\u2019Called to Both And\u2019\u00a0 The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury<\/p>\n
27 April 2026 <\/p>\n Deuteronomy 9: 1\u201321 <\/p>\n \u2018He gave gifts to his people\u2019<\/em> Saint Paul reminds his audience in Ephesus but, sadly, he does not always give the gifts that today\u2019s clergy would find most useful. \u00a0The gift of operating in at least two modes at once: offering pastoral care to the parish school; serving on its governing body; and parenting twins in Year 5 and their sibling in Reception. \u00a0The gift of doing at least two jobs at once: healthcare chaplain and rural dean and chair of the Deliverance Network and adviser on rural ministry and member of the Bishop\u2019s Council. \u00a0The gift of being in at least two places at once: behind the altar and by the bedside; in the care home and in the playgroup; at the computer and at the Food Bank.<\/p>\n I\u2019m guessing, Neil, that any combination of those three gifts would have served you well in Holland Park. \u00a0The bad news is that they are no more available to those who work in cathedrals than they are to our sisters and brothers in parochial and chaplaincy ministries. \u00a0If anything, their lack is even more evident, for tonight in liturgy and in legalese you have very explicitly been given two places to be in, two jobs to do, and two modes to operate in.<\/p>\n Bad luck. \u00a0Donning your new cassock (in its eye-catching Sarum Green) does not convey super-powers. \u00a0But if you allow it to, it will keep you alert to the double-edged nature of your priestly vocation, a double edge that our Church and its ministers are called to inhabit, and which has never been of greater importance for the world. \u00a0You are called to the local; you are called also to the global. \u00a0You are called to the particular; you are called also to the universal.<\/p>\n For you have been placed in the Treasurer\u2019s stall, and you have been placed in the prebendal stall of Calne (don\u2019t try to occupy them both at once: the medieval woodwork is very unforgiving). \u00a0You have been placed in two stalls because alongside the copes and the processions and the dignity of being a \u2018principal person\u2019 of Salisbury Cathedral you are also just one of fifty-plus members of its College of Canons, a body of colleagues lay and ordained from across the Diocese and beyond, called to support one another in doing God\u2019s work here and (if not exclusively in Calne) beyond. \u00a0Your Thesaurarii<\/em> stall (inaugurated more than 900 years ago) recalls you to the immediate task before you; your prebendal stall to our shared vocation. \u00a0Yours has brought you here and will ultimately send you from here. \u00a0Although not, we trust, for some little while.<\/p>\n You have been appointed Residentiary Canon and Treasurer. \u00a0The Treasurer, as the Statutes stipulate \u2018\u2026shall endeavour to promote the dignity and beauty of the Cathedral<\/em>\u2019, having oversight of the fabric and care of our sacred vessels, vestments, furniture and ornaments. \u00a0You will work with exceptional people like Jackie Molnar and Gary Price and will with them and others lead our ambitions to develop our whole estate and secure its zero-carbon future. \u00a0But you will also keep your days of residence, responding to the urgent pastoral need that presents itself within these walls every week, supporting our volunteers and, where necessary, representing the Cathedral to the community. \u00a0Again, your office as Treasurer requires you to care for stone, glass, timber and those who work them; your appointment as a Residentiary requires you to care for this Close, this city, this Diocese and all its people.<\/p>\n And you have (in the unpoetic language of the Cathedrals Measure 2021) become an Executive Member of the Chapter. \u00a0So around the Chapter table you will argue robustly for the Works Department, you will represent us to the Fabric Advisory Committee, and you will report to us on the business plan of Cathedral Enterprises. \u00a0But you will also, with all your Chapter colleagues, take ownership of our whole life, live out our shared values, and accept responsibility for our common decisions. \u00a0Your position as an Executive compels you to speak for your team; your position as a Trustee to have regard to the whole.<\/p>\n The scholarly polymath Iain McGilchrist has devoted his working life to the argument that in our generation our genius for analysis, appetite for data, and mania for process has displaced our facility for perspective, our capacity for reflection, and our instinct for wonder. \u00a0Consumed by the need to manage the immediate we are at risk of neglecting the cultivation of its broader hinterland. \u00a0A Church which \u2013 a priest who \u2013 ignores the immediate has no legitimacy in speaking of what lies beyond it. \u00a0Yet a Church which \u2013 a priest who \u2013 ignores what lies beyond it is fated to perpetual anxiety. \u00a0Local, global: each must inform the other, for the sake of the Church and for the sake of the world. \u00a0Work with us, Neil, and pray with us, that we might learn this afresh. \u00a0Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2019Called to Both And\u2019\u00a0 The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury 27 April 2026 Evensong with Installation of The Revd Neil Traynor as Canon Treasurer Deuteronomy 9: 1\u201321 Ephesians 4: 1\u201316 \u2018He gave gifts to his people\u2019 Saint Paul reminds his audience in Ephesus but, sadly, he does not always give the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":112320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermon"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nEvensong with Installation of The Revd Neil Traynor as Canon Treasurer<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nEphesians 4: 1\u201316<\/p>\n