Why I Could No Longer Serve My Anglican Parish in the UK - Hew Gregory Smith

It came to a head in a way. I began to become braver in my preaching and began to preach more like an Anabaptist from the sermon, from the pulpit. Did that have interesting results? It had profound results. Yeah. I was in trouble for that.

From my own congregation, rather than—I mean, they probably whispered it to those above me.

Hugh, welcome to the podcast. So you've had an interesting story that we want to capture in today's episode. You're originally from the UK, and we're part of the Anglican Church, I believe. That's right. And so let's just start at the beginning and get your story. Where were you born, and what kind of church environment did you grow up in? I was born in Singapore.

My father was in the army, and the second from last man to leave Singapore, because it was a—it was a colony, but had gained independence. And he was—he was helping their army gain the knowledge they needed to stand on their own two feet.

So I was there for the first three years of my life. Now, that's—okay, so that's an interesting time in British history, I guess, as that colony is becoming independent. It was independent already. It was—it was transitioning, I guess. Transitioning. And church background. He was inclining, and in later life, confirmed as an atheist.

His parents would have been reasonably regular churchgoers in the Church of England. So that was his background. And my mother had a Catholic education, but wasn't from a Catholic family. So she went to a Catholic school. So she had a knowledge of Christianity that kicked in later, bless her, and it helped us out of a hard situation.

And in her teenage years, she was involved with the Christian Science Movement. So basically, that was often her default, and she was disillusioned with that. So religion was not a big part, or Christian faith was not a big part of our family upbringing. But we had lots of stuff in our house that was religious. We had plenty of little temple bits and bobs that we'd picked up in bazaars and thieves' markets and things like that. So we had Buddhist scrolls on the walls and Indian images, copper images or bronze images of Indian holy men on the mantelpiece and stuff. So we had a lot of Eastern, what I look now as unhelpful junk.

We didn't know where we were. We were just sucking up the culture around us and having none ourselves, really. That was the way it goes. Was there a lot of—was this from your father's travel? My father's travels. My parents had been married for some time before I was born. I was the youngest of five, and I was 18 years younger than my brother. So we had a very spaced family, and my father had done a lot of traveling with the army beforehand. So then life went on to Germany.

We moved to Germany then, and then Nepal. And it's probably in Nepal that I had my first spiritual experience. It was basically an out-of-body experience that I first had. And I was terrified by the whole experience. I was only six at the time or something like that. And I would just head into my parents' bed after having this dream of just being able to push myself around my bedroom wall and float and look down upon my body beneath me. And that was disturbing.

And when I told my mother this, she was quite stricken, and in some ways, because she had messed around with this as a teenager. This was back in the—would have been back in the 40s, 50s. And she had seen it as a very terrifying part of her own life. And she just realized that it had just transferred down the generation to me. And she said, "Well, look, Hugh, there's something that will work. Let's pray the Lord's Prayer together." So upon praying the Lord's Prayer, that ceased in my life, which showed me something positive about Christianity that I wouldn't forget.

This is age six, you said. This is age six. Wow. So pretty early on. And I had never been baptized. My older siblings had. But there was no kind of any Christian imprint on me at all. I was untouched, basically, at that point. Yeah. So that was a positive impact in my existence.

Nepal was a pretty frustrating place to a point for me. I had difficulties in learning. I suppose they would put it down as dyslexia. So I was pretty low in the class. I'm often being left behind. So one day, I just banged my head on the floor. I'm just with a load of babies. I want to do something else. And so my mother said, "Oh, well, I'd better send you to boarding school." So at the age of six, I was sent off to boarding school, traveling with my sisters.

But so they were living in Nepal, my mother and father. And my father reckoned that it was cheaper to send us to boarding school anyway than to feed us at home, because the army gave such a generous subsidy on education at boarding schools. Wow. So that was, you know, that's fine. Problem solved. Off to boarding school. So is this boarding school, it's there in Nepal, or did you have to go somewhere else? No, it was in England. Okay. So in Devon. Yeah. They send you to literally the other side of the world. Yeah, on the other side of the world. So for the school term, then you come back. During the holidays. Yeah. So wow.

