a surprising place: the liturgy of ordination.’

At the time, ordained ministry meant to me what it probably meant to my breakdown recovery driver: tradition, formality, institution. I couldn’t see where I fit – a gay drummer who spent most of her time tweeting or listening to punk. I found the answer in what seemed to me a surprising place: the liturgy of ordination.

Being a vicar isn’t about robes and ritual and church fêtes. What I feel called to – as I vainly tried to explain that afternoon in the truck-cab – is something completely different. It’s the wild chase of the Kingdom: following the bugle call of Christ to roll up my sleeves and get stuck in alongside him. It’s gathering in the lost, bandaging the broken, resisting injustice, speaking for the voiceless, strengthening the weak. It’s feeding new and flickering sparks of faith, and blowing on the embers of the disillusioned. It’s walking the shadowy line between life and death with those who pace there at burials and baptisms, rejoicing with the joyful, weeping with the bereaved. It isn’t boring, cold-bummed mundanity at all; it’s a reckless, exhilarating pursuit of Life himself.

I didn’t quite manage to articulate all that to the breakdown recovery driver. But I listened as he opened up his heart, and poured out a story of loss and suicide, shattered relationships and hopeful new beginnings. I held the silence when he wept. And I prayed. And maybe –hopefully – that told him all he needed to know.

  • Rose was a member of the Way2 Community, which is based in Falmouth. More details here.
  • The Diocese of Truro is holding a Vocations Day at Truro Cathedral, on Saturday, March 17. Anybody who would like to explore what they feel is a calling from God is invited to attend. The day is not just for people who believe they are called to ordained ministry, but for everybody – your calling might be towards something entirely different, becoming a teacher or a medical professional, or perhaps as a Reader or youth worker in the church. Come along and find out more any time from 10am to 3pm. If you cannot stay for long, please feel free to drop in at any point.