Professional, yet vulnerable

By Em Coley

‘Why don’t you and Em get a tandem?’ This was a suggestion made to Mark (the vicar) after someone had observed the two of us arriving at a church function on our bikes. ‘It’d never work,’ was Mark’s immediate reply, ‘we’d never agree on who would get to go at the front!’

Mark’s comment indicates a slightly unnerving insight into my character (well, what else would you expect from a trained psychotherapist!) but is also an interesting reflection on two leaders trying to work together. But, as I have discovered, being a curate is not a straightforward leadership position; my role means I am both a leader and a trainee.
I encountered this particular tension a few Sundays ago as I took my first baptism service.  Mark was away and so we had spent time the previous week practising baptising a rag doll belonging to the crèche! Despite the preparation, however, I was somewhat nervous before the service and felt torn between needing to exude confidence, particularly to the families of the children to be baptised (so that they could relax and enjoy the service) whilst also allowing myself to be vulnerable with the people to whom I am ministering.

The friction in this job (which I don’t think will stop on becoming an incumbent) is between being professional and vulnerable. Naturally I play an important professional role, and yet feel that I cannot be successful in my profession without being vulnerable. I decided, therefore, to tell the congregation that it was my first baptism. This decision was followed by an enormous amount of encouragement, and ironically the comment,  ‘we’d never have known if you hadn’t told us!’ So, I could have got away without informing people how inexperienced I was, but somehow that wasn’t the point. The point is what sort of leader I want to be. I feel that somehow a strictly professional front will distance me from the people I serve, and that perhaps, leading vulnerably will enable people to relate to me on a deeper and more honest level.

Returning to the bicycle analogy, I am sure that Mark will allow and enable me to take the front handlebars every now and again, and it will be inevitable that I will wobble and perhaps fall off!  And if this is done in plain sight of others it will be more public, more painful and more embarrassing. Perhaps, however, it will also allow others to wobble as well.

Em Coley is a curate in the parish of Wendover with Halton, Bucks