Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for February, 2011

Books for Camp: Afterwards I Knew

Posted in Books, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 28 February, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Another book from the pile I picked up from CLC to review for our Pathfinder venture is Afterwards I Knew, which contains eight short stories, mostly set in Holland during the Second World War. The stories are fictional but are movingly told, recollecting hardships and difficult choices made by Christians in times of hunger and oppression.

The stories are peppered with lyrical language, scripture and poetry. They tell of families reunited, people finding faith and standing up for Christ.  There is rich theology here too – God’s grace in difficult times and despite our weaknesses and assurance of God’s love and the hope of the resurrection when we feel the weight of our sin.

Christian Focus recommend ‘Afterwards I Knew’ for children over 13 years old and I think 11 year olds with good comprehension skills (and knowledge of the Second World War) would be fine with it. The only rider I would place on this book is to ensure that those reading it know it is fiction. The stories are so uplifting and moving, it would be tempting to believe that they actually happened.

Who for: Boys and girls ages 11 and up (and grown-ups)
Genre: Short stories, historical fiction
Recommended for Pathfinder camp: Yes (for older Pathfinders)

Read Full Post »

The View from my Window

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 24 February, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve just been enjoying some early Spring views from my kitchen window as the sun sets on a surprisingly balmy February day. First there was the cheering sight of the robin hopping about around the bird table that the Vicar was given for Christmas. He doesn’t seem to mind all the clutter out there in the yard.

The yard is also where the Vicar was then chopping logs in a manly way to prepare the wood for our fires for next winter. We’ve had a good haul of wood over the last few weeks, mainly due to some serious redevelopment going on in our town centre. They’ve been chopping a good few trees down and have left the wood out for the hunter-gatherer tribe, of which the Vicar is an enthusiastic member.

Watching the Vicar chop logs reminds me of Almost, who we’ve not seen for a few weeks now. Almost is from Kosovo and is once again trying to get leave to remain in the UK. Almost tells us that his 3 brothers got permission some years ago but he had to return to Kosovo with his wife and family. His wife was taken ill  (with a stroke) on the way back and died recently. So he is back here trying again. He is living in cramped conditions and occasionally comes to ask if we’ll pay him for some work or for help with his gas or electric.

When Almost was last here, the Vicar was log-chopping and was then clearing up the prepared wood before he was able to take Almost to the Post Office to top up his gas card. As he does with most visiting able-bodied men, the Vicar offered Almost a go of the axe. And although Almost is much slighter than the Vicar, his axe skills were far more impressive. We asked him if he’d chopped wood before, back in Kosovo.

Ah. Too many, too many.

I wonder if our boys will grow up with great axe skills but sighing about having to chop too many, too many.

Read Full Post »

Books for Camp: Deadly Emily

Posted in Faith, Family, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 23 February, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As I mentioned the other day, I have a large pile of books that I thought might be suitable for kids on our Pathfinder camp this summer. Being a diligent sort of bookstall person, I’m aiming to read them all. And today I whizzed through the first one, Deadly Emily by Kathy Lee.

Emily Smith is a Christian. She’s still at primary school (I’m guessing Year 5 or 6) and her parents have split up so she, her brother and her mum have moved to live with her gran. Moving to a new place, coping with a new school, dealing with bullies and trusting God when everything seems to be going wrong are all covered.

Kathy Lee’s story is well written with an exciting plot which would especially appeal to girls who enjoy school and adventure stories. I liked the way in which Emily’s Christian faith is portrayed realistically without becoming cheesy. Emily clings onto God’s word in tough times but doesn’t always choose the godly thing to do. She’s a normal Christian girl and I think this makes her very accessible for the readers I’m aiming at. It’s not too long (138 pages), has no illustrations and would not be too intimidating for competent primary school readers or younger secondary school pupils.

Who for: 8-13 year old girls
Genre: School/adventure
Recommended for Pathfinder camp: Yes

Read Full Post »

Vicarage Recipes: Date and Coconut Chews

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 22 February, 2011| 5 Comments »

Someone asked me recently for a low-fat traybake. Most of my cooking isn’t terribly healthy – I prefer to have a small slice of something delicious rather than a large wedge of something worthy. However, sometimes deliciousness and worthiness can combine, as is the case with these fantastic Date and Coconut Chews.

