Answering the Phone 101

As he abrubtly hung up I had mixed feelings about having the vicarage phone number displayed on a large blue sign outside Malmesbury Abbey.  It was my day off and I broke my rule by answering the phone. The reason I answered was that I knew, yes I knew that it was my daughter phoning to tell me she’d be back soon and we could leave for a swim. So I picked up with a cheery ‘Hi!’ and got ‘I've driven 40 bleeding miles to sit in the grounds of Malmesbury Abbey with my family and the gates are locked and I want to know why.’ I started a courteous answer, angry with myself that my Philips Answer Machine wasn’t dealing with Mr 40 Bleeding Miles. ‘The Abbey is open between 9 and 5 in the summer but’…the line went dead. He missed ‘but we can’t leave the gates open, particularly on a Friday evening, because occasionally, late at night, people confuse our fine Norman porch with a urinal or a vomitarium, and brides tend not to be too impressed by that on a Saturday morning in a £1000 dress.’

It’s not all that bad, occasionally it’s really left field and rather fun. When I was a curate I had an enquiry that nobody’s theological training can prepare them for: ‘Eyup, vicar, can you tell me what Kum Ba Yah means?’ I nearly replied ‘if you can tell me what Eyup means’ but by this stage I was starting to realise that occasional politeness could help in Christian ministry on the telephone and directed him towards the local scout leader. In Australia, we discovered soon after moving in that the phone number of our minister’s house was one number removed from Pinky’s Pizza; ‘two large pepperonis with a side of coleslaw and a large Coke, fine, would you like your child christened with that?’ (Poor old Pinky’s closed down a couple of years later.)

There are plenty of meaningful conversations and the odd unprintable conversation to add to the above but I’m left with the nagging question, why do clergy have to be so immediately accessible anyway? I really struggle to think of any genuine emergencies in the last 13 years of ministry, most parishioners tend to go to a doctor or the RAC before they head towards me.

Two things. If we truly believe in the ministry of the whole Body of Christ shouldn’t our energies be directed towards making the Body of Christ interconnected and attentive in the local community and demythologising the clerical collar. And secondly, the ordained, and perhaps all of us, need to pay attention to the ‘radical unavailability of Jesus’ (a great phrase from Bishop Stephen Cottrell) who when grabbed by his disciples in Mark 1:37 with the words ‘Everybody is looking for you!’ replied without hesitating ‘Let us go somewhere else.’