False Alarm!

I had an e-mail yesterday inviting me to make an appointment with the Bishop. As I'm currently in his vicinity I wasted no time in making a phone call, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in his study 7 hours later!

We'd spent all day speculating about which exotic Wilts/Dorset location he might be asking me to consider, but unfortunately we're still none the wiser. That's because I've got a really good bishop!

As I might have mentioned before, we have to fill in a fairly limited tick-box form, which tells him very little about us. So the purpose of today's meeting was for him to hear what I want out of my first placing from my mouth, not from a form. Now we've done that he's in a much better position to match me to a suitable parish and vicar than he was this morning.

The wait continues, and I now expect to hear from him again at the end of August!

Four Croissants and a Funeral

The title seems to be a fairly accurate summary of the last seven days. The final week of my summer placement seems to have been mainly one of food, although there have been other highlights:

Monday - Deanery Synod (yawn) - cup of tea and a plate of biscuits
Tuesday - a pre-funeral visit, preceded by a McDonalds lunch (offering value for money!), and a 'Council of Churches' meeting where the refreshments were notable by their total absence.
Wednesday - 'Essence' - a cafe church where at least 2 if not 3 of the aforementioned croissants were consumed.
Thursday - Men's Group, with a cup of tea (but no biscuits), and a Marriage Preparation Review Meeting (with Dot's 'Lavender Cake')
Friday - 'Thirst' - another cafe church (technically not part of my placement, but my stomach doesn't care), followed by the funeral, followed by an interesting combination of crumpets and baked beans.
And tomorrow morning I round it all off with a prayer breakfast.

More tea vicar?

EDIT: Saturday morning - the prayer breakfast brought the tally to 5 croissants!

Where are you going to be working?

...is a question that I'm being asked increasingly.

And the honest answer to that - at the moment - is "I don't know". But I might know soon.

The Church of England has a process for allocating the outgoing ordinands to suitable training posts - curacies - and this process is just starting to kick into effect.

Just before the end of term I had to fill in a form stating my preferences (type of church, location, personal requirements etc). It was tempting to put my standard post-gig demands here - a crateful of chilled Carlsberg and a flock of nuns mopping my fevered brow in the vestry - but unfortunately I think it was after more practical stuff such as housing needs. At the same time the staff and Principal were writing a report on me that by now has gone to my Bishop.

The default position for all candidates is that our 'sending' diocese has first call on our services, and until they say that they have no position for us ('releasing' us) we have to work on that assumption. So around about now the cogs are turning in Salisbury to try to match my preferences with curacy opportunities that Bishops David, Stephen and Graham have in mind, taking into consideration anything flagged up in my college report as a specific development need. Shortly I'll hear from the Diocesan Director of Ordinands, and will be asked to visit the parish that they have in mind. Which could be almost anywhere in Dorset or Wiltshire.

Then we'll arrange a visit, probably over the course of a weekend, and will have to assess whether we think it will work or not. Both sides can say 'yes' or 'no'. If both are positive, we have a result. If either are negative we see if the diocese has anything else in mind. If they do, we try somewhere else. If not, I'm released and we go national, and there's a whole other bit of process for that.

Of course, I might not be able to tell you anything more for ages - we've got a busy summer ahead of us so it's going to be a while before we can visit anywhere - and even if it does all work out first time there are going to be formalities to go through before I can write about it....

Jane's ordination - Every Little Helps

As Roy Castle once sang:

"Ordination, Ordination, Ordination,
That's what you need"

And so the family decamped to deepest darkest Deptford for the weekend to support Jane at her ordination. Jane was on my staircase, a good friend and a free babysitter who liked lying on a real sofa in a real house every once in a while.

We drove down to her house in Deptford, picked up the keys from her vicar, Steve, and helped ourselves to her house. At this point it might help to understand that the last few days before your ordination are spent 'on retreat' away from the distractions of everyday life, in order to allow you to prepare properly for the life-changing ordination day. One distraction that Jane had was her post-ordination party. As a single lady she had to think long and hard about how she was going to find a 'wife' to sort this out for her, so the plan that evolved was this:

1. We, and another family, would spend the Saturday evening in her house, waiting in to receive the online supermarket order of party food that she had placed before leaving.
2. All would then go to Southwark Cathedral on Sunday morning to attend the ordination (except for Beth and Isaac who would be taken off in London by their uncle for the day)
3. Upon return from the Cathedral it would be all hands on deck to get the food out onto the tables.
4. Party starts, everybody happy.

