Been there, got the t-shirt! Some personal reflections on ministry abroad
BACK IN LATE 2014, as I was preparing to move from Dublin to Copenhagen, I was given a farewell gift by a clergy friend - a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “I speak Danish – what’s your superpower?” I thought it was quite funny until I signed up for language classes and discovered just why it is that Danish children start speaking at a later age than almost any others in the world!
Sadly, I never did get my tongue around all those vowel-rich words, but moving to Denmark began a period of ordained ministry in the Church of England – the first half or so in Denmark and Norway (in the Church’s Diocese in Europe) and more recently in the parish of Esher in Guildford Diocese – which has greatly enriched me personally, if not linguistically! So now, almost a decade after leaving Ireland, seems a good time to reflect on those years. I thank the editor of SEARCH for inviting me to share these thoughts with you.
My first, most basic reflection is that ordained ministry is, in many respects, the same whether you’re in Scandinavia, Surrey or Sallynoggin. People are people wherever you go, with much the same hopes and fears, joys and sorrows. That said, there are many differences in the culture and composition of congregations around the world. Some of those differences are relatively minor and some deeply significant.
On the more everyday end of the scale, I have to admit that the subtle variations in wording between the Church of Ireland Book of Common Prayer and the Church of England’s Common Worship still catch me out now and then. Who knew, for example, that it’s ‘keep you in eternal life’ in the Absolution in the Irish prayerbook but ‘keep you in life eternal’ in the English one? I certainly didn’t until I stumbled over it one Sunday morning. I leave our learned liturgists to parse the difference!
* Full article available in printed copies.
Darren McCallig
Is the Rector of Esher in the Diocese of Guildford. After serving as Dean of Residence and Church of Ireland Chaplain in Trinity College Dublin from 2007 to 2015, he served in the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe, in Denmark and Norway, before moving to Esher in 2020.