On 12th September, Reverend Andrew Hammond, aka Father Andrew became the new Vicar of Wymondham Abbey, as the congregation said goodbye to Father Christopher who had been brought back for an interim period. We sat down with him to see how he’s settling in.
It might be assumed that a senior Bishop decrees which priest goes where in the CofE network but that isn’t the case. So how did he get the job?
“It’s basically an open recruitment process. The job I was doing in Cambridge as Chaplain was a fixed term. I looked in the Church Times for job opportunities and this one came up. Here the Bishop of Norwich took an interest in the recruitment, probably because he is Patron of the Parish. He’s very aware things haven’t always been easy here and was keen to see a very smooth transition. I had to fill in a madly long form, full of qualitative answers as well as basic information. I also had to preach a bit, give a presentation about how I’d like to move things forward, and an hour of questions.”
"What did you do before coming to Wymondham?"
"I turned 40. Most people have a mid-life crisis and buy a leather jacket and a motorbike, whereas I became a priest. It’s what I call my mid-life synthesis.
I was an opera singer to start with and then in my 30s went into music administration. The Bishop of Norwich teased me during my induction sermon as I used to be casting director of Thursford for years, the Christmas show, which I don’t put in my CV. So that’s my past Norfolk connection. The experience is quite handy for what I do now, as there’s plenty of singing and organising.
Most recently I was Chaplain of St John’s College, Cambridge, and before that I was chaplain at King’s College. It’s quite unusual to do two roles at the same university, I’m probably the only person in history to have done both of those jobs. I really loved working with students. When I first went there I had no idea whether I’d be able to, as a single man with no children I had no idea about teenagers. I had good advice from people, one thing you need to know about young people is that they have the most amazing B.S. antennae. So you have just got to be you and authentic."
"What did you say in your pitch about your vision for the future of the Abbey?"
"I tried to put in a health warning because people worry when they see a new vicar coming. The current Archbishop of York wrote a book called ‘hitting the ground kneeling’ because he got fed up going to meetings where people said they wanted a new vicar to hit the ground running. No, you shouldn’t hit the ground running because you need to first watch and see how things are. It’s a bit like taking over a garden; you need to see what’s coming up.
I made my pitch that the essence of being an effective parish priest is doing church and pastoral well. Making everything that happens in the church building itself, speak of the holy and the sacred but also about warmth and hospitality. That enables your pastoral work to spring out from that. It’s all related. What happens in here relates to what we do around the town.
The active thing we’ve done is to acquire a parish nurse. I hadn’t heard of that before, at first it sounded terribly Victorian but of course it’s anything but.
The magic trick that the CofE has is its presence. There’s a building, there’s a vicar. It’s geographically specific. There is the parish of Wymondham, which is a big parish and getting bigger because of all the new developments. But the vicar is there for everybody. The old phrase is that he has ‘the cure of souls’. You’re there for absolutely everybody. It’s important to be able to live that out in a way that is mostly nurturing, encouraging, maybe even slightly challenging. It’s not about notches on the evangelical bedpost.
People are just inundated with messaging from every quarter on how to be better, look better, do better, have more. So the old ‘stand on a box and shout about Jesus’ method isn’t going to cut it as it’s just another message. It’s more about presence and word of mouth. I used to find this with students, people used to come to see me because another student had told them about me.
I do enjoy visible, joyful events. In previous places we’ve had events on Patronal festivals. Mary has several days, September 8th is her birthday and mine. We could do something like a carnival. When churches have processions they can be quite quavering, nervous, in your face ‘come to Jesus’. It can be better to be a bit more mediaeval. A festival which culminates in a service here which appeals to everybody. You have drums, instruments and kids dressed as bees or something. Banners and the whole thing, it’s about FUN."
"What’s it been like becoming a new resident of Wymondham?"
"It’s been great! Because I built in some holiday time where I had a buffer to move here ahead and get to know the area before starting work. I grew up in a market town in Nottinghamshire, which also had a market cross as it happens. I’ve been rediscovering that feel of a market town. Undercover, not wearing my collar of course. I do wear it now as you don’t have to introduce yourself. I’m always whizzing around on my bike and people will shout ‘morning Vicar!’
I remember as a boy growing up in a market town we had this really gently formative parish priest who was called a rector then, from when I was aged 8-18 that really important time, and I learned from him the basics of being a decent parish priest."
"Do you still do TikTok?"
"I’ve done hardly any in the last few months. I’ve been trying to work out if I should repitch it slightly. It was some students a few years ago who came to me and said you should do it! I said ‘I’m not going to lip sync to Taylor Swift songs.’ They said ‘no, you just do you, and you’ll get views.’ It’s amazing; it’s such a vast world with 1.2 billion users. Anything you put out could be looked at by any of those 1.2 billion people, including the Bishop. It could have pastoral consequences as people start asking quite tough questions. I’ve stopped receiving direct messages as I can’t properly deal with pastoral issues over TikTok DMs.
One of the things that has to happen here is finding a way of connecting with teenagers and young families. TikTok might be an amusing aspect of that. People can just look at it and suss you out - ‘what is this person like?’"
"What is pastoral work?"
"I’m not a trained mental health professional. The classic idea of pastoral work for the parish priest is firstly talking to people who come here who clearly want to talk, often there is a mental health issue. From ten years of working with students I’ve got quite honed ideas about what I can and can’t do and how I refer and advocate within local provision. We also do home visits and visits to care homes and schools. All organisations have to be clear about what they can and can’t do, we’re not clinical professionals. In some ways parish priests are filling in the gaps. Occasionally a student would say ‘are you an expert in anything?’ If I call myself anything it’s an ‘inner life specialist’.
There’s this Lutheran pastor in Denver Colorado who does YouTube videos. One of them is called ‘forgiving assholes’. It’s about forgiveness understood as therapeutic. If something bad has been done to you by a person, one of the things that sustains it as a trauma is the power that it still has over you. What this woman says is, "you can break the chains you’re bound by, take bolt cutters to them.” That’s not saying ‘pull yourself together’. It’s you retrieving your agency. You stop being the object of your sentences, and you become the subject. It’s not saying the thing that happened to you didn’t matter; it’s that it mattered so much you’re not going to be held by it. It’s not saying to somebody, ‘you can do it, it’s up to you’, which will immediately pile on extra stress and obligation. It’s just saying this is possible. It may be possible that you find the power to do that. So we describe things that may be helpful but we don't prescribe."
"Any message for the people of Wymondham?"
"Yes, come and see what we do! The Abbey is there for absolutely everybody. It’s a very beautiful place but it isn’t a cut glass vase. You should be able to experience it as a place where you can sense your muscles relaxing, literally or metaphorically. It doesn’t matter what you believe or don’t believe. It’s a place of sanctuary. And a place of encouragement and even challenge. We do church, but we do other stuff too. We have an amazing team of volunteers looking after the building.
My mantra to the people in Wymondham is to think of me as totally non-judgmental, totally unshockable and pretty available."
