Erm Hello new people?

Well I have joined a few blog rings and technorati and things like that but I never expected to log on after a few days to find that my blog had been linked to by Dave Walker over at the Church Times blog.

For my non churchy readers friends the Church Times is the main newspaper of the Church of England. It holds articles on faith and current issues, interviews, cartoons (yay Dave!) and appointments and resignations, obituaries and then a classified section with jobs in it. They have a high readership, even of clergy, who stalk their mail boxes on a Friday for the next installment ( or not!). In recent years it has become possible to stalk the website at 11.55pm for the new installment (don’t ask, I’m sad!).

Well, I must say that I did pannic a little on my discovery. Afterall my blog is very varied. The quality of my posts and knitting (!!) depend on my time and on the children. What would a seasoned Church Times online reader make of my typos and rushed posts? Would I come accross as the type of woman that vindicates their potential opposition to my ordination? So naturally I have started doing what any house proud blogger would do in the circumstances- I am going back through all my old posts and correcting the typos! Can’t do much about the quality of knitting but at least the casual reader will now be under the illusion that I am not completely reliant on a spell checker.

I have to say that my own slight pannic must be nothing in comparison to my collegue from theological college’s reaction when she found herself listed as a potential first woman Bishop the day after the vote!

Anyway, if you have found me (us) recently- welcome.

Is it really good news?

This is the final motion approved by Synod:

‘That this Synod:

(a) affirm that the wish of its majority is for women to be admitted to the episcopate;

(b) affirm its view that special arrangements be available, within the existing structures of the Church of England, for those who as a matter of theological conviction will not be able to receive the ministry of women as bishops or priests;

(c) affirm that these should be contained in a statutory national code of practice to which all concerned would be required to have regard; and

(d) instruct the legislative drafting group, in consultation with the House of Bishops, to complete its work accordingly, including preparing the first draft of a code of practice, so that the Business Committee can include first consideration of the draft legislation in the agenda for the February 2009 group of sessions.’

The voting was:

Bishops: 28 for 12 against 1 abs

Clergy: 124 for 44 against 4 abs

Laity: 111 for 68 against 2 abs

You can read more about the debate here at Ruth Gledhill’s Blog (she was blogging live!) or at Thinking Anglicans and you can hear the days proceedings via the CoE website.

I have to say that I do not share the Joy of watch chair Christina Rees at this moment in time. I am filled with fear. I feel frightenned that we have stepped into something potentially far worse than we could have imagined. I feel horrified that the cry to wait or to do some more talking and thinking has not been heard.

Most of all I am fearful of this ’statutory national code of practice’. Come on, what we are talking about IS Pseudo-legislation. Although there was not an agreement that synod should need to approve this code of conduct (which means that this could easily warp into something more like what the opposed would like- which will mean discrimination for women….just think back to that Manchester letter and the plans of the diocese of london in 1992). I am not convinced that we have any huge celebrations to be had. Part of me knows that we could go round and round this debate for years and not reach any conclusions that are satisfactory but this one is one that neither side *really* can claim to be happy about. Unless I have misunderstood. ….

disappointed.

I may reflect more when I’ve had chance to digest it all…..

Sermon 29th June 2008

It is quite appropriate that as we gather here this morning, mindful that members of our congregation and church are in the cathedral to witness the Bishop ordain our New Deacon Alison we hear a reading from Matthews gospel. This chapter in Matthew’s gospel is one in which Jesus is instructing the Twelve disciples as he sends them out to preach the good news. The reading comes from the end of the chapter, and forms Jesus’ concluding words to them. These concluding words are to challenge and to comfort the disciples. The Challenge comes first: God and his Kingdom demands your highest loyalty, beyond all else in your lives, even your closest relationships. We can tie this to our old testament reading also as we remember the extreme call God puts on Abraham and his beloved son, Isaac.
Then we are reassured in Jesus second words. Words of comfort: you will be welcomed and cared for by those who hardly know you.

These 2 sets of words. Words of comfort and words of challenge come together by no accident. The comfort is the necessary balance to the challenge to set aside loyalty to families. To hear the real challenge in the call to loyalty alone to God, to hear the word ‘hate’, the extreme demands that God puts on our lives is almost enough to make us feel the task is impossible for us to do.

