Size Matters

Tonight I have been to Bishop’s council where we have been discussing the joining of three dioceses: Bradford, Ripon and Leeds and Wakefield. It’s a very emotive subject, in other words in some ways everybody loses and so everybody is equally unhappy about it.

I must say that it was being discussed in quite a grown up way with a lot of humour and good grace. As if to emphasise the problems our diocese has in order to have this meeting of an hour and a half I had to go on a hour and a half journey.

There was an interesting discussion as to whether we ought to be turning three diocese into one or whether it would be better to have six diocese. It was pointed out that just as the rest of the world was abandoning mega organisations the church was discovering them.

Is small beautiful? In terms of effectiveness probably yes.

Is big beautiful? In terms of finances probably yes.

So what we need is a big organisation for finances and a small one for effectiveness.

Hmmmn.

It turns out that size does matter after all.

Anyone fancy medium sized?

I'm moving!

For those of you who keep asking why I am not blogging the waiting is over.

But you will have to retune to www.enterprisejames.blogspot.com

Easier to type and on a slightly different topic.

I hope you enjoy.

James

turning pink

My son having finished his exams and begun to turn from white to pinkish as he is exposed to the elements again. Watching him go through exams brings back that sickening feeling I had when I did mine...
The prayer I prayed, "lord don't teach me a lesson this time"
The deals I made... "one more page and then another polo mint."
But above all that sense of guilt that there must be something more I should have done.
I guess that still drives me now.
In the meantime the boy has a new suit, shirt and tie and is about to get his hair cut... Ready to face that other nightmare of my youth... Dances.

I must try and hide my fear on his behalf, after all I met his mum at a school dance. Who knows what could change tonight?
Maybe just another opportunity to turn a bit more pink!

The value of sleep

The end of another overwhelming week sends me back to the blog and try and make some sense of it all. The highlight of the week is the progression of the hall project and the arrival of the lighting posts on the square. They are very big! When you chose these things they are three centimetres tall and in a catalogue. They arrive five metres tall and nearly as big as the hall. There are a forest of them too, I think there may be some noisy discussion about them… well at least they make the trees look small.
The depth of the week came when I took a funeral of a young man who had ended his own life. Thursday lunchtime saw hundreds of people of all ages packed the church as all of us felt the weight of what had happened. There was no anger, there was little despair, there was a lot of love. We listened to his friends, we heard his music and we found comfort in the passage from Romans that tells us… “nothing can separate us from the love of God” not even I declared what we do to ourselves or what is done to us.
By three o’clock I was home and turning grey, by the time Catherine was home I was despatched to bed to sleep for twelve hours. The exhaustion came from sheer emotion and trying to carry a community in it’s grief.
A better day today, it's amazing what sleep can do. Talking of which it's time for bed.

learning

It's been a complex few weeks as what I predicted at the AGM has begun to happen. Tiny cracks and fissures begin to open up as project fatigue begins to bite.
It's because, I think people have forgotten how bad things were before we started but are niggled by the fact that it's not perfect yet.
There's an argument that this is the period of the churches history... Caught between the now of Jesus coming and the not yet of his return to finish the job.
I am reminded of what Desmond Tutu said when asked what Nelson Mandela had achieved in his long imprisonment... "he learnt to forgive."
I hope that we are learning that too.

Consultation

I have had a cough/cold now for over a week and so I am still punctuating everything I say with a… cough.  It’s half term which give me opportunity to catch up on a few missed days off. 

There was quite a bit of discussion this morning at church about the three sculptures that have been submitted for the square.  Two are a bit phallic and one is a bit boring seemed to be the verdict but they haven’t seen the full set of documents yet nor met the sculptors so hopefully there’s time yet.  The biggest criticism is that they are not very Christian or more precisely they are not explicit enough in their symbolism.

This is a hard one… is St Paul’s Cathedral explicitly Christian?  A church tower, a spire a Celtic cross which many claim is pagan in origin.

“We don’t want to have to explain it to people” someone said.

It’s going to be an interesting few weeks as we “consult” which is the latest euphemism for having a friendly row!

Doing our best

It has been a week of meetings trying to hold everything together.
It takes a lot of energy to do this. Much of this work would be greatly helped by everyone involved assuming that everyone else involved was actually trying to do their best.
We are trained to be suspicious of each other by the media, by our culture, and sadly by our experience of being let down. It's part of the Christian discipline to forgive and begin again and one which I will continue to have to practice.

