God calls people to a wide range of ministries, lay and ordained, in our church and in our everyday lives. Youth and children’s ministers, evangelists, missionaries, Readers, pioneers, and community workers are generally lay ministers, though some may be ordained.
Some roles are the same across the whole church, like Readers, deacons and priests. There also some lay roles which vary by diocese, so have a look at your diocesan website to find out what’s local to you.
You can contact your diocese here.
Whole life discipleship
There are many fruitful vocations outside of church structures
Being a vicar
Serving God by leading a church
Vicars are disciples of Jesus Christ, who love God and neighbour, and are filled with an infectious and life transforming faith.
Vicars lead a church through prayer, teaching, and worship, enabling God’s people to be better disciples of Christ.
Vicars preside at Holy Communion, baptisms, weddings, and funerals, walking alongside people in their joy and in their grief.
Vicars are generous to those who are different, striving to be mature, self-aware, and willing to learn.
Vicars are committed to the mission of the Church of England, working with others to build up the Church through recognising where God is at work in the world and in the lives of others.
How do I become a vicar?
Do you believe God is calling you to serve as a vicar? To be become a vicar, sometimes referred to within the Church as an incumbent, you must first be ordained.
Training for ordination is unlike any normal recruitment process. It is best seen as a time of discernment, and is therefore more like a journey or pilgrimage than an examination.
Your starting point is to meet with your own vicar, chaplain, or equivalent, to talk with them about your sense of calling. You should also arrange to meet with the vocations team in your diocese.
It is important you continually pray about your vocation throughout the discernment process.
Max Drinkwater: To hear the way the children have received the message is wonderful
Sundays are busy, we look after two churches, but we make sure to give time to the pastoral side of worship as well. It’s not just services to lead but people to see.
Throughout the week there’s a lot going on. We have weekday services attracting different congregations to come and worship. It’s lovely to see different people and how our different styles of service speak to them. There’s plenty of visiting to do. We have many retirement homes and care homes, so we go in to take services or bring people to church.
Schools are wonderful for engaging with families, not just the children but the parents too. We take ‘Open the Book’ into primary schools, and I’ll sometimes lead assemblies. I find school work particularly rewarding. At the end of the day you’ll overhear them say what a wonderful story they’d heard. They’ll retell the story to their family or carers. To hear the way the children have received the message and are passing it on is wonderful.
Weddings, baptisms and funerals are a big part of our time. These are the occasions where people come to you and say, “This is when we need you in our lives”. It’s such an important part of our ministry.
My own journey began at university. I spoke to my chaplain, who was very helpful supporting me to discern what God was calling me to. I always say though the first seed was planted as a teenager when I went to Walsingham, a youth pilgrimage they still run. I went with my church youth group. There was a talk on vocations and ministry, which was the first time I ever thought ministry might apply to me. It was the first time anyone had even spoken to me about ministry or vocation or what it might be to take an active role in church leadership.
At the time I thought “that’s something I might come back to”. It wasn’t an immediate, “I must follow this up”. Nonetheless, from then on it was always there, nagging away at the back of my mind.
Max Drinkwater
Readers and Lay Ministers
Serving alongside clergy
Readers (also called Licensed Lay Ministers) have a leadership role serving alongside clergy to support people in faith and enable mission. They are lay people who are trained and licensed by their bishop. Reader / LLM ministry looks different in different places depending on the local context. Many Readers / LLMs teach, preach, lead worship and are involved in mission. Some also take funerals after additional training. Many Readers carry out their church ministry at the same time as having another job.
How do I become a Reader or Lay Minister?
Before becoming a Reader / Licensed Lay Minister you will take part in a process of discernment. If recommended, you will be training through your diocese and be given a licence as evidence of your training and ongoing accountability. Training courses vary, so visit your diocese’s website to find out more.
Your starting point is to meet with your own vicar, chaplain, or equivalent, to talk with them about your sense of calling. You should also arrange to meet with the vocations team in your diocese.
It is important you continually pray about your vocation throughout the discernment process.
