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This is a text-only version of an article first published on Tuesday, 8 December 2020. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
VITAL pastoral work both outside and inside the Church is being carried out by Permanent Deacons.
The Revd Corinne Smith, who has been a Deacon for 28 years, tells Jo Duckles how she found her way into this specific type of ministry. Corinne first felt called as a deaconess in the early 1980s.
Growing up in Surrey, she was an only child whose first experience of church was going along with a Catholic friend, Marie, who was confirmed aged seven.
When Corinne asked her parents why she wasn't doing the same, she was told it was because she was Church of England. "That was news to me," says Corinne, who is now Vice President of the Diaconal Association of the Church of England (DACE).
Corinne at Diocesan Church House.
Jo Duckles.
"So I spoke to another friend's brother, who was nine and of course, much wiser than me.
He said 'I'm CofE too' and we went along together to St Michael and All Angels, West Croydon.
I remember singing It is a thing most beautiful.
A woman in front of me was crying and the words of the hymn struck a chord with me.
I was thinking that if this was true it was the most amazing thing. "Asking her friend's brother, he said: "Of course it's true. " That was Corinne's conversion moment.
Her mother had brought her up to say her prayers even though the family were not churchgoers, and Corinne says she grew up to become a 'horribly religious' teenager, "going along to Evensong with the old ladies".
When her friends were confirmed, her parents stopped her because they felt it had all got too hysterical. Drifting away from the Church, Corinne first returned when she was looking for a wedding venue when she was engaged to her now husband, electrical engineer Paul.
But she really got involved when she was expecting her first child.
Then a flute teacher, Corinne realised she might be called to pastoral work when people began gravitating towards her asking for help with their problems.
"I was a young mum who became more and more involved in the mums' group and when the vicar went on holiday, he asked me to look after the adult confirmation class.
More and more people were coming to me and a friend suggested going to the Westminster Pastoral Foundation in Kennington. " There Corinne completed a counselling course, which was quickly followed by a random encounter with a West Indian woman who knocked on the door of her London home, with a new-born baby.
It was February, and when Corinne let her in, the woman broke down in tears.
"She'd had a planned caesarean but couldn't get in at home and had walked from the other side of Streatham, in flip flops in the snow," Corinne says. She officially become involved in work in parishes after training to be a Pastoral Auxiliary Minister in the Southwark Diocese, and started to test her vocation, visiting the Dean of Women's Ministry, Sister Joan Irene.
"I was waiting to see the bishop when Paul was moved to Scotland and I began a degree in Ecclesiastical History and Practical Theology up there," says Corinne. When she began her PhD, Paul was moved back to England, this time to Oxford, and she transferred to Oriel College to continue researching church history. Around this time the vicar who had run her confirmation classes came to dinner and asked Corinne if she'd considered ordination.
"I heard myself say 'yes as a Deacon' and I don't remember anything else about the evening. " Reflecting on the conversation later, Corinne was surprised when Paul said he had known for years that she would get ordained eventually. After a successful selection process, Corinne trained for ordination at Ripon College, Cuddesdon and served her curacy at St Helen's Church in Abingdon.
She became involved with Bishop Otter College and spent time in Oslo, looking at the distinctiveness and complementarity of deacons and priests. In Norway, deacons tend to have been social workers, teachers or counsellors first and serve the church using those skills.
"It was interesting for me to see a different model and think about how that might work here," says Corinne, who has been a hospital chaplain and a college chaplain.
She did spells at Abingdon Hospital, The Churchill Hospital in Oxford, Pembroke College and a hospital in Portsmouth, before coming back to Abingdon.
She then worked for Sue Ryder, a charity with hospices and community care, for three years. "I wanted to give something back to this diocese because people were so encouraging.
I had support from Bishops Richard Harries and John Bone," says Corinne.
"Bishop Colin has also been very encouraging to me in my ministry since I returned to the Diocese. "On most Sundays Corinne can now be found at St Michael and All Angels in Abingdon at the 9. 30am mass.
She has 'permission to officiate' in the parish of Abingdon on Thames.
"The vicar has responsibility for two churches so where there needs to be help I think it is good to be there.
St Michael's understands the role of a deacon.
Out of that comes a general pastoral ministry visiting people to administer home communion, funerals, weddings and baptisms. "Corinne thoroughly enjoys her regular visits to the St Luke's Hospital, a care home for the elderly, where she administers extended Holy Communion.
The rest of her working week is taken up with her role as the Thames Valley representative of the Diaconal Association of the Church of England (DACE), www. dace. org, raising the profile of Permanent/Distinctive Deacons. "There are a number of dioceses now that are actively promoting the Distinctive Diaconate.
The Church is talking about Fresh Expressions and meeting people where they are.
It seems that there is a marvellous opportunity for deacons to work within that in a creative way.
It's a sense of standing on the edge of the Church, bringing the Church into the world and the world into the Church. "To explain how this could work, Corinne uses the theme of the 2014 chaplains' conference, On the Edge or At the Centre, at which Rowan Williams was the keynote speaker.
www. oxford. anglican. org/edge-centre/ "If you are a deacon you are on the edge of the Church but also at the centre in terms of the prophetic element.
I think deacons have something to say to the church," she says.
Corinne's hobbies include exercising through fit ball and aerobics, walking a dog, socialising and reading.
She also travels regularly with Paul, who goes all over the world with his job.
She has three grown up children and three grandchildren.