Student Testimonial - Brendan Johnson 2011

In July 2009, I found myself in a Church in Notting Hill Gate, watching with some suspicion as my wife attended an open day for something called 'The Interfaith Foundation', she'd not long dropped out of something very weird, and fairly damaging, so I was there to make sure she didn't sign up to another dodgy thing (I'm well qualified in spotting dodgy and weird).

However, as they were handing around the prospectus, I found myself asking for one, and I felt a distinct sense that this was something I was going to do, not in a 'clouds opening and Charlton Heston talking' moment, but just a sense of certainty that I don't really get very often.

So it came to pass that on Halloween weekend, I found myself in the Forest of Dean with 30 strangers - what I thought was going to be lots of theological discussion quickly turned into a very experiential thing, with lots of reading, visits and assignments in between the residential weekends, every 6 weeks or so.

It's been an incredible journey into my own self. I've found, felt, and done things I couldn't even have imagined. It hasn't been fun, or easy, most of the time, but there have been transcendent moments of beauty, and amazing depths of feelings between me and the other members of my group, (who I now regard as my family) as well as profoundly affecting my relationship with my partner, who was also doing the training (albeit in another centre).

........... and so it was, that I found myself on Saturday 16 July, sitting 10 feet from where it started, getting ordained.

I'm now the Reverend Brendan Johnson - I wonder what's going to happen next!