Quite traumatic at the age of six. Age six. Yeah. No kidding. That must have been confusing at that age, or maybe disorienting is a better word. It didn't last forever, though. And the occasion was quite sad. My parents divorced in 1979, and then that was the end of the boarding school education.

The army wasn't there to subsidize it. It suddenly becomes a very expensive thing. So I go home and go to a village school, a village government school. And I had a big shock coming because it was a very different world to my boarding school world. Boarding school, you've got lots of people like yourself, soldiers' children, diplomats' children, the odd African chief's children, you know, a kind of huge array of oddballs. And you all get along very well. And then suddenly you go to a village school and you're this weird guy that everyone picks on because you speak differently and you've traveled and they haven't. And you know, so it was a big struggle.

And a kind of a certain superstition took part in them. My family were pretty superstitious, actually. There is a religion in everyone, and they were. So on one occasion, when we were down in Wales, I willfully broke a mirror. And my sisters came to me and they said, "Ah, Hugh, that's bad." And I was only kind of 11 at the time or something like that. She said, "That's seven years bad luck now." You know, and to a degree, they were right because it was a very dark time in my life and for seven years.

Things began to change when I went to sixth form college in Taunton, a neighboring town. And there I met a different girl. She was from a Christian family and got to know her. But I have to backtrack a little bit here because whilst I was still finishing off at school, my brother had their first child, my brother and his wife had a first child, and they wanted to have a christening ceremony. So we went down to the local vicar and spoke to him about it. And he said, "Well, the first thing I have to ask you is, have you been confirmed and have you been baptized?" And my mother and I both had to answer that we both were not baptized or confirmed.

We were out of the loop, so to speak, in the Anglican mindset. So that had to be done. So we were invited to come along to a confirmation class. Can you define when he's asking you to be confirmed? What does that mean? And also, I mean, for those that aren't familiar with Anglicanism, what is a vicar? Can you define that as well? A vicar would be a minister, a minister who is responsible for preaching and leading out the service, prayers, visiting in a parish area. So he would have—and things are changing now because to a degree, in certain parts of the Anglican world anyway, numbers are going down, so parishes will be getting bigger—then he would have a responsibility of a village and its surrounding countryside till the next village is hit.

That's helpful. So basically, your brother is going to the local vicar and this is what he's telling them. And then my brother wanted us to be God parents. We need to be a God parent. Yeah. And of course, I think I was 15 at the time. So we went through this confirmation class and I came out of it not as a Christian, but I came out of it believing in one God. Because of course, the upbringing we'd had, there were Gods all over the place, you know, in our house.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So we had—I mean, there were works of art, let's put it that way. But I think it's a bit more than that because they would have meant something to somebody else in a different way. Anyway, as a result, I was going to be confirmed. And then the vicar remembered, "But you two haven't yet even been baptized." So just before we were off to see the bishop to get confirmed, he said, "Come over here." And he baptized both my mother and myself. And then we went off to see the bishop to get confirmed. And the bishop then lays hands upon you, which represents the giving of the Holy Spirit.

And you then become a confirmed Anglican. And usually at the time of 14 or 15 or 12 or 13, that's the time as a young person, you leave the Anglican Church. There's a joke about this in Anglican circles.

Very often in church buildings have problems with bats and they're flying around and dropping on the furniture and what have you. And one vicar's complaining, he's like, "Oh, you've got a real problem with our bats." And the other one says to him, "Well, there's a way around that, you know." "Oh, really?" You know, but you've got to be careful. You can't do things that are to bats because they're protected. "Oh," he said, "we don't, we don't, we don't worry about that. We baptize and confirm them and then we never see them again." So that is almost the—oh, that's terrible. Yeah, of Anglicanism at that time, and it probably still accounts to very much. Wow. So this was not—it doesn't seem like there was much expectation of continual involvement at this point for you.

But having said that, it was an evangelical Anglican Church. So there was a degree of expectation that we would continue. And I did. I continued to go to church. And I would put on—I would put on a suit and a tie and go to church. In fact, I went more regularly than my mother. Something was drawing me there. Could you pinpoint it at the time or just—I think it was probably, you know, there was a certain sense of belonging. But what I didn't want to do was to talk to anyone after the service. So once the service was over, I shot out of there straight away before anyone could know because I felt someone would go and, "Oh, nice young person.