He is firing the most difficult request at us, to get our attention, to make us see just how serious and drastic the call to serve him is but he supports our fears of that impossible task in his words of comfort. In the Kingdom, Jesus says, we step beyond the natural human structures of care and support. We stop feeling that our family must come first, that charity begins at home, that we look out for our own before we look out for others. The challenge is to start to see all people as our family, all as deserving our special care.

And this is where the comfort fits in: once we start to do this, seeing everyone as being as deserving of the same care and consideration we would give to our own family, we will start to experience what it means to be part of the family of God: welcomed into the homes of strangers as if a newfound brother or sister, finding that people look out for us and feel concerned if our needs are not met. So Jesus speaks of prophets, righteous people and little ones, all ways of speaking about his disciples, who are welcomed and cared for just because of their name, not because they are known. We might talk in the same sort of way about welcoming another Christian and looking out for them just because they’re a Christian, without knowing anything about them.
There’s clearly plenty here that we could spend some time thinking about, but as we prepare to welcome Alison as our new curate, I want to focus on just one thing: what does this passage tell us about welcoming others? As I said, Jesus is speaking here to the Twelve, to those who are going to be welcomed, but I want us to reflect on what he might be saying to those who are going to be welcoming others. I think there are two main things Jesus might be saying: first about what God sees when he watches us making our attempts to be welcoming, and second about what might really be happening when we welcome others.

So, firstly, what does God see when he looks at us welcoming others? This may seem like an odd thing to think about, but Jesus’ words suggest something quite extraordinary: God puts a value on even our smallest actions of hospitality that is far beyond what we would assume. Jesus speaks of those who offer ‘one of these little ones’, by which he means his disciples, just a cup of water. Offering a cup of water in the heat of Palestine is the most basic and simplest form of hospitality, meeting the most basic of needs without greatly inconveniencing yourself. Any household would have water to hand. But Jesus puts it on a par with welcoming someone into your home - in God’s eyes even the smallest step has value.

The point is not that a massive sacrifice has been made, as if it was our deprivation that gave God pleasure, but that we have taken that step into god’s Kingdom - acknowledging those around us as part of God’s family, and our brothers and sisters. This helps us to see that even the smallest of things that we do when welcoming people in our church and community is important. The smile, ‘good morning’, the item picked up from the floor, the drink and chair offered. Nothing is too small an act of welcome and the small things matter.

The second thing we can learn about welcoming from Jesus’ words is that when we welcome his disciples we welcome Jesus himself. The various people Jesus illustrates in his reading- Prohets, the righteous person and the little ones tells us that people called to be disciples and who are then sent by Jesus/God into the world come in different forms and guises. Jesus may not come to us himself in a form we would expect and indeed those who the church recognises as ‘sent by God’ in ordination are not always likely candidates. So when we welcome people, we may be welcoming Jesus and we should perhaps welcome people in that knowledge, that we may be welcoming Jesus.

Jesus is saying that the family of God is the people who welcome Jesus in whatever guise he appears.
Welcoming those sent to us by Jesus and therefore welcoming Jesus himself is not an extra thing that we do on top of the other important stuff, it’s normal and just what you do for a member of the family.

So today, we have the opportunity to welcome others in church, we have also, the opportunity to welcome of new curate Alison, this evening. Are we challenged to hear Jesus instructions to us to stop feeling that our family must come first in order to benefit the comforts of a wider family in which we can be nurtured and supported in the task of our continuing ministries?
Wether we are called to ministry of service and word, to a sacramental ministry, to a pastoral or bereavement ministry to a children’s and youth ministry, to a smile and a coffee ministry- we are all called to be part of the family of God. It seems to me that God expects little of us in order to be members of his family, in that, all he expects is that we welcome one another- and our reward is that in return he considers us each one of his own.

Protected: Muddled Thoughts

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Wonderful News!

I am delighted to be able to share the news (after today’s public announcement) that I have been appointed at Team Vicar / Vicar Designate of the new parish of Heath Hayes, Staffordshire, in the diocese of Lichfield.

Mark is to swap roles with me and take primary responsibility for the family whilst working away quietly at finishing his PhD.

