From advice on tax returns to guiding souls into everlasting life, David Charters meets a woman following two callings

‘IS JESUS on it?” asks the young woman standing in the timber pulpit of the brick church, as she smiles a little nervously for the photographer coiled before her on a parquet floor polished to a parade-ground sheen.

“Yes,” replies the man, clicking his camera quickly, obviously pleased with the pose.

This is a good answer. For, if the small figure of Jesus on the Cross was “off it”, much of her purpose in life would be lost.

Amanda Fairclough is training to be an Anglican priest while running her own accountancy practice.

At first, you wonder if there is a risk of Mammon and devotion to God brushing shoulders uneasily in this Church of the Holy Spirit in Dovecot, Liverpool.

But it seems not. As she settles to enjoy a sensibly-sized mug of dark coffee in her office, happily situated by the 1930s church, Amanda says: “My own particular calling as an accountant is to be of service to my clients, to provide a good living for my (two) employees and to contribute to the community in which I live.

“It is not just about cutting back people’s tax bills. Yes, that is part of what I do and one of the reasons that people come to me. They want to improve the bottom line of their businesses or to discuss how their work/life balance is out of kilter. Some know that I am a Christian. Some know that I am training to be a priest, so perhaps they will tell me a little more than they otherwise would. But it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the advice that I would give them.”

This is an ideal arrangement because she can slip from a smart business suit to the cassock and surplice, while also hopping through the mental hoops between tax-free allowances and delivering a sermon, or even conducting a funeral.

The two callings bring Amanda, 40, unusually close to both ends of Jesus’s sentiment, quoted in Matthew 22/21: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s”.

Amanda is the daughter of Carole, 63, a proud “Prescotian”, and David Fairclough, 65, a retired commercial manager, who specialised in chemicals and metallurgy.

She was not a particularly holy child at Prescot School, in the little town between Liverpool and St Helens, attending assemblies and occasional church services.

But, when studying for a BSc in physics at Manchester University, she began to realise that the world was God’s creation.

“I was quite curious about God, but I didn’t really become a Christian until university,” she says. “I used to go to church with the Girl Guides and my mum had been a life-long member of St Mary’s, Prescot. I sometimes wrote the prayers for assembly at school. When I went to university, I found that physicists and physics students are quite credulous people. The Christian Union group in the department was one of the biggest in the whole university. They explained things to me that I hadn’t previously understood.

“Gradually, I began to ask God into my life. I don’t think you can be an experimental scientist unless you have some concept of faith – not necessarily in a higher being, but having faith in a belief system, where you have a hypothesis, then working with it and testing it.

“At least at some level, faith is a matter of choice. You make a conscious choice to believe. That is based on all the evidence that you have gathered as a scientist and you come up with a working hypothesis and God fits that hypothesis.”

Since university, Amanda has qualified as a chartered accountant, and held a number of jobs, including managing a legal practice in Manchester. She started her own accountancy business four years ago, and moved into the office by the church two years ago.

By then, she had started studying for the Anglican priesthood at St John’s College, Nottingham, but has now transferred this training with the South North-West Training Partnership of the Diocese of Liverpool – attending classes once a week at Liverpool Cathedral. “Vicar school,” as she calls it.

The plan is for her to be ordained as a deacon in the summer of 2010 and as a fully-fledged priest the following year. Amanda’s present title is “licensed lay-worker” and ordinand (someone training for the ministry).

“My licence means that I am able to prepare families for baptism and help prepare children for Confirmation and carry out funerals,” she says. But she can’t yet do Holy Communion, marry people, baptise them or absolve their sins.

After ordination, Amanda intends continuing her accountancy practice just as now. “I will be a non-stipendiary minister. You give your time in the evenings, at the weekend, and sometimes during the working-day if your are able.”

This may seem a break with tradition. But the early Christian preachers nearly all had “day-time” jobs. St Paul, for example, was a tent-maker.

“It is not so much plugging a gap, as recognising that people who follow the non-stipendiary route had a genuine calling to the priesthood, to lead people to God. They may also have a calling to do something else as well,” Amanda says.

Does she think of God as male? “I tend to think of God the Father as male, and it is impossible to think of Jesus as anything but male, but I try to balance it out by referring to the Holy Spirit as she,” Amanda says.

With Amanda is the Rev Jonathan Stott, vicar of Holy Spirit, for nearly four years. “She is a great help to me,” he says. “She is involved with funeral ministry and pastoral care when the time allows. It is great for me to have a colleague to bounce things off.”

And that photograph? We should rest assured. Jesus is always in Amanda’s picture.

TO READ more features by David Charters, visit www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/authors/davidcharters

davidcharters