He's still coming to church. Let's go and speak to him." And so I would disappear very quickly. Anyway, back to the girl I met at sixth form college. She was different because the young bloods went to chatter up because she was pretty. And I observed this. And interestingly enough, they kind of walked off. And I said, "Well, what is this girl?" She's a Christian. She's not going to be—she's not going to be doing the things that we'd like to do with her and stuff.

So I was like, "That's a bit different." And I'm like, "I go to church, you know." So I got to know her, but then pointed out what my worldview was. And she could very clearly see, though I attended church and the Anglican Church, she was a Baptist minister's daughter.

And though I attended, I wasn't a Christian because I believed that the world centered around me and, you know, others were just cardboard cutouts that were convenient to help me pass my time. You know, that was how self-centered and rotten I was. And anyway, to cut a long story short, we had a friendship, but she said, "But I'm not your girlfriend."

And we did get pretty friendly. Anyway, she invited me along to the tail end of a beach mission service. I have to explain about beach missions. This is going into the more of the evangelical circle of non-conformity generally in Britain.

And they would, at seaside resorts, they would have young people looking after the bored children on the beach whose parents were just sunbathing and maybe just letting the children were a bit unoccupied. And so this youth group would, they'd wear blue shorts or blue skirts, blue shorts, and yellow or red T-shirts. So they would be identified as a team of young people. And they would teach the young people Bible verses. They would have like a shop where if people had learned to say so many Bible verses or achieved certain merits in the games they did on the beach, they would occupy the children and they would give a nice place where they could get out of the sun, sunshade area where they would meet and teach them simple songs and that sort of thing.

But then they would invite the children and the parents back to a gospel meeting in a local church that hosted them. And so I was there at this service where a chap called, I think his name was Nigel Lee, was preaching.

And he gave a very clear gospel message. And the gist of it to me anyway was that you can't just walk on the fence. You have to be for God or against him. He doesn't take people who run with the hair and hunt with the hounds. You need to be in his church or out of it. There is no halfway point. And I realized that I was attending church, but I had no knowledge of Christ.

Well, maybe I knew about him, but he certainly wasn't dwelling in me. And that there was an offer of salvation if we would come to Christ and repent from the sins we knew about. So a gospel call was made and I was invited to go up if I felt that my life needed to change. And so that was back in 1988. I think it was, I think it was, I think it was, I think it was on a Sunday in August of 1988. I gave my life to Christ.

Initially, there's a lot of work to be done on me since, a huge amount. But that was a first step anyway. And I, at that point, felt the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And so God had to do a lot more work with me. There was such peace in that encounter with God.

Interesting point though, you know how self-conscious you are when you're about 18. I felt that I was going up with a great company of others. But when I turned around, there was nobody else. So God brought me up there with the thought that there were many behind me and there wasn't one person. So I'm sure Nigel, as he preached there, was a bit disappointed that his eloquent sermon and his forceful preaching had only produced one person. But thank you, Nigel, if you're listening out there. Thank you. I'm very grateful for your preaching. Anyway, about a year before I went up from sixth form college, which is up to the age of 18, 19, to university.

So I was accepted at university in Aberystwyth, initially to study geology. But in geology, it was something that I'd started when I wasn't a Christian and I wanted to do it and I'm fascinated with it. And it helped later on in life with an interest in creation. But I felt that the reason I was doing geology was just about me. And those who were with me were very much that way focused on just themselves.

And I felt I wanted to do something better for the world, for God's kingdom, for poor people. And I thought, well, what can I do? I need to transfer out of this geology to do something else. So I actually was able to switch to doing agriculture with business studies.

And so I spent four years at university in Aberystwyth. And I'm glad I did because I met my wife there who's sitting back there out of range.

And we met at St. Michael's Church, Aberystwyth. And we had the ministry at that time was the Reverend Stuart Bell, a good, clear preacher of the gospel. And I grew in my faith there, I have to say. It was an evangelical, small, see, charismatic congregation that was showing some growth. And there was a lot of outreach to students. So it was very much a student. It was the hip student church to be in at Aberystwyth University. Very much, definitely. The majority of the students went there. And I involved myself to a degree with the Christian Union that was always having spats between Pentecostals and Calvinists, generally speaking. There was often a flack there. But it was nonetheless quite formative.