You may also want to visiting Transforming Ministry, the website of the Central Readers' Council to find out more.
Other authorised lay ministries
There are a variety of other authorised or commissioned lay ministries in different dioceses. Many of these have a particular area of focus, such as worship or pastoral care. Training courses and other requirements vary, so visit your diocese’s website to find out more.
Richard Medcalf: It came from a call to preach
I have been part of a church which was very good at releasing people’s gifts. A great variety of people would be invited to preach. It had a massive impact. So many of those who have a go discover a call to some kind of ministry. I noticed that just giving chances can really help people discover their gifts.
I had a go and when I moved to a new place I realised I wanted to continue to preach, but would probably need some training and to formalise the arrangement. That was when I considered becoming a Reader. It came from a call to preach, something I found I was good at, and others encouraged me. I also received wise advice for discerning the root of that call and working out what my call was to.
When I became licensed I focused initially on getting experience of preaching, whilst also looking at mission work.
I’m building relationships with people. That means my whole self: being an entrepreneur, being a dad, being a Reader. I’m bringing all these elements of my life together.
I’ve been talking to church leaders around the city about how I can develop this leadership work with them and their congregations. I’m now trying to unify work and ministry, looking to serve the church in a similar way to how I serve my customers.
I think it’s also part of my role to be in the church and in the workplace, and to share a lay perspective with ordained ministers, but also to think about what it means to exercise pastoral responsibility on behalf of the church.
Richard Medcalf
Distinctive deacons
Building bridges between church and society
A deacon’s ministry is marked by mission through service. Deacons are outward moving and community minded.
Deacons prefer to be out and about, building relationships, identifying and meting needs, and creating stepping-stones between God and the world.
Deacons are radical in their outlook and ready to try new ways of serving God in the community.
Deacons have a particular concern for poverty and justice, seeking to be the voice of the voiceless, advocating for those on the margins, and loving those in need.
As ambassadors, deacons take the gospel into the community, bringing its needs back to the church for intercession and practical action.
Deacons read the Gospel, assist the priest, encourage intercession, and send out the congregation, going with them as we all play our part in God’s mission.
How do I become a distinctive deacon?
Do you believe God is calling you to serve as distinctive deacon? To be become a deacon you must first be ordained.
Training for ordination is unlike any normal recruitment process. It is best seen as a time of discernment, and is therefore more like a journey or pilgrimage than an examination.
Your starting point is to meet with your own vicar, chaplain, or equivalent, to talk with them about your sense of calling. You should also arrange to meet with the vocations team in your diocese.
It is important you continually pray about your vocation throughout the discernment process.
Jess Foster: I see myself standing at the door, not the altar
From quite a young age people have said to me ‘you should be a leader or vicar’. I somehow knew I was never going to be a priest. It didn’t fit me, so I didn’t think much about it. I worked in PR, becoming a Bishop’s Adviser for communications.
Whilst working for the Bishop I became very interested in the diaconate, as a concept. I felt we should have a hundred deacons in the diocese! I left when I realised I should come out of PR, stop giving my voice to other people and develop my own voice. I trained to be a teacher, and there I realised I had a call to become a deacon myself rather than talk about it to everyone else. About a year later I was training!
I now minister at St Peter’s, Hall Green. I have three focuses: working with people from different faith backgrounds, working in the parish, and working with the bishop as an adviser.
On Wednesday mornings I’m in the parish, we have a communion and a place of welcome. It’s an initiative that started in Birmingham offering unconditional hospitality. There’s now about 200 across the country serving those who are isolated.
I will often spend my afternoons writing a sermon or meeting someone who is exploring their own vocation. I spend a lot of time with people going through difficulties. I am part of a women’s leadership programme, and a faith group trying to respond to the needs of refugees locally. I visit the hospital, sometimes I take funerals.
My calling became clear to me when I was asked where I saw myself standing in church. I said I don’t see myself standing at the altar but at the door. I see my calling as enabling people to come into church, but also enabling people to go out into the community to build relationships that are mutually transformative.