The plan started to fall apart at step zero, on the Friday night, when I got a text from the other family saying that their car had broken down and they wouldn't be able to make it at all. So now we were the primary receivers of the shopping order. So on Saturday, having availed ourselves of Janes house, we went into London to look at Big Ben/Downing Street/Trafalgar Square/Buckingham Palace etc, with Isaac becoming a master climber of statues along the way.

At Tower Bridge as a thunderstorm broke over our heads it was time to head back to make sure that we were there before the opening of the delivery window at 7pm. We were a bit damp after a ride through the rain on the Docklands Light Railway, but we made it with 15 minutes to spare.

We had dinner, put the kids to bed, and waited. And waited. And waited. The delivery window closed at 9pm, with no sign of the order. Checking the copy of the order that Jane had left behind we saw that we could ring Customer Services up until 11pm, so we gave them half an hour's grace before calling. Upon calling them I got an automated message telling me that the lines closed at 8pm on a Saturday and didn't re-open until 10am on Sunday. Hmm....no party food, and due in the cathedral at 10.30am.

Plan B swung into action.

When Jane saw me at Southwark before the service started she made ber own assumptions about Tasha's absence, putting it down to 'childcare problems'. I wasn't confirming or denying anything - it wouldn't be good to lie to a nearly-Reverend, and we'd agreed not to get Jane worried.

I wasn't hanging about after the service. I pegged it across South-East London back to the house to find everything under control, and the last few things being put out onto tables.

So how had this miracle been achieved?

Tasha had stayed house-sitting, ringing Customer Services on the dot of 10am. They tried to help, but ultimately their best offer was to deliver on Monday evening, blaming 'XXXXX Weather'. So she told them to cancel the order and got in the car, finding the local superstore and doing the shopping herself. Of course as she'd been expecting to go to an ordination she only had her 'best' clothes, which drew some strange looks in Lewisham.

Upon her return she now had a couple of hours to kill before everybody was due back, so got everything out onto the tables. Not a bad achievement when you're in a strange house, not knowing what bowls/plates/dishes are available, or even if they've been unpacked yet.

Jane was blissfully unaware of any of this, as the supermarket had not even been bothered to phone her to tell her that the order would not be delivered. She only found out the truth when she arrived home and couldn't work out why the food was already on the table. Needless to say, Tasha was immediately everybody's best friend!

The Christian website 'Ship of Fools' drew my attention this morning to Bishop Jonathan Blake's latest addition to his ministry - the 5th emergency service 'Bishop on Call'. Why, oh why didn't we think of him on Saturday night. Tash could have still come to the ordination whilst Blake cruised the supermarket aisles. I bet he'd have got even funnier looks about his apparel than she did.

On Placement

With all the academic side of life finished until the end of September you could be forgiven for thinking that I'm going to be doing nothing for 3 months.

Wrong!

One course requirement is for me to spend four weeks hanging out with a friendly vicar, to really find out what life in a vicarage is like. You might think it's a bit late for that - vicarage life is going to happen anyway, but some people are still not quite sure what they want to do after ordination. The huge majority will go into a parish life, but others may be considering chaplaincy work, or other roles within the church. This month is a good time to find out how much you like day to day parish work; it's also a chance to do stuff you haven't done before.

So I'm spending a month with James (vicar) and Paul (curate) at St Andrews Histon and St Andrews Impington. As a former scientist I'm tempted to write that as an equation, to save use of multiple 'St Andrews', thus: St.Andrews (Histon and Impington), but that would require it to be the same St Andrews, which it's not. There are two of them. And I've now written more words than I would have saved. Enough rambling.

Starting last Tuesday I've been cycling a 10 mile round trip from my house to Histon, and spending large parts of the day accompanying James and Paul as they do their work. A cafe church ('Essence'), a home communion, a hospital visit and another home visit are among the highlights. This week holds the prospect of some schools work, a playgroup and some evening meetings, whilst also trying to maintain some semblence of family life.

Along the way I'm looking out for interesting situations to comment on, as I'll have to do a presentation and an essay on the placement when I get back to Ridley in September.