Niggles

A niggly kind of day...
The heating is off for its summer holiday and those who have cast a clout even though May is not out are complaining at the cold in church.
"why are there not double sinks in the kitchen?"
"because we have a dishwasher."
This is afternoon things improve with youth group spending a cheerful couple of hours planning a prayer space upstairs in the new hall.
Then off to visit my son Ben in hospital, a bit sore and a lot miserable at a post operative infection raging through his body. At the end of the visit he is able to walk us to the lift and give us big hugs. Once again I am struck by the way in which the sick care for the well.
Now I am back at church enjoying a concert by really good amateurs and reflecting on the beauty of the church and valuing space and stillness in a mad busy day.
I have just won a coffee cake in a raffle, life is improving!

Democracy Matters

To Huddersfield to hear David Steele, a great old political warhorse. "Education is the key to propper democracy" being one of his key themes. Each country has to find it's own way of doing democracy. It made me think about Yemen and whether there could be a tribal way of doing democracy... In this country real democracy could do with being as localised as possible. Where town villages and cites still have meaning and force in people's lives then they should be the places where decisions are made.
As we become a less mobile population we might need to return to the concept of the parish.
Top quote for the evening belongs to Harold Wilson in whose name the lecture took place.
“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”

Benchmark

A weeks holiday in Cornwall and it's back to work with a bump and flurry of activity centred on the hall project.
The square is beginning to take place and I am currently sat on one of the new benches in the sunshine drinking ginger beer and wondering if life gets any better.
This morning we have been with the finance people from Yorkshire Forward thinking we may need to do the hard sell on what remains of the project... As it turns out unnecessarily as it turns out what has so far been achieved sells itself.
The next big task, as well as finishing is to learn how to make this work. Like people moving from a pushbike to a Ferrari it's going to be hard to raise our game, but our journey so far encourages me to be hopeful.

An Inconvenient Truth

Holy Week is never easy for christians , not for what you might expect although it is a month of Sundays.
Okay a week of Sundays!
Rather because it makes us face up to two aweful truths, our sin and what it cost Jesus to deal with it.
What's hard for me is not so much the dying but the suffering of Jesus...
It goes on and on like a car crash in slow motion with us helpless spectator.
It's Friday but Sundays coming!

Code of Silence

I am destined to blog while waiting... Today I am in Nathan's barbers with a queue of seven slighlty reluctant men. There's no coffee, no flowers just a slightly foggy goldfish bowl and a rare collection of car magasines.
We sit in silence and try not to catch one another's eye. Forty minutes have passed already and nobody has yet to break the code of silence.
My phone goes and I have to answer... Catherine is in a café but I am holding my ground.

leaving

Much rejoicing and hard work today as we move my son and his wife out of our house into their new home. It's very exciting as dismantle a balcony and bring a sofa in through the window... Risk assessments were made but so long as it was me up a ladder the removal men were happy!
A first home, even a rented one is an important step, and although they have done this once already to their flat in London the house seems especially exciting.
Makes me think about the numerous people for whom the crunch means this is an impossible dream.
The bible has no formula for a wedding but that someone leaves their family and cleaves to their wife.
Today feels like a proper leaving and a lovely thing too!

Finished

My thoughts in yesterday's blog became this magasine article today.
Wh oknows what they might become next!

Out of the Ordinary – Finished!
I wish I had a pound for every time someone asked me when the work at Mytholmroyd would be finished. It sounds such an easy question but it is actually very hard to answer. Of course with any building projects you have deadlines and builder’s promises but it is never an exact science. If I had another five pound for every time someone asked me if or when we were going to start work on the church in Cragg Vale I would be very rich indeed. The answer to both is that I don’t know, but also in a way I am not that bothered.
Generally speaking I don’t like finishing things, preferring the ongoing story rather than the complete one. I think that’s why when it comes to novels I like to read ones that are part of a series, so that after you have invested a great deal of effort in getting to know a character you are able to continue the relationship in the next book. My son, an avid reader, is always really sad when he finishes a book that he won’t continue the friendship with the characters he has met. Maybe that’s the attraction of soap operas, we never have to say goodbye.
It’s the run up to Easter and one thing has struck me this year about the words of Jesus on the cross. At the very end he says: “It is finished” and then he dies. Scholars have debated for ages about what he meant. The obvious understanding would be that his life is finished. However he doesn’t say “I am finished!” but “it is finished.” The consensus now is that Jesus was saying that he has finished the job he came to do.
Earlier in John’s Gospel we read the very familiar words that outline Jesus’ mission: “
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. John 3:16-17 (KJV)
Jesus came to save the world and the cross was the means by which he did it. Somehow he took the punishment, which because of our sin was meant to be ours, on himself: replacing us at the last minute because of his love.
Like all the best stories although the work was done the story continued with the resurrection. The work and the story continue in us as we find our way to Jesus and experience that new life for ourselves.
“It is finished!” the last words of the story of our salvation but not the last words of our relationship with God through Jesus.
I hope that you find you place in God’s story this Easter time and that you remain, like me, a work in progress.

