{"id":1045,"date":"2009-07-14T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-14T20:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1045"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:48:50","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:48:50","slug":"on-not-wanting-to-be-a-bishop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1045","title":{"rendered":"On not wanting to be a Bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often, someone who knows me reasonably well &#8211; as opposed to extremely well &#8211; will either ask me if I want to be, or suggest that I will end up being, a bishop. The trouble comes when they don&#8217;t take my denials at face value and think I&#8217;m coming on all <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Heseltine\">Heseltine<\/a>y, but I really don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s an attractive job, and I don&#8217;t feel any particular vocational call in that direction (for which I am most grateful, thanks boss). I am an ambitious person, but my ambitions lie in different directions, partly all the material associated with <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/2007\/07\/synopsis-of-book-let-us-be-human.html\">my book<\/a>, partly in (and this is my real deep dark secret) a desire to one day run a theological college and train priests for the ministry. The sort of priests I most admire tend to be like <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Keble\">John Keble<\/a> who turned down a Bishopric (and whose feast we celebrate today &#8211; which partly provoked this post) and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_Hope\">David Hope<\/a> who gave up being an Archbishop in order to return to parish ministry.<\/p>\n<p>However&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Having said all that, I do occasionally see things that make me question my certainty on the topic &#8211; and <a href=\"http:\/\/nickbaines.wordpress.com\/2009\/07\/10\/planks-and-splinters\/\">this post from Nick Baines<\/a> is one such. Perhaps being a Bishop is not the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Muzzle_(device)\">muzzle<\/a> that I perceive it to be!!<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often, someone who knows me reasonably well &#8211; as opposed to extremely well &#8211; will either ask me if I want to be, or suggest that I will end up being, a bishop. The trouble comes when they &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1045\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,25,12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ang-communion","category-autobiography","category-church","category-ministry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-gR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6415,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions\/6415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}