I was given this recipe by my friend Summer after we spent a very happy day off on a walk with her and her Vicar husband. We took a picnic lunch with us. I brought soup and Summer brought various treats including these. I’m not normally a fan of dates, but these slices are wonderful – chewy and sweet but full of fruit and coconut, which I think cancels out the butter and golden syrup.

Ingredients

  • 6oz/170g plain flour
  • 3 oz/85g dessicated coconut
  • 6oz/170g stoned dates, chopped
  • 6oz/170g caster sugar
  • 3oz/85g butter (you could use hard marg, but butter is tastier, isn’t it?)
  • 2 teaspoonfuls (1 dessertspoonful) golden syrup
  • 1 egg, beaten

Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup (I always do this in the microwave, but you can do it on the stove aswell). Stir the dry ingredients together then add the hot butter mixture and the egg. Mix everything well and then spread out in a lined 9″x11″ (23cmx28cm) tin. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180ºC (Gas 4, Fan 170ºC).

When cooled a little, cut into 24 slices. I did a little maths and reckon that each slice has about 3.5g of fat. This isn’t quite low enough to classify as ‘Low Fat’ in the US , but I think it’ll do.

[Late Edit: A Twitter pal tells me he’s tried this recipe using prunes instead of dates and rice flour in the place of plain and that it worked really well. Good for those on a gluten-free diet then.]

Read Full Post »

I Love Alarm Clocks!

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , on 18 February, 2011| 6 Comments »

Not my own, you understand. I am definitely morning-challenged and I have a battle with myself every day as I force myself to leave the cosiness of bed. But we have recently discovered the wonders of children with alarm clocks.

Some folk complain about how their kids are always up at 5am or some other hour before God has risen. But ours have always been blessed with a good sleeping-in instinct. This was great when they were tiny, but now that they need to be up for school it has begun to be somewhat problematic. The Queen, if left to her devices, will sleep until 9am. Not good when school starts at 8.45am and there are things like getting dressed and breakfast to be dealt with.

So we have been waking our children in the mornings and cranking them up for the school day. It had got particularly bad with the Queen as she likes to feel in charge of as much of her life as possible and recently, she has felt very strongly that getting up should be her domain. This means that she does not take kindly to being woken up, given a morning cuddle, having her clothes presented to her, having her curtains opened or any other morning activity being done for her by others. As you can imagine, there have been a few stressful mornings, when Mum or Dad appearing and trying to help has had the opposite of the desired effect.

Then I had a very helpful conversation with Glamourpuss, who also has a strong willed daughter, who was also getting grumpy in the mornings. Glamourpuss told me how she gives Wildchild her phone, with its alarm set. Wildchild is in charge of waking up to the alarm and bringing her mum the phone every morning. So I went straight out and bought an alarm clock for the Queen. We’re now a week in and our mornings have been transformed. The boys have one too, which has been helping them to rise, but it’s the Queen’s attitude that has undergone the greatest transformation. She has been delightful in the mornings – up and dressed without any shouting needed, and this morning she also went and spent time reading her new devotional book, praying and looking at her bible. All before breakfast.

Now a week is obviously not a habit, but I’m so glad that one of the big battles in our house seems to have disappeared. And so simply. Now I just need to find out how she bounces out of bed immediately the alarm goes off and copy her…

Read Full Post »

Christian Books and Young Teens

Posted in Church, Holidays, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 15 February, 2011| 10 Comments »

Every year the Vicar helps out on a CPAS Pathfinder venture (known as ‘camp’ even though we don’t use tents) in Devon, and I join him there with the kids. A great time is had by all learning about Jesus and having a fabulous holiday. This year I have volunteered to help out with the bookstall. They have one every year and I noticed last year that the selection of books was tailored more to the upper age of the camp and to the more literate kids.

A diverse range of children come along to our camp, from 14 year old clergy kids from the suburban Home Counties to 11 year old barely literate unchurched youngsters from the inner city. And I think it’s a real challenge to find books that will suit them. I’m currently hunting for recommendations and have bought a small pile of books to review from our local CLC bookshop.