And meeting Jeanette, well, actually I met her in the street and it was my flatmate. It was new Jeanette before I knew her. And I was looking over his shoulder thinking, she's a rather nice girl. But my flat did thought she was too. And he made no attempt to introduce me. So it was a couple of years before we met later. And at the time, our now brother-in-law was the parish worker. And he wanted to get us together, didn't he?

So he invited himself to tea and I thought, oh, the parish worker's coming. And I was living with a bunch of non-Christians in an outlying town called Borth on the coast as well. And suddenly income two parish workers, actually, and a girl with them. And it's the same girl that I saw in the street.

Pretty soon, we were seeing more of each other. And Jeanette will laugh, but I had to talk to her mother, didn't I? I got to befriend her mother securely. And then everything fell together. I was such a nice boy. Anyway, but when we got together and we were talking before we got engaged about the importance of if we were to marry, we wanted to be serving God in some form or other.

And what denomination were you at this point? Still Anglican. Still attending an Anglican church. And we have at the time another brother and a future brother-in-law and Jeanette's sister were serving with an organization called Emanuel International. And they are an interdenominational evangelical missionary agency based in Canada.

And we were very impressed with Wendy and Glenn, my brother and sister-in-law, and their work amongst the poor people of Malawi. And Jeanette actually went out to visit them. And I, at an earlier point, had visited my sister in Malawi.

And so we had another thing in common. And I actually gave you a radio to give to a forest ranger I'd been for a guy they'd talk with or walk with. And so there was a little things there to do things, to make connections. And I actually, at that time, I was visiting my father in Malaysia. And I sent Jeanette a postcard or two.

And my writing is absolutely awful. It's really bad. So when Jeanette saw my writing on this postcard that I'd sent her, she thought, oh, this guy must have terrible disabilities or something like that. He's got such awful writing and punctuation and spelling and everything.

Anyway, there you go. But she overlooked that. And coming to the end of 1992, I proposed to her and she accepted. And then I had to ask her father. And very fortunately, he said, yes, that's really good news. And we got married the following year. Then, following on from this desire to serve God, we were impressed with what Wendy and Glenn had had to say about Emanuel International. But then, I was also interested in Tear Fund, which is a British charity that works overseas. But they said, well, for the first year of marriage, we won't even consider you because you need to have that year of living together in your local culture and getting through the teething problems of marriage.

And then we asked Emanuel International and went to some interviews there. And we said, do we have to wait? And they'd say, normally we would. Normally we would. But on this occasion, they bent the rules somewhat for us. So we went off to train in Canada and Jamaica as missionaries. And the way Emanuel International worked, or maybe still works, was that you would do your training first and then be offered to churches around the world who liked the look of you and thought you'd be able to fit into the programs they were offering. So this was a little different than training to be a minister, say, or something. This is different than that. This is training as a missionary worker.

This is missionary worker. But underneath the local church. So we weren't going off. It happened to be an Anglican church that we went to. And I'll say more about that. But before that, I have to say, because it was during training that we had our first encounter with Mennonites.

Because we come from an Anglican background, the mission agency wanted to shake us up a bit. So they liked to put you with a church that you had no experience of. And so we were put in this local church of Mennonites in a place called Stoville, which is east of Toronto, east of Markham in Canada, in Ontario. And we were with the first Mennonite church. And I only discovered recently the first was actually the name of the denomination of Mennonites in Canada. Oh, interesting. I thought it was the first Mennonite church. And in the UK, we have kind of Cub Scouts. And if you're the first troop of Cub Scouts to be in a certain village or a town, you get first.

And the other one would have to put second and third and fourth if there were more of them being set up. But so it wasn't that. I discovered that recently. That was the name of the denomination of Mennonites. And they would have not been as conservative as you are. But they still retained, and I hope they still do, and God bless you if you're listening from your dear folks in Stoville, first Mennonite church, you had a big impact on our lives.

