06.09.2022
‘An incredible journey of learning, changing and growing’ – Scott Evans reflects on path to ordination
Scott Evans will be ordained to the Diaconate on Sunday September 18 in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, at 3.30pm by Archbishop Michael Jackson. He will serve as Deacon Intern in Kilternan Parish in Dublin. Here he talks of his background and his call to ordination.
My name is Scott and I’ll be serving as a part–time deacon this year in Kilternan with the Revd Rob Clements and the excellent team there. My journey to ordination has been a long and winding one — particularly since I didn’t grow up in the Church of Ireland and being ordained was the last thing I would ever have envisioned for myself when I finished college almost 20 years ago.
My upbringing was quite unusual because my family moved to Bangladesh when I was seven years old. As a result, many of my formative years in church were spent at an international church that was more bound by our common language rather than our churchmanship. When we moved home, I was a member of the Church of the Nazarene and my faith really began to become my own through the youth group there and at camps in Ovoca Manor with Scripture Union.
It was around this time 21 years ago that I was offered a place on the CAO to study marketing at what was then the Dublin Institute of Technology. God — it seems — had other plans. One evening, as I was praying about my future and calling as I drove home from a wedding, I felt God urging me towards youth ministry — something I had never really considered as a career. The more I turned the possibility over in my mind, the more excited I became and, by the time I had pulled into my parents’ driveway, I had found a leaflet for the Irish Bible Institute in my glove compartment and was ready to announce my decision to my parents. The following week, I began my undergraduate degree in Applied Theology.
Three years of study, youth ministry and Chinese food delivery driving later, I graduated and started my working life with Scripture Union where I had the opportunity to lead the kind of camps and retreats that had helped my faith come alive.
In 2008, I was restless in my own faith tradition and ready to see where God would lead me next. It was around that time that I received a call asking if I would be interested in applying for the job of Diocesan Youth Officer in Cashel and Ossory. I’m incredibly grateful for that phone call because it helped me find my spiritual home in the Church of Ireland and began the road that led me to four years of ministry in Kilkenny, seven years of chaplaincy in UCD and now — many years and two selection conferences later — to ordination. It’s been an incredible journey of learning, changing and growing and I’m excited and mildly terrified about what else God has in store.
With me on this journey are my incredible wife Christina who is the chaplain in East Glendalough School and our unstoppable almost two year old Daniel. We’re looking forward as a family to what God has next for us and to being part of the church family in Kilternan!