We’re now starting a bread service, where we come together to bake bread and reflect on our faith. It began after a Muslim women asked our vicar how to bake bread. It brings people together across faiths and generations. I love seeing what happens when you put down your own agenda and pay attention to God. For me I’ve loved every minute of it and feel I’m in the right place. There are lots of different ways to serve God. I’d advise someone considering vocation not to try to do something that isn’t the right fit. Jesus came that we might be free, and if you’re not free, if you’re not excited and liberated then maybe you’re not in the right place.
Jess Foster
Pioneering
Planting fresh expressions of church
Pioneering is about firsts. Pioneers must be able to see a new future, and have the skills and gifts needed to make the future accessible now.
Pioneers connect with those outside the Church, working alongside them to create fresh expressions of Church in those places.
Pioneers are leaders of innovation, with a gift for seeing what God is doing and responding creatively to it.
How do I become a pioneer minister?
Do you believe God is calling you to serve as a pioneer minister? Most pioneers are lay people, some are ordained. Your starting point is to meet with your own vicar, chaplain, or equivalent, to talk with them about your sense of calling. You should also arrange to meet with the vocations team in your diocese. Next talk to the Pioneer / Fresh Expressions Officer in your diocese about selection and training.
It is important you continually pray about your vocation throughout the discernment process.
Nic Findlay: Loving someone fully is to stand with them in their joy and in their mess
I was baptised aged sixteen, shortly after becoming Christian. Not having a church background, I found it difficult to understand the different traditions.
For a long time, God has been speaking to me about the need to engage with people outside traditional church settings. Not just to tell them the good news about Jesus, but also to walk alongside them in the whole of their life. For the practical support to be more than an add on, not “oh, I’ll be nice to you and help you sort out your debt if you let me tell you about Jesus”, but for that to be part of it. Part of loving someone fully is to stand with them in their joy and in their mess, not to treat them as a project.
Some friends of ours were leading our marriage prep course. We went to meet with them and they started talking about similar feelings of wanting to do church differently. Church where people were, with a heart for the poor and the broken.
I’d trained as a teacher following university, and after three years I was getting frustrated that I couldn’t access the whole of these kids’ lives, I didn’t know their families.
My friend had similar experiences to me. He’d run a very cool youth event for teenagers, which met in a local café. Some teens had rocked up from one of the poorest areas in Cambridge, and they just couldn’t access it like the others. They didn’t have money to buy a coffee themselves, so they couldn’t really sit down and join in.
Others didn’t know how to sit down and pay attention long enough for the format, so my friend found himself effectively acting as a bouncer on the door, preventing these young people from hearing about Jesus, because they didn’t fit in with the culture in which Jesus was discussed.
I’d had these experiences at the school, so for the four of us, as we started to meet together, there was a sense of wondering what it would look like to take church to where people are at, rather than expecting them to fit into a model of church we have created.
Together we set out to pioneer a new way of making disciples within community, which became known as Barnwell Oaks. Located in one of the poorest areas in Cambridge, it was an entirely lay led community. None of us were ordained.
In the early days we didn’t really know what we were doing. We were doing things like playing football on a Sunday afternoon, because the teenagers were playing football then, as a way to get to know them.
There was a lot of praying and walking around and asking God what he was up to, and then gradually structures and rhythms began to form. Rhythms of meeting local families for Sunday lunch, which then became a kind of church space, and bigger gatherings of families together, which looked more like a Sunday congregation, and then in amongst that, mentoring and hanging out with individual young people and youth groups. With my teacher background I did quite a lot of work in schools and in mentoring.
We did a lot of trying and experimenting. It didn’t always work out well, but we were always moving forward. It was really hard, but I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything else. We have since moved on to pioneer new ways of making disciples in Liverpool. It’s tough going back to square one but we are confident for what the future holds!
Nic Findlay
The religious life
Committing to a life of prayer and service in community
Members of a religious community, such as monks or nuns, live according to the gospel of Christ with prayer as a regular part of daily life. Some give the opportunity of life-long commitment after several years of training and discernment.
