Tuesday 28th August 2007
From a boyhood in the highlands of Papua New Guinea to an English public school, followed by a Jane Austen romance and a dream job Nick Seward's life so far could spring from the pages of a novel. And as Rebecca Paveley discovered, his journey to faith was helped along by one of our greatest Christian storytellers and apologists, CS Lewis.
IT may be that I'm out of touch with school chaplains, but Revd Nick Seward is not what I expected from a chaplain at one of Oxford's high achieving private schools.
He turns up for the interview straight from running his church's (St Ebbe's in Oxford) summer football camp.
He starts by telling me what he loves about school chaplaincy: 'It's great not to have to worry about the social niceties as you do in a parish: the kids just want to debate the real stuff'.
The head of Magdalene College School was 'taking a punt' when he employed him, Nick admits. He was a curate at the time, with no teaching experience.
But the punt has worked: the school's theology results are good and Nick has bonded well with the boys, who come to Magdalene from a diverse background.
His own less than typical background no doubt helps: he was born in Zambia to parents who were 'secular idealists' and moved with them to a remote mission station in the southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where his father worked as a PE teacher and then managed the national football team.
He said he always had a faith, even at a very young age, which was 'inspired by my grandmother's teachings'.
'I was probably an odd little boy; when I was told off I used to go and sit down and read the Bible.' He and his sister attended the mission school and that also had a strong influence on him, though not always for the good. It was living near the mission station which turned his father into a fervent atheist, he says.
'It was while we were out there I discovered the Narnia stories by C S Lewis. They enabled me to see that what was in front of me in the mission school wasn't really Christianity and that what was in the Narnia stories was.' But he said his best friends came from the local school where the school uniform was a grass skirt.
So it came as a total culture shock to be sent to an English public school, aged 12. The move was caused by his parents going through an acrimonious split. 'They had lived too well the ex-pat lifestyle,' says Nick, wryly.
He was bullied for not fitting in and clung to his faith and C S Lewis, joining the Christian Union, which had just a couple of other boys in it.
'My guide throughout was C S Lewis, I discovered Mere Christianity when I was 17, which was amazing. I went to a Billy Graham mission in 1984 and started at a youth group which experienced its own small revival too.' It was at university he first sensed he wanted to do full time Christian work but says he would have 'run a mile if anyone had mentioned a dog collar'. He was offered the chance to work after university for a church on a run down estate in Blackburn.
'I felt that this is what I was meant to be doing, it really was life at the rough end. I experienced an orthodox Christianity that was getting its hands dirty.
'I was helping to run a church plant and it was practical, hands-on work. A couple of ministers there said I should think about being ordained. I really didn't feel I was good enough, but I decided to knock on the door and pray about it. Sure enough I was selected that same year and I went to be a lay pastor back in Blackburn for a year. I had a wonderful time, it really confirmed my sense that this is what I should be doing with my life.' But he had asked to take another year out before training so he went travelling for year: and spent time working as a cowboy in Australia and as a beach model in Fiji!
He came back to study at Cranmer Hall in Durham, where the new Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Revd John Pritchard, was then Warden.
He was ordained in Canterbury. 'I had a Jonah moment at the ordination retreat when I was surrounded by people in black cassocks and I just felt like running away! But I also felt strongly that God was with me, so I went through with it.' His curacy was spent in Maidstone, which is where he met his wife, Hannah.
He describes their romance as 'very Jane Austen'.
Hannah was just 17 at the time and played the organ for the church. Nick says he was very 'proper and upfront' and spoke to Hannah's parents and his vicar about wanting to see Hannah outside church. But, horrified, his vicar banned them from meeting and appealed to his Bishop to speak to Nick.
But when Nick went to see the Bishop he turned out to be on their side, and agreed the couple could 'become an item' when Hannah turned 18.
They duly married at the end of Hannah's first year at university in Oxford, where she was an organ scholar.
It was then that the job for a chaplain at Magdalene College School turned up.
'It was perfect, I had a very strong sense this is where God wants me to be at the moment. My curacy was in many ways a desert experience but the school is a wonderful place to be.' He has now been there five years which is the longest he has been anywhere, he says. But with a one year old baby daughter Samantha, and another baby on the way, he is staying firmly put in Oxford for now.
And with C S Lewis still serving as his mentor, what better place is there to be?