discernment

People considering ordination in the Anglican diocese of Melbourne are required to attend the Year of discernment, a series of talks on various aspects of ordained ministry. I am roughly halfway through this process and have recently learned that it is also known as the Year of disillusionment or Year of discouragement. Perhaps that sounds too cynical. Or perhaps a healthy dose of cynicism is needed to function as a priest.

I’ve officially been in “the process” of discernment for about six months; the curiosity and disquiet that led me here began about a year ago. In that year I have been casually observing priests and ministers working in different contexts—a busy cathedral, a smaller parish and a university chaplaincy. Along with the talks, these observations have given me a good deal of disillusionment and discouragement. I knew that full-time ministers were not sheltered from overwork, politics, bureaucracy, gossip, bitchiness and all the other trials of secular work. Seeing it at close range is discouraging, though. What is most challenging to me is the idea that this could be work like any other. Until now, shared worship has been a source of rest and nourishment. I haven’t really adjusted to the idea of being one who feeds, rather than one who is fed.

Discernment is a mutual process involving the inquirer and the church, with the hope that the will of God can be found in the process. We have to be wary of those who are eager to serve God and the church (or themselves?) but don’t appreciate how draining ministry is until it is too late. On the other hand, there is the danger that those who would be good priests become too disillusioned and leave the process early.

I’m not claiming I would be a good priest; that’s the question that I have started asking this year, and I don’t expect to have an answer soon. In the past year I have felt excitement at the possiblity of being called to the priesthood; disillusionment and burnout, to the point that I nearly left the whole process; and, now, a sense of fatigue from all these mood swings. If this is the normal range of experience of people in discernment, it amazes me that anyone does go through with ordination.

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