We anticipate that we will move sometime early in October.

St John’s Heath Hayes is a central, Eucharistic focused church that is working to be open and approachable to the community it serves. They have a breadth of services and a team of ministers (Lay readers, musicians and others) who are very engaged in ministry in that place. The church is a red brick early 1900’s ish church (I think…from memory). It has many of the signs of previously being very high church indeed but many signs of modernisation and meeting the needs of the current community and congregation. It also has a lovely addition of a lady chapel that will be delightful for saying the daily office within. The church hall is very well used by many groups and also holds an office staffed by volunteers and a part-time administrator.

Heath Hayes is what used to be a minning community. On the outskirts of growing Cannock and Hednesford, very close to Cannock Chase and in commuter areas for the M6 toll and Birmingham. The parish has 3 primary schools. I felt very welcomed on my visit there and the interview, although not a breeze, felt like a good interview with engaging questions and a good deal of discerning. I feel it will be a lovely community to live in and serve in and it is not only the right place for myself but for all of us to flourish through this next phase of all our lives.

I am also looking forward to working with and supporting the ministry of David and Kathryn Buck in the Parish of Hednesford (1/6th of my time) where there are groups for older children and a secondary school.

We now have to concentrate on managing our endings and beginnings (and the children’s also) and I anticipate trying to blog through this…but I may not get much blogged around the move!

I am delighted- it is finally starting to sink in!!

New Shoes

I like shoes…. there may be more posts about shoes!!

These make me feel SO great, girly and confident and amazingly they are very comfy too.

Sofa Transformation

Our sofa has looked like this for 4 years.

VERY boring.  finally Amy Bulter’s new range of fabrics was in colours that captured me and so it now looks like this. The cushions spread over 2 sofa’s that are identical.

And a close up of the fabrics (on the patchwork cushion).

DDO’s stand up for Ordinands??

Article in the Church Times. What has me particularly annoyed is the following comments:

“I have very slight misgivings about candidates in the upper age range, but I do not see this as a significant ‘quality’ problem.”

Ugh when are we going to get over ageism in all directions? What strikes me most is that I thought that we are supposed to be recognising people who are called by god to excersice a specific ministry. There are financial limitations when it becomes sensible for the church to put age limits on stipendiary ministry and that they do…but if a person meets those requirements or is happy to be unpaid then what is the problem?? If they meet criteria and are selected? What are the misgivings? I am sorry but on the whole I really think it’s about forgetting age and looking at vocation and God’s will.

”The Revd Peter Clement, DDO for Ripon & Leeds, said that the main difference was that “many new ordinands are middle-aged women who do not have a university degree.

“If they were 20 or 30 years younger, they would have degrees, but they don’t have the paperwork and that makes a difference. But they are flowering in the context of learning, because they have not had this opportunity before. These women have a very strong sense of commitment.”

Oh please. This seems incredibly patronising to me and really really verging on sexism. When I trained at college there were just as many middle aged men without degrees as there were women.

Standing up for clergy quality means not playing into the traps of associating any possible faults with age or gender, life path etc, but more with selection criteria (sometimes selection gets it wrong and someone isn’t up to the job…how often are they still ordained?) and/ or training and in my mind issues sorrounding continuing/life long support and learning for the task of ministry (how often are those who are judged by whatever criteria as substandard offered mentoring and training?).

Sermon for June 1st 2008

(Smoke alarm sounds)

Don’t panic- there is no fire.

I hope that didn’t alarm you too much. How did you feel when you heard the alarm? Did you suddenly panic? Were you looking for the way out? Were you looking to see if anybody else was looking for the way out? Or were you thinking ‘it must be a mistake’? Hearing an alarm is not a comfortable experience even if we know there is no need for concern. An alarm really can’t be ignored. It tells us there may be danger. It forces us to ask new questions, to set new priorities. Am I in danger? Do I need to leave? Where will be safe?

The reading from Matthew’s Gospel this morning is alarming. It is intended to alarm. It’s not just a general call to vigilance. These words were meant to alarm particular people. They were not spoken, remembered and written down in order to alarm those who have never made a profession of Christian faith. They were not intended to provoke someone who’s never given the Gospel a second thought. So they are not a fairly aggressive evangelical thunderbolt aimed at those outside the Church (because, after all, words to the stranger on Jesus’ part are generally words of invitation). No – these words are directed to us – to people who may never have allowed the thought to pass through their heads that they might be on the wrong track.