In my review pile are the following:

Fiction

  • Deadly Emily by Kathy Lee (the Queen gobbled this up in a couple of hours and very much enjoyed it)
  • The Shock of Your Life by Adrian Holloway (recommended by the CLC manager)
  • Afterwards I Knew by Christine Farenhorst

Apologetics/Lifestyle

  • Jesus Rose from the Dead by Catherine MacKenzie
  • Friends First by Claire Pedrick and Andy Morgan

Bible/Devotional

  • For Girls Only! Devotions by Carolyn Larsen
  • No Girls Allowed Devotions by Jayce O’Neal
  • The Manga Bible by Siku
  • Esther: God’s Invisible Hand by Helen Clark

I’ve had a couple of recommendations which I’ve not managed to pick up: Hannah MacFarlane’s books and that old classic, The Chocolate Teapot by David Lawrence.

I would love to have an appropriate book for every Pathfinder this year. So I am asking around for recommendations. Have you found any good Christian literature recently? I’m not just looking for books either – how about journals, booklets or dvds?

If you’ve done youthwork, or have kids between the ages of 11-14, give or take a couple of years, or have any ideas at all, I’d love to get your recommendations. Have you run a bookstall on a summer camp? What sells well to younger teens? I’m especially interested in books that will appeal to boys, who I know are often not keen readers. All help gratefully received!

Read Full Post »

Musical Struggles

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 14 February, 2011| 22 Comments »

We struggle with music in our church. We have a lovely and talented organist, but he only comes in the evening. We have a Ministry Trainee who plays the guitar, but not all songs suit the guitar, and Rocky often has other things to do of a Sunday morning. There’s another lady who plays sometimes but she often plays at other churches.

So mostly we have cds. And midi files. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to plan a service where you have to factor in ‘have we got a singable version of that on cd?’ but it complicates matters enormously.

Often the Vicar will come through humming a tune and I will mention how much I love that song and he’ll tell me how suitable it is for the theme of the service. And then he’ll have to choose something else because the version we have in our (now rather extensive) Christian music collection is utterly dire. Or it’s a version from a conference with far too much fancy twiddling in between the verses. *sigh*

We are continually praying that the Lord would send us some musicians, but since we’ve been here the best bet looks like training up the Vicarage kids into a band. But the Engineer, although the best pianist amongst them, is still only six. So in the meantime we keep on buying cds and smiling at anyone we meet who plays anything.

I was prompted to blog about our church music when Rachel tagged me in a meme. I’m not normally a memer (? is that a word?) and I notice that Rachel didn’t answer the question herself!

Please try to name ONE (I know, there are so many to choose from) CCM [Contemporary Christian Music – I know, I didn’t know what it was either] praise song that you find unbearable and at least 2-3 reasons why, pointing to specific lyrics if you must.

Since the Vicar mainly chooses the songs at church we don’t actually suffer from songs that we can’t bear very much at all. There are a few old faves of the congregation that wouldn’t make my top ten, but I’m glad to sing them for the encouragement they bring to others and the gusto with which they are belted out. So I’m struggling to think of a song that’s unbearable too. Apart from this, which isn’t actually unbearable either – it’s gone past unbearable and out the other side:

I know I posted this before. But it was ages ago. And sometimes I need to be reminded that having musicians who can play instruments isn’t everything. Although if you’re reading this and have musical gifts and think you could serve a small inner city church in easy commuting distance of Birmingham,  in a parish where 3 bedroomed terraced houses can be purchased for £90,000, we would be overjoyed to hear from you…

Read Full Post »

Vicarage Communications

Posted in Church, Family, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 8 February, 2011| 7 Comments »

Yesterday I attended the (more or less) weekly diary meeting in the Vicarage. This is where we sort the week out, both churchwise and familywise. Monday mornings is our slot for this.

Making sure the message is received can be tricky

It’s not just me and the Vicar at these meetings: Rocky the Ministry Trainee attends too, as does Beauty, who volunteers some time to help the Vicar out with some of his admin. The weeks when this meeting doesn’t happen can get quite stressful as important information like ‘I’m doing a funeral but don’t worry I’ll definitely be back with the car in time for swimming’ doesn’t get communicated. The last couple of weeks have suffered from this lack of diary liaison.

So you will understand that I like it when we have a diary meeting. I’m not sure whether this is normal for clergy wives, but it certainly helps us.  Vicarage life suffers from a serious lack of routine, so knowing what is on this week helps me to keep my head above water. I also usually pop in to the less frequent meeting that the Vicar holds with his leadership team where they plan ahead for the coming months. This can be a great help for our plans as a family, especially as diary and admin aren’t really the Vicar’s strongest subjects.