And one of the things we remember very clearly about that was the hospitality that we were shown. After the end of the service, we were always invited to someone's house for a meal. They took us under their wing.

And I'll have to say a very amusing cross-cultural misunderstanding, a couple of them which took place, which were quite telling at the time. First of all, was a simple misunderstanding. Sunday school, for instance, came about in the service. And for us, Sunday school was something that those who are perhaps under 12 or under 13 would go to. But the adults would be in the service and the children would be out there somewhere. But here, adults did Sunday school. So that was something very new to us. So off we went into our little groups and we went down into the basement to a men's group. And there, one of the fellows leading it said, ah, lovely to see you.

I've brought some cider along to drink during Sunday school. I thought, my goodness me. It's only 10 o'clock, half past in the morning, and we're drinking alcohol.

What has this mission agency brought us to? And oh, that must have been a shock. So then here we were. Okay, well, when in Rome, do as Rome does. So we were, oh, it's only apple juice. It's okay. That's all right. And then that was one thing.

And the other one was a bit more serious. This was towards the end of our stay at the church. But we were asked to do something that was a cultural practice from our own countries. And it happened to be the beginning of November. And there's a tradition in Britain called Guy Fawkes Night. And it reenacts the time in history when James I was the king. And he had started encouraging the Bible to be more widespread and for the country to be generally a much more Protestant nation.

And there were subjects of his who were Catholic who did not like this. And among them was a man named Guy Fawkes who plotted with 21 others to rent cellars underneath the houses of Parliament and then pretend it was for firewood storage, but actually be putting gunpowder in there. And then on Guy Fawkes Night, November the 5th, to ignite it and blow the House of Lords/Commons to smithereens with the king.

Then there could be an invasion because everyone would be in disorder because all the royalty and the nobles had been wiped out with a great explosion underneath the House of Commons/Lords. And one of the plotters warned a Catholic nobleman to, you're one of us, don't be there tonight. But he was a loyal subject to the king, warned the king. And then the plotters were arrested and for their treason, horrible things happened to them.

And so on Bonfire Night, an effigy of Guy Fawkes is made in some places. And a big bonfire is put up. And the effigy is burned. And so we had plenty of things to burn around the mission buildings in Stoville.

And we thought, well, let's do a British cultural demonstration to our Canadian hosts and friends and what have you. And so we had a sausage sizzle and we had a big bonfire constructed. And the accountant of the mission had this very involved little daughter. And she was really into it as well. So we got some old clothes and stuffed them with old wet leaves that were lying around because it was autumn or fall. And we made this effigy of Guy Fawkes with a big floppy hat and a big, big mustache and beard. And we had him on the top of the bonfire. And we invited the local churches that hosted us because a lot of us were from Britain as well.

So we all took part in it. And we had this sausage sizzle and big bonfire. And one of the guys from our church, a young man, was a part-time fireman. And he was absolutely disgusted and said, this is sickening. He was a Mennonite.

This is sickening. I'm a part-time fireman. And I have seen humans burn in cars, in houses when I haven't been able to rescue them. And here we are burning an image, an image of a human being who's made in the image of God.

And I never thought the same about Fireworks Night or Guy Fawkes Night from there onwards. Something of his conviction made him brave enough to speak out and challenge what had just happened. But the two women spoke out as well in the church service, giving thanks for the way the church had helped them. One of them's husband had broken his leg badly and couldn't get the harvest in. And basically, the church people who could pitched in and brought in the harvest and helped out. Another one, his husband actually tragically died. The same thing happened.

The congregation pitched in and the harvest was taken in. The day was saved. And immediate relief was given to a problem that faced both women. And to us, from our church backgrounds, that spoke volumes. For you, coming from Mennonite backgrounds, that's just what you do. But it wasn't something that happened from our backgrounds. Yes, if there had been a bereavement, you would have had a very compassionate visit from the vicar.

And maybe there would be some help from a neighbor farmer. But the church would not have acted as a body to help do what's done in the general sense of our experience.

That would have been neighbors who may have been going, but it just wouldn't have happened together. Not like a church, an actual church unified in this way. Never would have. Is that just culturally or traditionally? That's just the way it is? I think it's something deeper than that.