The parable Jesus teaches is that of two houses - one which is built upon rock and another which is built upon sand. It’s not a complicated image. These two houses then go on to encounter a storm and so on.

In its original context Jesus is talking about many ‘storms’ for example the coming destruction of the temple, the revolt against the Romans and of course more generally about Judgement and the end times. The parable does seem to carry through to a more general ‘how will you cope when things are not going well?’. Storms in our lives might take many different forms- illness, bereavement, self-doubt, financial stress , natural disaster or the breakdown of a relationship. The things that turn our world upside down. The point of the parable is that Jesus is saying ‘what are you basing your life on?’, sand or Rock? The choices you are now making in regard to this will determine how you cope when there is a storm or a crisis. Jesus suggests that listening to his teaching and embodying it in action is the firm rock that people should be basing their lives on.

So how do we know if our houses are built on sand or rock? Well, It’s only when the storm comes that you can see that the house is stable or not. Until that point it is not always obvious what substance the house is built upon or how resilient it will be in the storm. This is exactly the same point that is being made with Jesus harsh words at the beginning of the reading- he’s saying just because people say ‘Lord, Lord’ (his name comes easily to their lips) people will look at them and think these are disciples of Jesus, in fact he’s saying he never knew them. What is visible on the outside is not always a true representation of what is on the inside. How we respond during times of crisis will illustrate on what basis our lives are built and will indeed reveal at the same time, what is on the inside. But obviously we don’t want to wait for the storm to see of our house will fall down or not!! The key thing seems to be that Jesus wants us not only to hear his teachings but also to embody them in the way that we live. In other words he wants us to be the same inside and out.

What do we mean by the inside and the outside? The outside is that which we present to the world and to each other. It’s regular giving to church and charities, knowing the service well enough that we hardly need to look at a service book to follow it, having enough knowledge about our faith that we can discuss contemporary issues with others. All of these and others present the outward appearance of faith but they could potentially be little more than empty religiosity. The inside is the things other people don’t see. We don’t see how much each other prays. We don’t see the extent to which we each put our trust in God. We don’t see all the ways in which God is transforming our lives.

Not only is it impossible for us to truly see each other from the inside sometimes it’s pretty hard for us to see ourselves. The people who owned the houses in the parable may not have realised how stable or otherwise their houses were until the storm came. This is why Jesus is speaking so harshly and provocatively because he wants us to think about it before the storm comes! Not because we can avoid the storm, both houses go through it and I imagine even the house built on rock was weathered by the storm but because he wants to give us time to listen and to embody his words inside and out. To ask ourselves the hard questions so that we might survive the storm.

So what if when we ask the hard questions, the answers we get frighten us? What can we do about it when we feel insecure or concerned about our inner lives and whether or not they are truly reflecting our outer lives? Firstly I wanted to reassure you that it is quite normal to have doubts and that they can be a very healthy opportunity for reflection that sometimes leads to us making changes in our lives. Things we might do to develop our inner lives are – attending a course of study that will help us to understand our faith better, making ourselves accountable to another person for our inner life- a spiritual director maybe, borrowing a book from the Parish library and reading it, keeping a note in our diary’s of things we would like to pray for, meeting up with other Christians in our workplace with a view to thinking about how we can live out faith in that context (maybe sharing prayer concerns for the work context), building in a set pattern for reflection. These are just a few suggestions and I am sure you could add more to the list.

We have heard this story about the houses built on rock and sand. It was written for us. It was designed to place within us a germ of self doubt – a pebble in our shoe. Perhaps this story is an alarm for us today.

You have heard this Gospel story read, preached and proclaimed this morning. It was remembered and written down for us – not merely to reflect on the fact that we face many storms but with adequate time on our hands this morning to reflect on whether the inside looks like the outside, to think about whether our houses are built upon rock or sand so that when the storm comes we might survive.

So apparently most vicars are a bit rubbish?

