Seeking the seekers

My name is Jon Martin. I’m 30 and an Anglican priest in Ottawa. Our church is one of the city’s bigger ones. On an average Sunday, we’ll see anywhere between 200 and 250 people. My weekday mornings are pretty straight-forward. Usually I’m come into the office around nine o’clock and check e-mail and any phone messages before my boss , P.J., gets in. P.J. will come in later and we’ll do a morning prayer. He actually makes me do it, despite the fact that I wrote a master’s paper on a non-relational God and on how prayer is just a psychological tool that people use to centre themselves.

After that, I’ll either teach or go do some pastoral visits. I teach adult programmes. I have a group of seniors who come in, and we do what’s called lectio divinia, which means holy reading – basically we just talk about Bible study. So we sit around for an hour, drink coffee, look at the upcoming Gospel for the week and chat and ask questions. If I’m not teaching, I’ll go do a couple of pastoral visits at one of the many seniors’ home we take care of. Then I’ll come back to the church and have lunch.

In the afternoon, there’s usually a meeting or two. After that,  I’ll go back out for another pastoral visit or just talk to people. As part of our strategic planning process, our diocese has just begun a programme called “Seeking the Seekers”. One of the ideas behind it is simply to start conversations with people. A person who says “I don’t believe in God” is usually open to the idea that there might be some sort of creative essence to the universe. What they’re rejecting is the image of God that the Church has given them — the old man on the mountain who strangely looks like Charlton Heston; or God as the absentee landlord who, if you’re good enough or worthy enough, may or may not help you in life. The image of God as a parent is something that’s been around for ages, but sadly, people always make God a dysfunctional parent — either He’s an absent parent or He’s an abusive parent. This way of reaching out is called “fringe ministry” — you just have conversations with people. It’s not a hierarchy any more. The wisdom’s in the room, not just with the leader. Good leadership now is not telling everybody what they need to know, but trying to find out what everybody knows, so we can all benefit from that.

I’m usually home by about 4 or 5 p.m., and I try to go to the gym or for a run, maybe sleep for a little while and get some supper. Then I head back to the church. We have a 7 p.m. meeting that will usually go on until about 9 p.m.

What I do at night will depend on whether I’ve been paid recently. I usually try to round folks up to go out, so I can have some form of social life. If not, I’ll go home and try to distract my room-mate from her homework, or from the fact that she has to wake up at 4.30 a.m. to go to work. We’ll open a bottle of rum and watch something on TV like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer or Dawson s Creek. We’ll sit and talk about how we really should be doing more for our health, but we’ll usually have several drinks and some chips and talk about how we don’t get out as much as we used to.

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