And as if the cycle ride wasn't enough I rounded off the week with a Men's Group cycle ride. I've done on of those before, in Ferndown, but that gentle 8 or 9 mile ride had nothing on this Cambridge epic. I never thought I'd cycle from the extreme north of Cambridge (Histon) to the extreme south (Grantchester), but I have now, and done the return trip too! 17.3 miles! Add to that the 10 miles for me to get to and from home and I was ready for bed on Friday night.

The phone lines are closed...

..the votes have been counted and verified, and the results are ....


L - O - N - G


P - A -U - S - E


...in your pigeon holes for collection.

Actually it doesn't seem to be the done thing to talk about our results. Sorry about that. If I actually published the breakdown of my scores somebody would probably get upset. But for those who have been following my progress in Greek, that particular result rhymes with fix-de-swine.

Most of my results started with a 6, only one with a 5, one even with a 7, and the figures 7 and 8 were common as second figures. If we were to get Peter Snow to project these results onto a final degree result, it wouldn't quite rhyme with Thirst. But as I'm only staying long enough to complete a Diploma that's a fairly academic point. (academic! - get it? Oh, please yourself)

A few days after the results were issued we also got our essays back with the examiners comments. This is where we start to get a real feel for what we need to do to improve our marks for next year, if indeed we're aiming to improve - I started out aiming only to pass the diploma, but I feel an increasing urge to continue study after ordination at a slightly slower pace in order to complete to degree level and to see just how well I can do! I do have a common theme of not making sufficient reference to the books that I've read on the subject, or an over-reliance on one particular author. In one case, I read loads of books on Youth Ministry but struggled to find anything of direct relevance to the Romsey Mill situation that I was writing about, so the bibliography was long, but the list of references was very short... I guess I can learn library skills from that for next year.

We now have the summer holidays to decide which modules we'll be taking next year. There is very little choice to be honest, as most people on my course have little prior theological education, so we're guided to the same core choices as each other. Where it will vary a little is in detailed choices such as between studying one pair of Old Testament books or another, and the ability to 'audit' certain additional courses, which means we can sit in on lectures but don't have to submit any assessed work - this way we get to hear material, and can read around what interests us, but without the pressure of related essays.

And I've got all summer to consider my options, even if I didn't make any notes from the options meeting......ooops!

How to stump a leading theologian

Last week we had a visit by a distinguished guest, the highly influential 20th century theologian Professor Jurgen Moltmann. You might never have heard of him, but if you've heard a sermon in the last forty years you will have heard his ideas.

Professor Moltmann was speaking on the occasion of the 2nd annual Moule lecture, held in memory of Charlie Moule, another key theologian who had a long association with Ridley Hall. A marquee full of staff, students, former students, invited guests and members of the public listened to his lecture for nearly an hour, before the floor was opened for questions.

And this was the first question. (Don't worry, it really doesn't matter if you weren't there for the lecture itself. It makes no difference whatsoever to your understanding of the question. Or indeed to Moltmann's understanding of the question. If by any remote chance the questioner is reading this, please let us know who you are. We're not quite sure why we want to know, we just have a morbid fascination.)

Questioner: “This is a double whammy if you will pardon the approach. The first thing is that for years there have been sermons preached about the Parable of the Sower which I think to have been quite erroneous for the simple reason that they ignore the work of C.H.Dodd and Joachim Jeremias in pointing out the context of the parable and trying to make out that Jesus was an idiot because he taught in parables which was a traditional Pharisaic method. So therefore my question is, starting from that point to ask the question: do we not recognize that the Parable of the Sower has two contexts? The context of the ministry of Jesus when he stands in the Hebrew background to understand that there is one particular truth held which is the victory of God that’s coming with a magnificent harvest that is far beyond anything we can dream of and then the context of the Greek speakers who couldn’t understand the Hebrew thinking and tried to deal with the allegory. That is the first bit, and the second bit is related to the question of time, which has been something that has run through all of your lecture, that is the question of how you relate time to eternity. And years ago I came to a certain picture and I’ll share it with you for your consideration, which is to say that if you take a ball and let that represent eternity and you draw a tangent to touch the side of that ball then that represents the amount of time that is in existence from when time began to when it ends. But everyone’s time is interpermeated with eternity and therefore we have that to add to our picture of the historical Jesus who is the eternal Jesus, who interpenetrates everyone’s time, our time now, he’s with us, their time then when he was with them. I offer those two things to you….”

Jurgen Moltmann: “Errr.. I’m not quite sure whether I understood every word you are saying…”


Jurgen is not alone. This was one rare occasion when I was on the same level as the staff.