My collegue pointed out this article this morning at staff meeting.  The Religious affairs correspondant at the Telegraph has angered a lot of clergy, confirmed the views of the general public and basically written an unsubstantiated piece of firewood.

It seems like the journalist is pulling together a whole load of unrelated things that build this up into a firewood, when perhaps it is simply a match.  There is allegedly some report about quality of clergy which he has linked to ongoing reviews concerning clergy pay which are not related to the quality of clergy but to the simple fact the the stipend is incredibly low in comparison to jobs with comparable level of responsibility.    He makes similar erroneous use of selection criteria which have actually occured on the basis of trying to get new clergy who are more mission focused.  Pensions and retirement housing have been being reviewed due to the current pensions crisis and financial issues.  Many of these things have nothing to do with clergy competance.  Finally the author seems to have thrown into the mixing pot some recomendations about preaching  which are not particularly revolutionary, have been around for sometime and would probably be regarded by most people as plain good practice, though he is presenting them as radical and new steps that will improve performance.

It seems he is implying that what is being said is ‘The workers are rubbish- the answer to the solution is to hire different workers’.  This is a secular model and NOT how the church operates.  People offer themselves when they believe they are called to a ministry, that vocation is tested and affirmed by the church- and it is not always ordination.  Ultimately the church is not employing people to do a job.  It is recognising a vocation that is God given and enabling them to do it.  So if we have identified that there is a problem with clergy not being effective in their ministry the solution is not to say - well these clergy are rubbish and we have to look at our selection processes better.  The solution is to say ‘we’,  collectively as a church are not enabling those called to this ministry to function in an effective way.  Now it’s possible that the problem is that these people are not actually called to this ministry, but given the fact that the discernment/selection process is far more rigorous than any appointment and training procedure you’ll find in any other field it’s more likely that the problem is to be found elsewhere.

What might the real issue be?  Clergy are being asked to do things they are not called to do, they’re not being given adequate support, they’re being given too much to do (sometimes more than is humanly possible) and they are not being given training to keep them up to date with developments.  Most professionals in any other field would be expected to do a certain amount of training events in order to stay qualified.  There is no standard like that for clergy, training has to come out of parish and diocesan budgets which are stretched just to provide numbers of clergy.  Training budgets get cut early- as there is less outcry for cutting training events then you do for cutting clergy.  The environment we are in is one where less clergy are being asked to do more, with less support- there is no wonder many clergy are tired and lack the energy that might be desired.  Suggesting that these clergy are less competent and we should have appointed better people or that if we give better pay people will have more motivation or we will get better quality clergy- is offensive and misses the reality of the situation.  The idea that increasing clergy pay would solve the problem really is laughable-most stipendiary clergy are educated to degree level.  They could walk into an entry level post in most secular environments, get no promotion for the rest of their working lives and still earn more than most clergy.  To even get to the point where the majority of people entering the church would be earning around the same as they would in any other career they might choose to follow would mean a massive increase in clergy pay which is not going to happen without reducing clergy numbers to the extent that the job really does become humanly impossible to do, no matter how big the payslip at the end of the month.

Jonathan Wynne-Jones has managed to start a bit of a fire on many a blog and over at thinking anglicans.  I suspect that Ministry Division have been fielding a fair few phone calls demanding clarification, copies of this so called report and ranting etc.

On a personal level I feel completely betrayed that ‘bishops’ who are supposed to have the care and responsibility for the church and it’s ministers have been so insensitive as to have even commented on a leaked report in this general area.  Generalisations are never helpful.  I don’t want to think my Bishop is going behind my back and telling anyone that I am a bit rubbish.   I’d rather he told me and supplied training!  That seems highly unprofessional.  I do accept that they may have had a report done and that report is probably part of looking at selection criteria and training needs for clergy in post.  That seems fair enough.  All organisation review once in a while- why are we any different? (Except perhaps there might be something imperative in the gospel that might mean we can demonstrate good working practise when reviewing- that might be an example to the secular world!)  However the way in which the article is written makes it unclear as to whether or not the report is purely about opinion (and whose opinion) or whether it actually is based on some sort of quantative research.   What makes a ‘good vicar’ is a highly  controversial subject.  I look forward to reading the report!