finishing

It's been a while since I sat still as day molded into night into sleep and back again.
I am sat in a café waiting for Catherine to finish work so that I can take her home. We are down to one car which takes some organising. It's been an interesting morning with a small group of Rural Deans who on the whole are a positive bunch but like everyone else are capable of joining the chorus of "Nobody knows the trouble I see."
The first draft of the book is printed and there for anyone to see. I haven't had the courage to show it to anyone yet though I have pointed at it!
Finishing things is hard...
Everything except blogs!

Passion

Back to what I know and do best today with a combination of storytelling, project encouragement, and healing rifts around my two parishes. I always forget that when I am a bit fed up visiting people cheers me up… people are what I am passionate about… so being with people reconnects me with my vocation.
Yesterday I was talking with a group of clergy about passion when someone became very upset. I think what pushed the button was thinking about passions, clearly many of those present felt that what they were passionate about as clergy had been blocked out by the other things they were being asked to do.
Today I talked to a brilliant teacher who felt that they were being forced out of working with the children that they loved in order to deal with all the other stuff thrown at them by their job.
Are we destined to lose the bit of the job we love in order to do the job we get paid for?
I hope not… today I was able to be the working, passionate priest out and about helping people.
No wonder I feel better.

Betraying the other woman

Still trying to shake off Sunday... Mothers's Day, Mothering Sunday on which I was inflicted with that disaster for vicars a loss of my voice.
I ended up oscilating between Barry White and Barry Humphries!
Comedy voices appart it was the first "significant" Sunday in ages since the sabbatical when I have been not present at one of my churches. It felt a bit weird to get up late and only visit one of the two communities I hang out with. How people cope when they have a multiplicity of congregations cope I don't know.
Catherine always reckons that Cragg is my other woman... I missed her yesterday and so next week I'll need to take flowers.

Friendship

To Halifax and Calderdale Council's health scrutiny committee with a friend of mine who is transgender. She has had a hard journey to find out who she is and I have been a distant support as best I could. It is a journey that I wouldn't recommend to anyone, in all departments it's a painful journey.
What Clare has needed has been friendship... Or as they call them "people who give unconditional positive regard."
It's been hard for me not to wade in with an unhelpful prophetic voise in what has been a pastoral situation.
As I sat with a slightly mottley and yet heroic collection of humanity I allowed myself a moment of reflection of how this would appear to others only to stop myself. What others will think is always the wrong question. The right question is always what's right.

leadership

It's been an interesting evening with PCC at Cragg with lots of positive talk about stuff and plans for the future. With it came a discussion about pastoral support which got a bit personal.
It brought up an age old problem of those in leadership... To what extent does your competency make others incompetent? If a church has a gifted evangelist does that mean others stop sharing their faith? If a community has an effective project champion does that mean that nobody else need drive it forward? I always thought that effective leadership was that which lead by example... You model by good example and people do as you do and not just as you say.
Paul writes of Jesus that he emptied himself taking the form of a servant. Deliberately Jesus chooses to be less so that we might be more. He chose to leave his people so that we might grow up and with the help of the Holy Spirit change the world.
Today I am on a train running away to Manchester to see a film about superhumans...that should bring me back down to earth.

1970's revisited

A historic meeting of Catholics and Anglicans in wakefield draws together a great crowd looking at each other and realising that we are alike.
It seems very important in this week when we have seen violence in Ireland again. Is it just me or have we just leapt back fo the 1970s?
We have a recession.
We have violence in Ireland.
There is even talk of opening the mines in South Yorkshire!


Not the same because we meet today in wakefield Catholics and Anglicans.
We build or business centre in our church.
Both communities in Ireland are not rising to the call to arms.
As the bishop said:"We are not strangers but friends."