Popular Harrogate priest on why it isn't like the Vicar of Dibley and celebrating a major anniversary at town's biggest church

Harrogate crime incident: Man arrested for attempted murder of two children in Beckwithshaw

By Fr Gary Waddington, Team Rector, St Wilfrid’s, Harrogate

This week, I celebrate 25 years of being a priest: a ‘silver jubilee’ of sorts.

I was explaining to a friend that to mark the occasion there’d be a mass here at St Wilfrid’s, followed by a party. He was curious: did the Church give a ‘long service’ award.

The short answer is ‘no’ - unless its missing in the post!

“What’s changed over those years?” he asked.

Well first, what don’t I do? I don’t ride a bike, eat cucumber sandwiches, or have three Christmas lunches to avoid offending anyone by turning down an invite.

I don’t solve murders in my spare time. Priests aren’t like the depictions of Grantchester or Dibley.

What a ‘priest’ is and what a ‘vicar’ does is also different. Priests celebrate mass, pray, baptise, conduct funerals and weddings, bless and absolve penitents.

That’s our unchanging ‘core business’. It is who we ‘are’ by virtue of ordination.

Vicars (or Rectors) are the priests, like me, who run and lead parishes alongside a wonderful diverse group of lay volunteers, and - if we’re

fortunate - other staff.

That’s a task often about planning and leadership, preaching, pastoral care, teaching, spinning plates, administration, finance and fundraising and a whole load of other things too.

A massive grade 1 listed building involves an awful lot of finance and admin and lots of meetings...

Certainly, what’s changed over 25 years is an increase in admin.

Some rightly so: safeguarding, for example, is thankfully taken far more seriously now than sadly it once was.

When I started there was no email – and no expectation that you’d drop everything to answer an email asking you to reply to an email sent an hour before...

Social media didn’t exist. Not everyone had a phone. My first ‘mobile’ made and, occasionally, received phone calls.

More acutely, the sense of faith and the understanding of what Christianity is or more often, isn’t, is far less a ‘given’ than 25 years ago.

I vividly remember a young woman expressing surprise when I pointed out who Jesus was, on the cross that hung round her neck.

“Oh,” she said. “I’ve always wondered who the funny little man was.”

That’s far more common now: the challenge is helping others meet and understand who the ‘funny little man’ is, what he means, why we believe that’s important and why we then follow him.

Priesthood is fundamentally a vocation: a way of life, different to how many people imagine. I guess that’s why I still find it a surprise when people often say, “but Fr Gary, you’re so normal!”

Priests are human too: with all the ups and downs that come with that. What we do isn’t about us.

Priesthood is first and foremost about God, a God who loves us and whose Son died and rose again for us.

Twenty-five years on, I wouldn’t change that, for anything.

Fr Gary Waddington

Team Rector,

St Wilfrid’s, Harrogate

Harrogate Lib Dems to unveil new parliamentary candidate by 'the end of summer'