In most communities, promises are taken or vows made in community before God and the church. Such vows include poverty, chastity, and obedience. Usually, but not always, vows are made for life.
Most communities are women only or men only. Some wear distinctive clothes (a ‘habit’). Some are engaged in the world, others are more oriented to prayer. Members of communities can be lay or ordained.
In general, religious communities can be described as either active, contemplative, or new:
Active communities have active ministries in society: in education, health and social care, evangelism and parish work. What makes their ministry different is the way it is anchored in a life lived together. The support of sisters and brothers acts as an encouragement and a witness. Caring for the poor and reaching out to the vulnerable are central to the witness of religious communities.
Contemplative communities revolve around set times of prayer and worship. Much time is given over to seeking God in private prayer and silence. The community’s home, which may be called a monastery, priory or convent, is a place of God. Some members will leave the monastery at times to preach and minister, but such outside commitments are secondary to the life of prayer. Some communities confine their work to the home and its grounds, maintaining what is called ‘enclosure’. This helps keep distractions from prayer to a minimum.
New Monasticism traces its history back to the activities of the Confessional Church during the Second World War. In resistance to Nazi oppression, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer advocated a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.
Since then, there has been a revival in the place of Christian groups living out a sense of community, loving service, and rhythm of life. New Monasticism was recently named as a fresh expression of church, for which a number of diocesan-funded initiatives have grown up.
A prominent example is St Anselm, a residential community based in Lambeth Palace, which has given young adults selected from around the world the opportunity to live a life of prayer, community and loving service for up to a year.
This model is now being expanded to Leicester Cathedral and Sheffield Cathedral, with others also considering it.
How do I join a religious community?
Do you believe God is calling you to serve in community? Your starting point is to meet with your own vicar, chaplain, or equivalent, to talk with them about your sense of calling. You should also arrange to meet with the vocations team in your diocese.
The best way forward for anyone interested in this way of living is to visit different communities and experience their way of life as a visitor first.
Many communities provide opportunities for people to live alongside them for longer periods of time. Participants commit to helping with the work of the monastery or community - and there is no obligation to join the community afterwards unless the person wishes to explore further.
It is important you continually pray about your vocation throughout the discernment process.
Find out more about Religious Communities in the Church of England.
Elizabeth Pio: I have time to be still and quiet with God
Prayer is our main work. Solitude and silence are my joys. I have time to be still and quiet with God. I’m blessed to have the opportunity.
We have a guesthouse as well with people staying for retreats and quiet times, so there’s quite a bit going on. I tend to follow a contemplative life, so I don’t go out as much as some of the other Sisters might do. I spend a lot of my time in prayer and in silence, working in silence, and walking for recreation.
I’d say to anyone exploring their call, spend time with God, and spend time in silence every day. Give time to listen and not say anything. Keep your eyes open. Keep your ears open. Open for anything that he might bring to you. Anything he might put in your way. Go and visit places. One of the quickest ways to know is to visit and see if you feel a draw. Go and see for yourself.
Before my thirties I hadn’t had any interest in religion whatsoever, no faith background at all and none in my family. I wondered why people went to church, what did they get out of it? Why would they do that every Sunday?
Then I started having a look at what Christianity was about. I bought a Bible. It was actually a children’s illustrated one, much to the amusement of my family. I didn’t think I could get through the adult one, it would be too much at first.
My conversion was quite dramatic. A St Paul moment really. I took my new Bible home, opened it, and something amazing happened. I heard a voice saying to me, “In this you will find everything you have been searching for”.
I had no idea who or what the voice was, or what it meant. I wasn’t even sure what I was searching for. I did know that it changed my life. I read my new children’s Bible from beginning to end in a week. I didn’t understand all of it, but it was the beginning of my Christian journey.
I was in a career that I absolutely loved, a marketing manager for an international engineering group. Yet something had changed. Within eight months I’d left my job and started studying theology.