I think it's something whereby faith and practice go hand in hand in the Anabaptist setting. And they don't always do that. Not to say they never do that in Protestant/Anglican circles, but it's not so common. It's very rare. Well, it definitely made an impression on you. It did. Right. Powerful. So you continue on from this point and you're still Anglican.

I'm still Anglican. Basically, I've been Anglican this whole point from when you became a Christian on. Do you return to the UK and continue life there then in the Anglican church or what happens? Well, after that, we had some time building up our funds.

So we went back to the UK for a while. And at the time, we discovered we were going to have a baby. It was Richard, our first son. So he was born in England, in Southwest England. And so our funding did come in. And it did mean that we went to Uganda. And in Uganda, we were teaching as well as being tutors for agriculture because we had to grow our own food at the college. Ah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Which meant I had to, anyway, that was a long story. So it was suddenly we're thrown into missionary life there. Added to that, in northern Uganda, there was a war zone. So we were generally kept within the confines of Gulu.

But it was a very dark time. You would often be hearing gunfire in the distance. And sometimes the conflict came very close. And we would have bullets raining down on our roof sometimes. And sometimes we had, on one occasion, we had a tank fire outside our house, which was an experience. That was an experience. Yeah. That brought a lot of dust down from the roof of the house. Yes, it does.

Yeah. There's a lot of percussive force behind a weapon like that. So, wow. Okay. So, yeah, you're definitely getting a variety of experience here. But it's interesting. I didn't know Anglicans were in Uganda. So you were connected with a church that was already established there. Already established. A group there. Yeah. The first missionaries had come in in 1911 to northern Uganda. So that's just over 100 years ago. So not that long then. Yeah. And they had tried to bamboozle the Africans with technology. Interesting. By taking, filming them, doing dancing and throwing spears and what have you. And that actually backfired badly because once they were shown the films of themselves, they thought their spirit had been trapped upon the screen.

And so they thought the missionaries were sorcerers and kept well away from them. So it was actually a long time that the trust was built up again. Yeah. Now that wasn't a good plan. So how long were you in Uganda then? We were there for two years. Okay. So you went back to. We went back to the UK and then did our second year. So we were in Uganda from '95 to '97. So after Uganda, you end up back in the UK. And at some point, you become an Anglican vicar yourself. So now that's a change. So what happened there? What was the process? And yeah, why did you become a vicar? Why did I become a vicar?

Yeah. Well, we had some shining examples of Anglican ministers in northern Uganda. They were working in, they were working for a pittance. Sometimes they would not be paid. They'd often have to grow their own food to survive. And they were godly men and still are, as far as I'm aware. That must have left quite an impression because you're describing an environment that maybe we read about it in books or something, but those of us living in the West just never experienced chaos, like what you're describing. And for someone to live in that environment. It was the example of the men who we knew there that made me think, perhaps I should do that when I go back to England and take up the calling of becoming a clergyman in the Church of England, which is what I know of.

I know nothing else, really. Yeah. Yeah. I'm realizing that's a thread through your story. The Church of England or the Anglican Church. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a large, large impact on your life and these ministers you knew. So becoming a vicar, what is that process like? You go back to school. You go. First of all, you have to see the warden of the warden of ordinance.

And they are called a perpendary. So I visited a perpendary in the Church of England to begin with in my diocese. And I told him what I was planning and why I would like to be ordained and that sort of thing. And I had the experience in Africa. And basically, I didn't realize it's a bit of a game to test your calling. He kind of pooh-poohed everything I'd done.

And I thought, why am I wasting my time? I should ask the church in Wales. This is another Anglican sister church, the Church of England. Ah, okay. I didn't know that. And so I said, you're just wasting my time.

Why should I be trying to prove to you that I want to, when you're mocking me? And so I just left off. And then he's running after me and saying, no, come back, come back. I said, no. I'm going to go to the Church of Wales now. I'm not going to bother with this anymore. So I didn't realize that it was a test your vocation and make you grovel sort of thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So now my brother-in-law, who was already ordained as a deacon in the Anglican church, told me, you know, that's what they do. And so he said, next time you go in for an interview, don't be so quick to walk out.

