Well, there's a first time for everything, even for a blog.

It was actually my cousin, Kim, who gave me the idea; she had a blog while doing her journalism placement in India and so I thought to myself "You'll be starting your placement in Liverpool soon, how about your own blog?"
So here it is... my first time... blogging.

Liverpool will not be my first time living abroad -I lived in London for 4 years and Dublin for 7 months- and it will not be my first time active in a parish, a group of people calling themselves Christians and coming together around the Christ-figure and His life and message to the world. I've been involved in the local Anglican parish in Ghent (Saint John's) as a lay assistant for years.
But it will be the first time I move abroad to actively take up a specific 'official' role in a parish after obtaining my theology degree and applying formally for ordination. Somehow it all has become much more serious now, and to be honest I'm glad, even relieved; finally something is happening.

I'm also glad and relieved that I didn't rush into a theology programme immediately after secondary school, that I studied Art History and Middle Eastern studies before signing up for a 'course on God'. Luckily I had met a pastor who recognised the zeal of the convert (I was raised an Atheist) when he saw one and gave me the good advice to "let any potential call sink in". Gaining experiences was very important he said, after all how could anyone become a minister, when they're a wall flower that has ever left their own patch and never met a whole array of people walking on God's green earth?

So I read other subjects first, both in Ghent and London, and worked and travelled a more, before finally deciding that the opportune moment had arrived for me to enroll at the Protestant Faculty in Brussels. And so since September of this year, I'm allowed to call myself an 'MTh', all signed by the dean and stamped by the secretary. It had taken me 5 years part-time, with ups and downs, and it took until the moment I handed in my dissertation (on Anglicans and Lutherans in Israel-Palestine), that I knew I had made the right decision; come what may, I would have that diploma on my wall!
Even if it meant never touching a Bible again... which as a Lutheran is highly unlikely!

I jobbed here and there, customer service -so I do have some idea of what makes people tick- and even teaching, religion for the Anglican community in Flemish official schools.

And thus, I visited other places -very few career options for future Lutheran pastors in mostly RC Flanders- and was greeted very warmly at the Nordic Church in Liverpool, where it became evident during the course of a lovely weekend there, that I might just fit in to give it a go. So we agreed on a trial period of 3 months... meantime the Lutheran Church in Great Britain has ample opportunity to scrutinize my application for ordination... and then...

I 'leave behind' a loving partner and a cheeky cat, but I've been blessed with a relationship of dialogue and humour ("Liverpool? Fun! Another holiday address!"), so I'm confident that the 3 months (starting on 3rd January) will bring more clarity and certitude on how I fit in God's plan for that congregation and my own calling to the ministry. It will again be a joined enterprise with the local CofE priest -I feel a pattern emerging- and I am excited... very excited... the sort of very excited that makes you a little nervous and anxious... you know the feeling, the kind of feeling when you are excited and then scared it might be too good to be true.

Then I take a deep breath and say to myself "If it wasn't meant to be, they wouldn't have asked you to get on an aeroplane -grief, I hate flying!- come over and work with them. After all it's a first for this congregation as well!
So 3 months of Liverpool, here I come!
But first we'll get through the holidays, and the packing, and o yes, I need to fill out forms for the bank and the health insurance as well, and trying to put up this blog properly... for the first time.

26-12-2012, 00:00 geschreven door jojanv