Where is Scooby-Doo when you need him?

‘We believe in ghosts.’ The silence was total agony. I was on my two-day selection conference for ordination in 1996 (yes, Cranmer was on the panel) and it was the ‘one-minute wonders’ where we each had to turn over a card from the table and introduce a topic on the card for one minute, without preparation and without any assistance at all from the rest of the group. Then we were to lead an 8-minute discussion and summarise for a further minute. The man to my left turned over his card and read out ‘we believe in ghosts.’ Unfortunately for us all, he then couldn’t think of a single thing to say for 60 seconds; not a single reference to ghosts in the Bible, in society, to Bill Murray in Dan Akroyd in their seminal work, Ghostbusters, not even a Scooby-Doo impression. It was 60 seconds excruciating silence during which I internally vowed that whatever was on my card next I would read it out and not stop talking for 61 seconds. Rambling drivel was far preferable to this communal awkwardness, and possibly a requirement for an ordinand in the Church of England.

So I turned over my card and it read: ‘We regret that there no longer exists a single unifying liturgy in the Church of England.’ I was off. O, how I regretted it, I lamented the loss of such a liturgy. I nearly cried. O that we couldn’t walk into a church in Bradford or Barnstaple and be reassured by the words of 1662 flowing from the mouth of the priest. O, that society no longer carries around Hymns Ancient and Modern (ha!) and says the creeds facing eastwards without reference to our personal leather-bound copies of the BCP. I was off, and nothing could stop me, not even the fact that what I was saying made no sense at all, and that I seemed to be channelling the sprit of a long-dead Victorian cleric. My ramble produced a rather animated conversation, mainly discussing my sanity, and then we moved on to the next card. The agony was over.

I remembered my one-minute wonder at the end of worship yesterday. In the space of 36 hours I had presided at a joyously beautiful wedding of friends in Chorleywood with meaningful liturgy, contemporary worship and music from Toy Story; I had spoken at a Rogation Day Service on a farm where my preaching was upstaged by a cow with her newborn calf; I hosted the passionate African gospel music and evangelistic preaching of Uganda Fire at Malmesbury Abbey; and then finally led Choral Evensong with the music of Tallis, Wamisley and Blow. The church and her worship is glorious, diverse, surprising – ‘how many are your works, O Lord, in wisdom you made them all.’ (Psalm 104:24)

So, if you were on my selection panel all those years ago, a quick word. I lied.