So you stuck with it then. So then I went to visit, then I went to visit the similar setup because I'd been going to college in Aberystwyth, which I'm going to attending an Anglican church there. And I needed then to work through the diocese of St. Davids, which is in South, it was in West Wales.

And so I visited the warden of ordinance there. And I met the bishop who questioned me. And I went to a panel aboard. And I remember my own doubts, being honest with them. I said, well, I am dyslexic.

I'm not really great with those things. And there was some retired major or something on the board. He said, don't worry about that. You've got a degree. You'll be fine. So that was a part of the story. So then you're then sent to theological college where your calling is tested still for three years if you're under the age of 30. And I was under the age of 30. So I had to do a degree again. So I went to the. So you got another degree? I got another degree in practical theology.

Is that, would that be a four-year degree? It was a three-year degree. It was basically in an Anglican college being released into the university to do the theological side. And some of it would be in-house training and then going out to preach in different parishes.

You'd have an experience of a wide range of churches in the Anglican setup. And that was in the city of Cardiff. So that's where I was based. And so for three years, I was there. And in the Anglican church, you've got four groups within it that bicker and fight amongst each other often enough. You have the Anglo-Catholics who are very like Roman Catholics.

They would perhaps have images and statues in their churches. They would swing in since. Some Roman Catholics would say, that was like we used to be before Vatican II. Wow. So quite medieval in their way of doing things. But amongst them, I've met men of great faith. So I don't want to pooh-pooh them too much.

Some of them are just in it for the theatricals, which is very sad. So you have that group. Then you have the liberals, as you do usually in any denomination. They're often actually aiming to change culture, the culture that's around them, as much as they want to change those who are being ministered to by them.

And you have them in the Mennonites as well in their setup. Then you have the charismatics. Can I say more? Yeah. Oh, okay. I've just never thought of Anglican charismatic combination. I don't know why I would. I guess that makes sense now that you say it, but whoa. Okay. That's interesting. They're there. And then you have the evangelicals. And within the evangelicals and the charismatics, there's often hybrids between the two. And likewise, between the charismatics and the Anglo-Catholics, there's hybrids between them too. And maybe with the charismatics and the liberals, there are some hybrids. But generally, the evangelicals and theologically, the evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics will probably have more in common than the charismatics and the liberals.

So it's a bit of a muddle. It's a bit of a muddle, but you're born into that. And our church was conservative Anglo-Catholic changing to liberal Catholic.

Oh, so you're in an interesting transition. I come from an evangelical background and observing all this going on in the college, the bickering and the fighting and the meanness that was going on between the ordinands and the ordinands and the staff. And it was pretty ugly stuff, but part of spiritual formation, I'm told.

Wow. Yeah. Because that's an interesting, and it's interesting to me because what you're describing, like so many different church denominations go through that process where you have this old traditional, old conservative way of doing it. And then it's changing and being updated or going more liberal in certain ways. And that causes all kinds of, yeah, like you said, bickering. Yeah, it certainly does. It's quite an emotionally charged atmosphere. So once you complete your three years there and you said you were preaching some in different parishes, things like that, so you're getting some experience.

At that point then, are you now officially a vicar or do you have to do something else? It doesn't happen so simply. There's some more hoops to get through. Then you are then assigned to a placement, a teaching, a parish where you are ordained deacon. And so as a deacon, you can preach and you help with communion, but you cannot administer communion to the congregation. You have to wait a year. And then after a year, you're priested. And then you can give communion. You said priested. I'm not familiar with that term. What is that? That would mean that you undergo a ceremony and you become, and you're given a charge by the bishop. And your hands are laid upon you and you make a vow of obedience to the 39 articles of the Anglican faith.

You then are allowed to conduct a communion service after a year, after being a year of a deacon and observing it happen. But hands off, you're not able to do it yet. And then now you continue being a curate in your position. So you've now been ordained. You can take communion. You can go to old people's homes and give people communion. You can visit the sick and give them communion.

