IT was a fascination with the transcendent that prompted Stuart McKerracher to walk into All Saints Church, Ryde, during Choral Evensong, back in 2004.

It set in chain a series of events that will result in him being ordained deacon at our cathedral this June. The 41-year-old will then serve as an assistant curate at Portsmouth Cathedral.

Stuart was brought up on the Isle of Wight in a family without faith, but was fascinated by subjects such as astronomy. It was a sense of curiosity that led to him walking into All Saints at the age of 19, and he became immersed in the words of the Book of Common Prayer.

“It was what I had been searching for,” he said. “That sense of the ineffable. I started attending church and found the community there really supportive.”

He went to Oxford University as a choral scholar, sang as a lay clerk at Worcester Cathedral, and then started teaching classical civilisation at an Isle of Wight sixth form, while also studying for a Masters. He took a PGCE and then started teaching RE in North Wales from 2018. It was then that his sense of calling intensified.

“Ordination had crossed my mind a couple of times, but it wasn’t until I was teaching about faith that I realised I needed to be living and breathing a faith that was dear to me,” he said. “I couldn’t do that within the state system.”

He worked at Bangor Cathedral as a lay succentor while he started a process to explore his vocation. It was interrupted by the Covid pandemic, which actually gave him opportunities to run a Foodbank from the cathedral office.

“That was my first experience of direct ministry to the vulnerable,” he said. “It was akin to ‘breathing out’ the gospel in deeds rather than words. It actually confirmed that I did feel a vocation to serve others.”

Stuart fell ill with long Covid for 18 months and retreated back to the island to recover. For a while he was bed-ridden and unable to walk without a stick.

“I had a real sense of dislocation, but I also felt God was stopping me in my tracks, calling me out of education and asking me to choose faith,” he said.

He helped his local vicar with administrative work, and ultimately re-started a process towards ordination. He found a paid role with the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO), and was also preaching and leading worship.

Stuart trained for ordination at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield for three years. He helped lead its Holy Week programme and has worked with the homeless in the crypt of St George’s Church, Leeds.

“It has been wonderful to be able to devote time to studying Scripture and theology, and it has helped to inform my discipleship,” he said.

“It’s also confirmed that sense that I sing to glorify God – I don’t tend to sing in a secular setting. Music is so important to unlock the depths that go beyond words.”