In God she trusts

CHRISTMAS will be rather different for Vanessa Foreman this year. For the first time in her 27 years, she'll be apart from her family and working hard - but she wouldn't have it any other way.

That's because Vanessa will be experiencing her first Christmas at the front of the church - addressing the congregation rather than a part of it - as the new deacon in the parish of North Stoneham and Bassett.

Her time at university, teaching at a primary school, and training at theological college far behind her, Vanessa has found her true vocation in life, and is loving every minute of it.

"I really enjoy parish life because there's so much variety. On any day of the week I can be planning a service, going into the pre-schools, helping at midweek communion, doing house communions for people who are ill, visiting people in hospital, for baptisms, weddings and funerals, writing sermons and prayers, or having a meeting to plan things," said Vanessa.

"Of course, I am preaching on Christmas Day - it's one of those occupational hazards! I don't think it will seem strange though, because I'll just be in work mode, but I think my family are going to find it more difficult."

Vanessa, looking uncannily like a very young - and much slimmer, I hasten to add - version of the Vicar of Dibley in the hit TV comedy, explained how her family had no part to play in her rather unusual career change from teacher to vicar.

"My family are not church-goers at all. My parents live in quite a small village and I started going with family friends when I was about eight or nine, because the grandfather in the family was a reader at the church.

"Then I kind of drifted away when I was 14 - like you do when you're 14," said Vanessa.

But then a very tragic event drew her back to church two years later. Her brother, who was 24, died of leukaemia and, like so many people do when someone they love is cruelly taken from them, she turned to the church to find solace and some form of answer.

"The priest in the village at the time and the other clergy at the church were great. They really looked after me and let me ask all the questions that you need to ask when something like that happens - without giving me pat answers - and I think it made me look very deeply at life in general, because I think bereavement does that to people," said Vanessa.

After spending so much time with the priest in the Essex village where she grew up, and with her faith strengthened and confirmed, Vanessa began to think about working in the Church herself one day.

But teaching was the career she had always imagined herself doing, so she began a BA in history and teacher education at Canterbury University. She worked for two years afterwards with reception-age children at a primary school near the family home in Chelmsford, Essex.

"Being a vicar was something I had always thought vaguely about doing, but I chose teaching because I enjoyed working with children, and it was a good course at Canterbury.

"While at Canterbury I was quite involved with the chapel at college and was chapel warden for a year. I really enjoyed it, and that's what made me think about working for the church. It was also about the same time when the vote went through for ordination of women in the Anglican Church," explained Vanessa.

She added: "It seemed the right thing for me to be doing. But I wanted to teach for a couple of years, partly because I wanted to find out what teaching was like, and partly to have a job and do all the normal stuff, while testing things out to see if being a vicar was really the right move."

So Vanessa went back home to talk to her village priest and others whom she knew in the church, and they all thought it was a good idea.

With her mind made up, and still working as a primary school teacher, she set out on the long road to ordination, involving endless visits to senior figures within the church, writing lots of essays, and, finally, a selection conference which would decide whether she would make it as a deacon.

At the end of the daunting three-day conference - when she was interviewed four times and underwent all sorts of different methods of assessment - Vanessa faced an agonising wait to find out how she'd done, but it was the best news she could have hoped for.

"The diocesan bishop rang me about ten days after I got back from the conference to say I'd been recommended for training. I was so nervous waiting for him to ring, but once I'd heard I was just so excited. Having been thinking about it for so long, it was really quite exhilarating," said Vanessa.

So in 1997 she gave up teaching and went to theological college in Cambridge to begin three years of training towards her ordination.

While there, she spent a term shadowing a vicar in an inner city parish in Manchester, and two terms in South Africa working with a vicar in the rundown area of Mitchells Plain near Cape Town, and later with the chaplain at the University of Cape Town.

Vanessa first came to Southampton in October last year after hearing of a vacancy in the parish of North Stoneham and Bassett. She visited the parish priest, the Reverend John Owen, and things just clicked.

"This was a really good parish for me because we've got three churches which are all different in style and feel, and there's a lot going on. I met John Owen and I knew I could work with him and learn a lot from him," said Vanessa.

She insists that her parents and her elder brother - despite being non-religious - have always been really supportive, if not a little puzzled at her choice of career.

"I think at the beginning they were a bit bemused by it, but also pleased because I've worked hard to get here. It's been quite a long process and they know it's something I've wanted for a long time. They have always wanted me to be happy," said Vanessa.

"I've got a big mixture of friends - people who go to church and people who don't - and they have all supported me and been pleased for me, too.

"It's been quite good because it's enabled me to talk about my faith, Christianity and the church in a way that people perhaps don't normally."

Many of those friends and family members were at Winchester Cathedral on July 2 to see Vanessa ordained as a deacon - and many will undoubtedly return there next June to see her officially become a priest.

"My ordination was the most wonderful day, and now I'm really looking forward to becoming a priest.

"I've done my first baptism and I've been assisting at funerals, but until I become a priest I can't do the Eucharist prayer, so I can't take communion services from beginning to end, and I can't bless people so I can't do weddings," said Vanessa.

She may appear quiet and unassuming - very much unlike Dawn French in The Vicar of Dibley - and she admits she still gets a little nervous before a sermon, but Vanessa looks upon it as an enjoyable challenge, and is thriving on her new-found career.

"I can't imagine being anything other than a parish priest," she said. "Everyone here has been really welcoming and friendly. I think I'm quite fortunate in that they're used to a woman's ministry, because there was a woman here before, so I haven't really come across any prejudice in the parish.

"For people who are quite traditional it can be quite a shock to the system to have a woman vicar when they are used to seeing a guy, but once they have got used to it people quite appreciate it really."