On 1st July Vivian Sockett will be ordained deacon at Holy Trinity, Brussels.  

Vivian, who is to serve as Assistant Curate at Holy Trinity Church in Maisons-Laffitte, shares her story. 

“In 1989, I graduated with a BA in Economics and Political Science from a top US college … and this was my prayer: ‘Dear God, I’ve made a terrible mistake, please do something useful with my life.’ I didn’t want to work on Wall Street, I didn’t want to work in Washington – I wanted to serve God in a church and make a difference in people’s lives. I applied to Bible colleges and seminaries until someone said, ‘Why are you bothering with that – you can’t be a pastor, you’re a woman. It’s a waste of money, get a job.’ 

“I acknowledged the inevitable, put the applications in a box, and prayed that God would use my life somewhere, somehow, for Him. So, for 15 years my husband and I supported missionaries in the northeast of France and worked in small evangelical French churches.  

“At the age of 40, I began working for an international Christian charity serving the persecuted church. For 16 years, I’ve championed the voice of the most vulnerable, pioneered research into how gender, age and displacement can determine how Christians are persecuted for their faith, written socio-theological material to strengthen Christian communities, held the hands of the most persecuted around the globe and seen an incredible growth in understanding of what is really at stake when the church is under attack.  

“But what does that have to do with ordination? For me, it’s all about coming alongside the church seeking to be God’s light in a world which needs His reconciliation and healing. In 2014, our family moved house again and began attending St Mark’s, Versailles, where our daughter had found her place and, unexpectedly, so had we. The Church of England turned out to be my spiritual home, encompassing the breadth of international and churchmanship experiences I had had and valued. 

“Five years ago, a number of people around me started asking, ‘Why don’t you train to be a priest? I could really see you in that role.’ I was stunned but began enquiries which eventually led to studying in preparation for ordination.  

“When I was in my 2nd year of ordination training and visiting the US, my father brought a couple of full packing boxes up from the basement to my room and asked me to deal with them. I began dutifully to go through my old folders and notebooks until out of one thick yellowed envelope tumbled all of my seminary applications from 30 years earlier … and the tears began to flow. This has always been my call. 

“At the Eastern Region Ministry Course (ERMC), we have been studying many of the shared spiritual traditions through the Benedictine, Franciscan and Ignatian traditions, and France has a deep spirituality which persists under the overt rejection of religious institutions. I look forward to seeing what doors open when ministering from this new role and pray to be able to love, listen and converse even more effectively with a people deeply shaped by Enlightenment thinking yet who so value spirituality.  

“I am immensely grateful for the past three years studying theology at the ERMC and for the appointment to curacy at Maison Lafitte, to the west of Paris.  It is such an answer to prayer to have been placed with the Revd Charlotte Sullivan, Area Dean, and I am excited by my return to an unfulfilled call to both France and the expat anglophone community in Europe.”  

If you are interested in exploring your calling as a Christian, or if you'd just like to find out more about the ordination process, please visit the diocese's webpage on ministry.