You have the power. Some would say you're a magic man now. No, I'm being a bit fascistic, but that's you're suddenly empowered. Yeah. Interesting. Now, would you be called a priest at this time? Is that the wrong terminology? No, it's the right. That's right. But generally, if you're from an Anglican evangelical background, you generally prefer to use the term minister. Minister. Okay. Priest often is, and you might be called reverend. Whereas if you're from the Anglo-Catholic tradition in the Anglican church, you like to be known as father. Ah. So you could have chosen a number of different titles too. If I'd wanted to, I could have been reverend. Reverend. Father. Yeah. Which one did you choose?

I was reverend. Okay. Yeah. So this is a process, but this is really interesting because I'm not familiar with this. Of course, being an American, not much interaction with the Church of England. So you go through this process and you're now a priest or a reverend or a father or a vicar or whichever term I guess we want to pull in here. So what's that like now? That becomes your life. Well, then you're suddenly there. And I was, I have to say, I was probably rather naive.

I realized I was now managing decline. Oh, that's got a field not fun. And it wasn't great, but I was doing my best to preach the gospel in that situation. And the inertia was tremendous. And I began to rattle cages by speaking of the need to be born again in my sermons and sometimes in the parish magazine. And that was something that ignited an interest because someone who read an article I'd written in the parish magazine was a Baptist minister from a nearby town. And he'd somehow read what I'd said. And he'd understood the reaction that I'd got, which was pretty bad.

I think my training vicar was a bit irritated with that. There was someone lodging with the hairdresser up the road in the terraced houses we lived in in Pembroke in South Wales by the name of Brendan. Brendan, if you're out there, God bless you.

I have to say you used a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but you got your point across. And your point was, Brendan, that as a born-again man, I was in the wrong place.

Some would argue against that. Some would say you were in the right place, Hugh, because you're in it to win it. That was what my evangelical Anglican brethren would say. Hugh, you're in the church to win it.

They wouldn't be saying the same thing now with what's happened to the church. But anyway, this man, Brendan, basically metaphorically took me by the scruff of the neck. And he told me in no uncertain terms that I was absolutely wasting my time ministering in a church that was simply a daughter of the whore of Babylon. That was his reaction. That was his reaction. Now, that's Plymouth brethren speak.

Okay. But he had a reason for that because he had actually become a Christian from a Catholic background. And he was originally Irish, interestingly enough. And his mother had been so annoyed by him becoming a Christian that she had ordered his brothers to beat him black and blue. And there was no love lost. So he was a man who was wounded and bleeding, I believe, from that traumatic experience of him becoming born again and being rejected by his family. So the Plymouth brethren was all to him. But in the conversation we had, he mentioned the suffering of the Anabaptists in Europe under the Catholic Church.

Well, now that's interesting. And why did he bring that up? Because if that was his background and the background of his upbringing of being Catholic, and he had suffered and coming out of Catholic and going into the Plymouth brethren. I understand now. Yeah. Ooh, yeah. Okay. So he could empathize with suffering for what it had been, the cost of his faith moving out of that.

But with the mention of Anabaptists in Europe, a light bulb came on in my mind. And I began to remember our time in Canada, which was about eight or nine years before. I thought, they were Mennonites. They're Anabaptists.

That got me thinking. Do they exist in England? Do they exist in Wales? Are they around? Are Anabaptists there? The early days of the internet, type it in, Anabaptists. And what pops up? There's the Anabaptist Network in London, Woodgreen Mennonite Church, and the Bruderhof pop up. I didn't have a number for the Bruderhof, so I contacted the Woodgreen Mennonites and said, could I have a number for the Bruderhof? Because you might have to have as you're both Anabaptists. And they somewhat reluctantly passed it on. Anyways, they did, thank you. And so in the great scheme of things, but I have to say, at the time, the neighboring Baptist minister had given me this book to read.

And I don't know if you've come across this one. I've heard of it, but I'm not how do you pronounce that name? The Broadbent. Yeah. The Pilgrim Church by E.H. Broadbent. And this would have been produced by the, I think the man was Plymouth brethren. He's passed away now. But in the 1930s and 20s, he did a lot of traveling throughout Europe and Asia, making contact with surviving churches from historical links and in the States as well, Mennonites and Amish. So he spoke about the continuation of the Pilgrim Church from the Acts of the Apostles through history. So that book opened my eyes to the existence of a non-sacramental form of Christianity that existed from the time of the Apostles.