Sparks Fly: David Perry Reflects on His Formation at Sarum

The Revd David Perry looks back at how Sarum College prepared him for his current ministry

Starting life at Sarum College was an exciting, emotional experience which, if I am honest, I had never really expected to have. However, having heard God’s call and subsequently had the Bishop’s ‘okay’ what could be more normal than to experience the unexpected?  Now, almost eight years after walking through the doors of Number 19 The Close for the first time it is useful to ask what remains, for if the answer is little or nothing then perhaps my time could have been better spent. Was Sarum the right place for me after all? Will it be right for you?

Three phrases in particular have stayed with me from Sarum:

One, from a lecturer on day one is this: “We will take you on a journey to stretch your faith to its limits and beyond.”

The second is from another student who wisely perceived: “If you come to Sarum not knowing what you believe, you will be lost. But if you come here knowing what you believe, then Sarum will fix it in you and will strengthen your belief immeasurably.”

The third one is my own and goes like this: “Some questions you’ll find answers for and that’s great. The rest you’ll never understand, so just accept it and move on.”  A Sarum ministry course is not the place for those who cannot or will not question and challenge, but for those who really want to dig deeper into the mysteries of God — it is home from home. To quote a course text, it is where faith meets understanding.

Sarum helped me discover both why I believe what I believe and that it is okay to do so: my idea of God is as valid as anyone’s provided it stands interrogation.  In the years since graduation, through the oddest of curacies (Covid!) and several changes of secular and ministerial jobs, I have found all sorts of challenges that demanded so much of me that without Sarum’s depth I would have faltered.

I now work as a chaplain in a major hospital where I meet people in great distress, in endless pain or great confusion and torment and often at the edge of their faith. The question so often on people’s lips is ‘why?’, to which there is no easy, comfortable answer and because they cannot accept or understand how the God they have served and loved for so long could now drop this into their laps, it is to me that they turn.

It is no easy task relating a Jesus who cured the sick and raised the dead to a man who is dying from painful cancer or a woman who watches her child die. It is impossible to say “death has lost its sting” when you bury still-born twins. It is challenging to say “God loves you” to a woman who has just been told she cannot have a life-saving operation so now must simply wait for the end.  And yet these things must be said and explained, because they are true. In chaplaincy, the reality of life as a mortal human comes face to face with the glory of God, so sparks fly.

Still, at the end of the day, whether I drive home in tears of anguish and loss or with grins of joy, I find that my own faith is sound and I can go back tomorrow and do it all again because two things carry me through – my unshakeable faith in a loving God and the years I spent at Sarum College reinforcing that faith.  Sarum’s lecturers took me to the edge of my faith and brought me back again. They built on the trust God gave me and they taught me that it is quite alright for some questions to remain unanswered.  I could ask for no more.

David Perry trained for ordained ministry at Sarum College from 2015 to 2018. Both the main image and the one at right with The Revd Paul Burden, Dean of Ministry, were taken on Academic Awards Presentation Day in March 2019.

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