Curacy and curiouser

Just a quick update.

Old Diocese and New Diocese are exchanging correspondence about me and nobody in New Diocese can find anything in them to 'cause concern'. That's a good sign!

I have an appointment to meet my New Bishop in a couple of weeks time. This will be a formal interview, a bit of 'getting to know you' but definitely more than a cup of tea and a fireside chat. It's also the final step in securing the job.

All is well.

Progress Report

Things went well on Thursday. We both got on well with the vicar, she (for a lady she is) wants us to go there, we want to go there, so it's pretty much a deal. We've held off a couple of days since the visit, just in case either side had second thoughts, but we didn't.

However, there are some formalities to go through yet with the local churches, the diocese and the Bishop, so I'm not yet able to go public and share details with you. If you phone me up and ask me I'll tell you, but it's not going on Facebook or this blog until we've got the official nod. It's not a million miles from Ferndown, and within spitting distance of my 'old' diocese.

It's a bit strange how quickly our perceptions change. A month ago Salisbury was 'my' diocese (and technically remains so until I finish at Ridley and they finish supporting me in June), but now a different Diocese has appeared on my internet favourites list. I still have allegiances to several past and current churches, but for the last 18 months I've never been too sure who is my vicar - now suddenly somebody has a 'my new boss/vicar' label and when I get new ideas I start making mental plans for how that might look applied to this new location.

And so you'll have to wait a bit longer to find out. But we know where we're going with enough certainty to start contacting schools and to get measured for wax jackets and green wellies. You'll have to phone my mum to find out.

Balance

There's a bit of a conflict going on in me at the moment. Trying to balance academic work with the job search is a bit of a struggle.

This Thursday me and Tash will be visiting a parish in the South-West, spending a day with the vicar and trying to work out if it:
(a) could be a good working relationship
(b) could be somewhere that we feel we could live and work
(c) is going to throw up anything unexpected

I'm trying to prepare myself by coming up with all sorts of questions that I want to ask, and trying to anticipate what is going to be asked of me. After I'd written my own list I then looked at the handy list provided by the college, which just made my list even longer. Hopefully the day won't merely consist of us each asking the questions off of pieces of paper.

And this is all distracting me from the work I need to do to keep my head above water in this terms disciplines of Doctrine and Ethics. Lots of reading to do, not only for the weekly seminars, but now also the essay deadlines loom about 6 weeks away....

Making progress

It's interesting how you make decisions based on sketchy information and then change them when you find out more. We've been looking at the details of four different curacies over the last 2 weeks - some of which we knew little about at the point of first contact, others for which we had a full 20 page 'Parish Profile'.

As time has gone on and I've gradually got the same level of information about each one the mental priorities we've had have been constantly adjusting up and down. Two parishes that we thought we liked the sound of turns out not to be so great, one that I'd love to be in hasn't responded as yet (so I can assume that someone else has been offered that one. And the one I wasn't sure about initially is now looking very interesting and wants to talk to me more.

So now I need to arrange a date to visit a friendly vicar, to go and find out if we think we can work together and to get a feel for the area and the churches. If we both like each other, everybody will be happy. My initial phone conversation was encouraging, so let's see what happens.