Revd Sheridan James

Journey of faith

When the Church of England published prayers for commuters desperate to beat the Monday blues, it was Catford-based deacon Sheridan James who promoted the concept live on Sky News and BBC Radio 4 - and not just because her Commuters' Prayer featured in the online offering.

'I've got a real country vibe in my heart,' she says, chatting beside St John the Baptist Church as the morning traffic races by, 'and so sometimes all this noise and clatter does get to me.'

Born in Manchester, the commuters' friend was raised in Cardiff, then spent a decade in Aberystwyth, firstly studying for a degree in French and English and a masters in Contemporary Anglo-Welsh Literature; a keen musician she also played washboard in a skiffle band, as well as playing more seriously in elan, an acoustic folk-rock band.

'When I was 27,' she recounts, 'we all moved to London to try and go professional with that.'

Three years later an exercise within the band to list what each of them would like written on his or her gravestone set Sheridan thinking.

'I just suddenly thought I don't want the word 'musician' on my gravestone,' she remembers. 'I want the word 'priest'.'

Then came the realisation that in actual fact this feeling of vocation had been building in the background for six or so years.

'I started to confront that quietly in myself, ' she adds, 'and then started to discuss it with other people who were in the ministry.'

By this stage Sheridan was working as Marketing Manager for Church House Publishing - where she felt particularly inspired by the authors behind the Emmaus Christian discipleship course, who encouraged her to explore her calling in a systematic way and enter the selection process.

'I've just finished three years on the SEITE course,' she goes on to say referring to her preferred training method, comprising one weekend a month and one evening a week of lectures, and leading to her curacy at St John the Baptist - which, she says, is a great example of a church bringing people through God's love: 'Especially in south London, where there's quite a lot of violent crime, I think it's really important for the Church to be places of genuine diversity.'

To generate a sense of peace by the busy road, and to bid farewell, Sheridan offers another of the commuter prayers: 'Lord would you help me - and would the same spirit that hovered over the face of the waters that breathed human life into being be with me in this work.'

You can hear this interview now by clicking here