Wanted: adult males for the priesthood (no women need apply). Join the holy fight against evil by becoming a soldier for Christ.
Job requires devotion, dedication, commitment, patience, tolerance, compassion and sacrifice.
Ceremonial and pastoral duties also require successful applicants to be part social worker, philosopher, psychologist, teacher, counsellor, public speaker and community leader dealing with people from birth to death.
On call 24/7.
No wife or children allowed, also no sex of any kind.
Minimal pay but room and board provided.
In the early 1980s, David Gruschow and Edmund Little answered such a calling - and two decades later are priests in the Nelson region.
Neither man marched out of adolescence into adulthood with his eyes firmly on Christ and the Cross, although each, in his own way, sought to be active, rather than passive, Christians - and their early work as teachers would have a spiritual dimension.
Gruschow became a Marist brother and teacher, having been attracted to the Marists' lifestyle when he attended a Catholic secondary school in Lower Hutt.
The oldest of nine children and raised in a typical Catholic family who went to mass on Sunday, he was, in effect, making a religious commitment but one with an emphasis on teaching.
He describes the Marist brothers as being like male nuns, or monks. They take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
"While I was teaching, I did a little bit of parish work and really enjoyed that, so I felt the Lord was calling me to do that work more frequently," he says - and to do so meant the priesthood.
That calling became more insistent, he says, while he was teaching in Fiji. At the end of 1985, at the age of 31, he was ordained as a priest.
A year behind him at the seminary was a man 12 years older, who had travelled from the other side of the world to become a priest.
Edmund Little's path to the priesthood wasn't a road-to-Damascus experience but a more circuitous journey through academia, although along the way he always had "an itchy feeling" that he ought to seek ordination.
Born in Essex, England to a Welsh mother and Cockney father, Little, one of two children, says his family wasn't particularly religious. His parents belonged to the Anglican Church but did not raise him as an Anglican.
From a young age, however, he was interested in history - and it would be the Catholic Church's long history, its continuity through time, its community spreading outwards from the present and back into the past, and its teaching consistency that would appeal to him.
At university he specialised in modern languages, especially Russian and French, attained a PhD and taught at the University of Hull for 15 years. While there, he was asked to teach the spirituality of the Russian Orthodox Church, which he did for several years and the itchy feeling grew stronger.
In 1982, he visited New Zealand, doing some lectures and tutorials at Victoria University, and happened to meet Cardinal Tom Williams, then the Archbishop of Wellington.
In conversation, Little asked if at the age of 40 he would be accepted as a student for the priesthood - and was somewhat surprised to hear he would be.
Little returned to England, resigned his university post, came back to New Zealand and was ordained in 1986.
Today Fr Little is a priest at Sacred Heart Church in Takaka, having previously served at St Mary's in Nelson, while Fr Gruschow came to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Richmond early last year after six years in Petone (and having been an army chaplain for eight years).
Frs Gruschow and Little are two of 537 priests in New Zealand today, about 10 percent less than there was 10 years ago and a continuation of a decline in numbers over the past three decades.
Even more concerning is that the average age of parish priests is increasing: from 48 in the 1980s, to 62 in 1997, to mid-60s today.
Correspondingly, there has been a gradual decline in the number of seminary trainees. In 1979, for instance, there were 43 in New Zealand; today there are 16 seminarians.
In that sense, Frs Gruschow and Little are more typical of men choosing the priesthood in their 30s or even 40s. Neither of them was previously married or has children.
Lyndsay Freer, of Catholic Communications in Auckland, says there seems to be hesitancy on the part of young people to make serious, long-term commitments.
"This is reflected in the number of couples who choose not to commit to marriage. Also, we note that couples are marrying later rather than at a young age."
Applying at a young age, sometimes straight from school, as often happened years ago, is discouraged today, Freer says. "It is more desirable to have men who have come to a mature decision after time to consider what they want to do with their lives."
The Catholic culture has also broken down a bit, says Fr Gruschow. "It isn't as strong as it was when I was a child.
"Part of that culture was it was perfectly acceptable to go into the priesthood. Families encouraged you and thought it was wonderful. These days, I think it's more complex than that. A family, while they theoretically might like their son to be a priest, in practice they may not be convinced that it's the best life, the most wholesome or fulfilling life for their son."
Catholic families have fewer children today, as well. It's no longer a case of one son out of seven, nine or 11 children becoming a priest, but one son out of three children, he adds.
Also, since lay people have replaced Marists in many schools, there is less opportunity for teenagers to be inspired towards a religious vocation, as he himself was.
Fr Little points out that the shortage of priests is one that only Western countries are experiencing - priest numbers in Asia, Africa and Latin America are burgeoning.
However, language and cultural barriers can block many of them from bolstering numbers in Western countries.
The result is a serious problem for the Catholic Church - and perhaps other denominations as well, Fr Little says.
"Nobody knows quite what to blame - consumerism, post-modernism, the me-me society, the availability of entertainment on television, at the cinema and on video and DVD," he says.
"We're also a much more mobile society. People used to walk to church, now they drive. At a basic level, going to church was something to do on a Sunday; mobility now gives them many more choices."
The impact of distractions and other options to attending church affects the numbers of people going into the priesthood, since it is from the church's congregations that most aspiring to be priests come.
What might be a disincentive to join the priesthood is the bad publicity the Catholic Church has suffered in recent years about priests involved in sexual abuse cases, including paedophilia.
Fr Gruschow says the publicity has been "hugely damaging", and Fr Little says it has made other clergy feel "sick and despondent".