I felt called to the Religious Life, but it was only once I had plucked up enough courage to explore that I knew it was the right path to follow. I visited this convent, and heard the voice, “I’m calling you here. This is where I’m calling you”. Nothing else made sense but to live in this house, but at the same time I thought "who would do this kind of thing?" I knew it was what God was asking me to do. So that’s what I did, I just obeyed.
My spiritual director, vocations advisers, and parish priest were all encouraging me towards priesthood. I knew though that wasn’t my calling. I said to my vocations adviser “I’m not sure I’m right here, but I think the Religious Life is saying something”. So he supported me and looked out for opportunities for Religious Life weekends, convent experience weekends and that sort of thing.
At times I thought it was mad to give up everything and live like this. I remember thinking this doesn’t make sense, it’s not even an attractive place, I don’t like anything about it. In chapel I felt so uncomfortable, so stuffy. Nothing drew me to it at all. Everyone was so much older than me, and with so much more biblical knowledge. I worried we had nothing in common. I said to God, “If you want me to come here, you will really have to say, otherwise I’m not coming back”.
When I came out of Evening Prayer, one of the Sisters asked, “So when are you coming back then?” And then I had that feeling again. That I was being called. I’d come with a friend because I was scared, I didn’t want to be obvious, but I said to my friend “I’ve got to go back, I’ve got to go back.” On subsequent visits there was always a really strong draw back, and then eventually I came back for good.
I knew it was the right path for me.
Elizabeth Pio
Youth and children’s ministry
Allowing every child to encounter faith and Christ
What do youth and children’s ministers do?
Young people are not the Church of tomorrow, they are the Church of today. Youth and children’s ministers might work in a parish, in schools, through a deanery, or with a Christian organisation. There is a strong emphasis on Christian formation in peer groups, including preparing young people for confirmation.
A great many Christians consider their youth minister to have been integral to their faith journey.
How do I become a youth or children’s minister?
Do you believe God is calling you to serve as a youth or children’s minister? Each position is different so check out what parishes and organisations are asking for.
Your starting point is to meet with your own vicar, chaplain, or equivalent, to talk with them about your sense of calling. You should also arrange to meet with the vocations team in your diocese. Next talk to an adviser in your dioceses about training.
It is important you continually pray about your vocation throughout the discernment process.
AJ Wade: I’m there to support and encourage young people in their leadership
I first got involved with doing youthwork when I was about seventeen. My church was excellent at raising up young leaders. I’d grown up in the youth group and became a junior leader. That started my journey in youth ministry.
I thought God might be calling me to something else, but I wasn’t sure about it. I also knew he was calling me to work with young people as well. I spoke to my church leader and decided to apply for a two-year youth ministers training scheme with a church in north London.
I was leading groups, mentoring young people, organising teams, trying to get people together to do stuff. I was really thrown in at the deep end. This is what youth ministry is like, do it!
I’m now the youth minister at Christ Church in Bedford. In a typical week we could run between three and five different groups, catering for the different needs of young people. I’m also involved with a local secondary school, with their Christian Union, which the young people there wanted to set up - I’m just there to support them and encourage them in their leadership.
We are beginning to do work in schools for RE lessons and assemblies, and linking to other churches in Bedford. We run a Bedford-wide youth event a couple of times a year.
At the heart of my ministry is young people engaging with God and to support them in that journey. If they’re in a place where they’re not sure about God, I come alongside them and help them to find God for themselves and understand God as their friend and someone who loves them and cares about them.
If you feel called to youth ministry I would encourage you to talk to your church leaders and to your best friend. It’s great when you feel called into ministry, but others can also see gifts in us as well. They may see something you’ve not considered, and encourage you to explore other calls too. There’s always a risk in there. I’d also say to consider different ways you can get involved in ministry in your church, ways to train and get more experience.
Aj Wade
Ministers in secular employment
Taking the gospel into the workplace
Churchwardens & parish officers
Serving in the local church
"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me!"
Isaiah 6:8