In the sermon that was preached at the service where I was ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament the preacher quoted a friend of his who was involved in full-time work with homeless young people: ‘We give all kinds of noble reasons as to why he are involved in work like this. But one day we discover the real reason and we don’t tell anybody.’
Richard Holloway has been looking at his life as a prospective monk, missionary, parish priest and bishop and tells us the real reasons. To say he is hard on himself is putting it mildly. It might seem cruelly disparaging to say of anyone involved in ministry that he was in love with the idea of it all, that he enjoyed strutting his stuff on the stage that was provided for him, that it gave him the opportunity to be seen, heard and discussed. But that is what he says about himself. Reflecting on his appointment as a bishop in 1986 he writes:
‘Had I really grasped the force of my innate scepticism towards institutions would I still have agreed to became a bishop in 1986? Probably, but I would have known that it was more vanity and ambition that prompted me than the wisdom of self-knowledge. To be fair to the person I was then, I did not yet know myself. We live ourselves forward and understand ourselves backward, but I had not lived long or reflectively enough to know who I was.‘
This is typical of the backward looking ‘understanding’ in the book and sometimes it is quite breathtaking in its honesty. It would be easy for someone with my perspective on faith and ministry to take a dim view of all of this and I have heard people question how Richard Holloway ever reached a position of such authority in his Church. But I am reminded of an article I read some years ago called ‘The Minister’s Call’ by Joel Nederhood. He is writing from a conservative evangelical position and explores what he calls ‘false forms of the Call’. He recognises that ‘Certain elements of the ministry as we know know it tend to call into play a variety of motivations that may strongly impel a person to enter this work without his having been authentically called to it.‘ He mentions the lure of being able ‘to speak uninterruptedly for extended periods of time to an audience that feels obligated to give attention to what is being said.’ There is also the status afforded to ministers, although he admits that this is decidedly on the wane, and the access that is given to people’s private lives.
Nederhood argues that no minister is immune from these and other ‘improper motivations’ and they need to be aware when they begin to take over. It is for this reason that I am grateful for Richard Holloway’s book which I think is challenging to anyone involved in full-time ministry. I am sad, though, that at the end we are left with a picture of this talented and thoughtful man without faith and without the hope of eternity. However, as he writes when he comes to the end of a glimpse into the future when his children will scatter his ashes over his favourite hills:
‘And that’ll be that. Well, almost certainly . . .‘