"It's very demoralising," Fr Little says, "because aside from their direct victims, children or adults, these (offending) clergy have abused the trust put in them - and made our life more difficult."
As well as coping with such bad publicity, the church has had to contend on occasion with debate about its attitudes towards, and position on, such issues as celibacy, artificial birth control, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and the ordination of women.
Celibacy can carry risks of isolation, alienation and loneliness from having a lack of intimacy - but, Fr Little adds, there are dangers attached to the married state as well.
"Some of the loneliest people I have met have been married," he says.
Fr Gruschow says that in the history of the church, celibacy hasn't always been necessary - and its requirement today should be re-examined. Fr Little agrees.
Fr Gruschow also points out that Anglicans who have converted to Catholicism and become priests are allowed to do so even if married, thus celibacy doesn't apply to them.
Nor does it apply, Fr Little says, to some branches of the church, such as the Eastern Catholic Maronites, whose clergy can marry.
Fr Little believes the focus on celibacy is a symptom of an age in which sex has assumed an importance he suspects it didn't have before.
"Celibacy - the very word has a mystique, an attraction, that people find mysterious and strange, and celibacy is often blamed for whatever problems the Catholic Church is seen as having."
He recalls a conversation years ago in which the wife of a Protestant clergyman told him that the Catholic Church shouldn't rush to abolish celibacy as an easy fix to its problems, because it would raise as many problems as it solves.
"She said, `If you think that a minister can have a normal family life without serious difficulty, you're kidding yourself'."
On many other issues, such as artificial birth control, divorce and homosexuality, Fr Gruschow says the church's position is one of stated ideals rather than strict rules that damn those who transgress them.
"Even a surface reading of the Gospels illustrates the Lord being compassionate and forgiving and not overly worried about the letter of the law," he says.
"In the past, people believed you must meet these rules, whereas these days they're more seen as ideals. It's wonderful if you can meet them - but if you can't, you work towards them. There's more an appreciation of this journey towards perfection rather than being perfect now, which nobody can be."
So where is that line that says you haven't strived hard enough to work towards an ideal?
"That's an interesting question," says Fr Gruschow. "We always say that's the province of almighty God, that God is the judge."
However, there are some subjects which are still non-negotiable - for instance, the church's rejection of abortion and homosexuality.
"Abortion is one of the black-and-white rules," says Fr Gruschow. "It has much more moral impact than the (artificial) contraception one does."
As for homosexuality, it's a case of damning the sinner, not the sin. Thus, a homosexual can be a member of the Catholic Church as long as the homosexuality isn't physically expressed, says Fr Gruschow, just as a homosexual can be a celibate priest.
Asked how such attitudes towards abortion, homosexuality and not allowing women to become priests fit in with Christian tolerance and compassion, Fr Gruschow says it's possible to have a strong moral code and still be compassionate and tolerant.
"Jesus showed that. He was pretty intolerant of various things, like hypocrisy and injustice. The art is to hold both together without compromising either. It's important to have strict rules to protect human dignity and it's also important to be compassionate when people don't live up to those rules and to provide a way of helping them to do so. Strong moral codes are important but you have to allow people the space to make mistakes."
If a man thinking of becoming a priest adheres to the church's position on various contentious issues, despite how they reflect society, and if he is willing to make the sacrifices the priesthood requires and cope with inherent stresses, there can still be a question of money.
Fr Gruschow says some priests are "making waves" about remuneration because the church has started employing lay people to replace priests where there aren't priests available, and they won't do such work for what priests receive.
He says lay people get about $45,000; priests get $60,000, although they also receive free accommodation and food.
It's a demanding job being a priest, and some men do choose to leave the priesthood each year.
"Some men have left in recent years in order to marry," says Lyndsay Freer, adding that stress can be a factor but money is not usually a reason for leaving.
Fr Gruschow says he is thinking of retiring when he turns 65.
"We're allowed to do that, though they don't like it", explaining that priests are encouraged, even expected, to continue their work until health or other circumstances cause them to retire, or to move to less onerous duties.
Last year Fr Little experienced "burnout" first-hand, a factor in his move from Nelson to Takaka after taking nearly a year off to recover.
So what are the joys and rewards that make the priesthood satisfying and worth the sacrifices and stresses?
Fr Gruschow cites the pastoral work and being a leader at worship.
"Most of my job is being with people and often it's an important time in their lives - birth, baptism, marriage, sickness, death and funerals.
"So at key times they invite you into their lives, as a spiritual dimension which they find very important."
He finds providing good quality sermons at church services a daunting task "because people demand a good quality sermon these days" - but it's a chance to reflect on scripture and how it applies to life and discuss issues from the Catholic perspective.
"Part of our role is to educate our Catholic people because there are lots of people who aren't Catholics and have all sorts of different ideas about what Catholics believe or don't believe and do or don't do, which are often incorrect and impinge on our Catholic people."
Ultimately, though, the Eucharist, symbolising the body and blood of Christ is the essence of the Catholic faith and a priest's reason to be.
"The Eucharist is the source and summit of our Catholic life. When people come to mass, it's not for the priest but the Eucharist."
Fr Little echoes Fr Gruschow: "I like to help people in their joys and sorrows where I can - that sounds pious, but I do.
"And, yes, celebrate the Eucharist, follow the commandments of Christ and try to acquaint people with the mystery of divine love, which in the Eucharist recalls the suffering, death and resurrection of the Lord, the triumph of life over death and of good over evil. Before I became a priest, an old priest said to me that when he celebrates the Eucharist, he's always conscious of doing something much greater than himself - and that's what I feel too."
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