Curate Conundrums

I wonder if John The Baptist was around today, what people would make of him? Would he get through the selection process criteria of the Church of England? Would he get through a Bishop’s Advisory Panel? I’m not really sure training residentially around lots of other people would have suited him, and then of course there’s his diet, would the kitchens be willing to provide enough locusts and wild honey? ‘And lo there appeared a Man named John, in Norwich city centre, he wore a crumpled and stained shirt, and ate out of bins, and people in the Norfolk countryside came to him to be baptised in the River Wensum.” Can you imagine it? The Christian story is littered with strange people, and strange stories, which gives me hope, if someone as strange as John the Baptist can find a place within the Christian story, then there’s hope for me too. The bizzare, the strange, the outcast, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the unclean, the unwashed, the poor, these are all the kinds of peopl...