Whilst we’re talking about Vicarage communications, I had a funny discussion on Facebook yesterday where a whole heap of Vicar’s wives (I think I decided ages ago that the collective noun is a hoot) agreed that the best way to communicate with our husbands is by email.  And this was a group of wives who don’t work outside the home, who could just pop their heads around the study door! I also use Facebook and Twitter from time to time. Little post-it notes get lost in the chaos of the study and verbal communications are immediately forgotten. Best to put it in (electronic) writing every time. How do you communicate as a family and avoid double or triple bookings or just the stress of not quite knowing what is going on and where the car has got to?

Read Full Post »

Where Does Our Help Come From?

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 2 February, 2011| 21 Comments »

Obviously, you recognise my quotation from Psalm 121:

1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

And of course, as a Christian, I look to the LORD when things are difficult and when I need help. But God uses other people to provide some of the human comfort and support I need in my Christian life and in our ministry. One of the ways that we can get that support is through formal support structures.

The other day I had a leaflet in the post about ‘Clergy Spice’, which is a programme of events run through the year by our diocese for clergy spouses. The admirable wives of our bishops and archdeacons and a few others run this and also produce a Clergy Families handbook.

But I must confess that I have never been to one of their events, but not because I don’t need support. The thing is that I already had some great support structures in place before we came to Lichfield Diocese.

Apart from my wonderful husband, who helps and encourages me daily, I am involved in three groups that enable me to share the joys and frustrations of Christian life in safety and support.

The oldest group dates back to before I even met the Vicar. I was in my early twenties and was invited by a few girlfriends to join them on a weekend away. That group met initially for some talks on the Christian life and to pray together. Twenty years later, nearly all of us are still meeting twice a year and continuing to pray for one another (we circulate a prayer letter three times a year). Not all of us are married or in paid Christian work (or married to people that are), but as the years have passed, this group has delighted us all more and more as we’ve seen the Lord’s work in us and through us.

The second support structure I tap into is the Proclamation Trust Minister’s Wives conference. I started attending these when the Vicar was still in training, and I find the refreshment of three nights away with some excellent bible teaching a great tonic. That’s the place where I catch up with folk from theological college days and make new friends who are in similar situations. Last year I was very encouraged to meet someone whose husband is in a small Black Country church like ours. Because we are in different dioceses we’d never come across each other, but the conference enabled us to share some of our experiences. I have other Vicar’s wife friends who go along to the New Wine Women in Leadership conferences, which are similarly encouraging (but possibly with a bit more singing!).

The third ministry support structure I’m involved in is an annual reunion of the group who left Oak Hill Theological College in the same year as us. I organise this and last year we held it here in our parish. Less travelling but more catering responsibility! The first couple of years after we left a pretty large group of us gathered but in subsequent years there have been fewer folk, but always at  least 15 of us, including children. We meet, share something of what has been going on in our churches, eat, go for a walk and then pray and break bread together. Alongside the meet-up I nag everyone to send prayer and praise requests, so we also have an annual prayer letter which helps folk just to feel in touch as well as pray for one another. Writing this reminds me that I need to get an email out this week about the reunion and prayer letter – we’re meeting in less than a month!

I guess I also use social media (Twitter and Facebook) for support. Last week I mentioned on Facebook that I was thinking about whether to change our Sunday school resources and I had some wonderful help from friends who’ve been (or are now) in similar quirky churches with fluctuating Sunday schools.

So I feel I’m blessed to be pretty content with my support structures. I know that I have enough discreet people who know me well who I could turn to if things were sticky in parish or just if I felt fed up. But I know that others struggle in this area.  I was interested by some comments on Twitter recently from folk (I think mainly ordinands’ wives) who felt a need for some better support.

Where do you find your support in ministry? I notice that there doesn’t seem to be a non-evangelical equivalent of the Proc Trust or New Wine. Are non-evangelicals less good at networking and supporting one another?  Or is it a personality thing? Are there other conferences out there if your diocese isn’t running things or they aren’t convenient for you? Maybe I’ll see you at the Proc Trust conference in March. But book soon – they sold out last year!

Read Full Post »