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Archive for the ‘Church’ Category

Glimpses of Brokenness

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 20 May, 2011| 2 Comments »

Some of the things that I’ve come across or heard in the last few days:

  • A granny was robbed of gold necklace after she collected her grandchild from our school nursery. Lunchtime yesterday.
  • A friend’s business was burgled a few days ago. When police came round to look at the break-in they smelt something suspicious. They raided the unit next door and found a cannabis factory.
  • 2 men (dad and an uncle?) were taking a young lad, maybe six years old, to the ice-cream van, just as school was out and streams of kids were passing and queuing. They were dressed in t-shirts bearing what I have found are sometimes called ‘comedy‘ phrases. I wasn’t very amused myself. I don’t shop at Blue Inc, or I’d be boycotting their business.
  • A kid who thought that ‘the taxpayer’ would pay for our broken windows, so it wasn’t such a big issue after all.

And these are just the stories that I can tell in public. The evil and brokenness around us here can sometimes be heartbreaking. Despite that, we are encouraged regularly. This week some kind builders have been supplying us with wooden pallets (for burning and for storing logs on) and some tree surgeons gave us a tree that they’d been chopping down. Vicarage warmth is assured for next winter.

Like every week at the Vicarage, it’s been a fair old mix, but perhaps more of a mix than most people enjoy. It makes me remember that old hymn and resolve to employ my heart and tongue as I should.

Through all the changing scenes of life,
in trouble and in joy,
the praises of my God shall still
my heart and tongue employ.

Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady

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Men up the Tower

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 18 May, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As I mentioned in my last post, this Sunday just gone some stone fell off our church tower, shattering on the paving slabs just in front of the main church doors. I’d thought it was plaster, but in fact the stuff that came off was sandstone. The sandstone has weathered and suffered the effects of pollution since the church was built in 1840 and the stone has started to crumble.

Today a team of workmen steeplejacks [late edit – forgot the word!] have been abseiling around the tower to check all the stone decorations and check that they’re safe. The original chunks that fell off came from a decorative arch over the church clock. When the men went to check the rest of that particular arch, large chunks crumbled off in their hands. So they have removed as much as they can from that side.

I spotted them just as they’d finished on the first side, and went back out with the camera as they were checking the next clock face. That decorative arch isn’t looking so crumbly, but you can see on the right hand side that the bottom of the arch has weathered quite badly (just near 3 o’clock).

Men up the tower

Rather them than me, especially in this drizzle

So we’re looking forward to being able to enter through the main church doors on Sunday. That news will be extra welcome to sheepish latecomers who were on full view last week. And then there’s the next step of replacing the stonework that’s been removed. I love our beautiful building but I must admit that sometimes I wish we met in a tin shed.

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Census Confusion

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 25 March, 2011| 26 Comments »

As Formfiller-In-Chief in the Vicarage, the lovely census form falls to me. Actually, we have two of them, as the database people think that The Vicarage at House Number, Street Name is a different dwelling to House Number, Street Name. Anyway, I will be communing with the forms over the weekend and battling with the usual question:

What exactly does your husband DO?

Before I get to the that, there’s the question of the Vicarage itself. I’m not sure whether our landlord is the Vicar’s employer or not, as he’s not officially ’employed’ – he’s an ‘office holder’ and the house is part of his ‘freehold’.

And then, of course, there is the employment question. The Vicar is not really an employee (although the diocese handle his stipend and he answers to the bishop), nor self-employed (though many of the ways that HMRC look at him are similar). I think he may be ‘doing any other kind of paid work’. The folk over at Thinking Anglicans are also wrestling with this and are suggesting ticking all the boxes in the first employment question (26) – although I think that option is really for people who have more than one job.

Alas, you do not have that choice for Question 33 and you must choose between being an employee and being self-employed. What will you all be choosing? And there is also the challenge of describing what you do in your main job. Pastor-teacher? Cure of souls? Ministry? Preaching the word and administering the sacraments?

I’m also looking forward to answering Q37: At your workplace, what is the main activity of your employer? If we go with the thought that the Vicar is employed by the Lord, I could have some fun with this: Running the universe. Upholding all things by His powerful word. For example.

Looking forward to hearing your suggestions. And it’s meant to be completed by Sunday…

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A Year Comes Around Quickly

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 7 March, 2011| 3 Comments »

I’m off again today on the Proclamation Trust’s wonderful Minister’s Wives’ Conference. I’m looking forward to being refreshed by teaching from Lizzie Smallwood and Vaughan Roberts, chatting to friends from dawn until dusk and being encouraged by hearing what God is doing in many different places.

It’s hard to believe that it’s a year since I was last at Hothorpe Hall. We have been living in our Vicarage for two years now. We moved in during February half term and the Vicar was inducted on 10th March.

There seems to be a pattern in moving to a new parish: a while ago I blogged about the ‘I hate foreign’ part that happens early on. But a lot of clergy say that the second and third years can be tough – when you start changing things more and your weaknesses become more exposed.  It’s when you begin to really know your congregation and your parish and they you. I think we’ve found that true – last summer felt like quite hard going. But now we are very encouraged by signs of growth.

And only yesterday the Vicar launched a big new initiative: we are aiming to increase the number of small groups. We’ve even had fabulous banners printed up. Designed by a Vicar’s wife, natch.

Does your church have small groups? How are they getting on? Any wisdom could come in very handy…

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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!

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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…

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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?

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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!

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The Vicar’s Wife on Air

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , on 24 December, 2010| 1 Comment »

Just in case you don’t follow my Twitter stream, I thought I’d let you know that you can hear me on Radio 5 Live tonight, Christmas Eve. I’m joining a discussion on ‘What does Christmas mean to me?’ on the Stephen Nolan Show, although it’s being hosted by Ranvir Singh tonight.

Do pray, as I’m feeling quite nervous at this point. My dad was a radio journalist until he retired, so I have a family reputation to uphold. I’ll be enormously pleased if I manage to get through without saying ‘er’ and ‘um’ more often than I say something coherent.

In the meantime, we are chilling after a cheery Christmas Cracker service and waiting for the gammon to be finished. I boiled it in leftover Spiced Cranapple before giving it a final blast in the oven.

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Festive Refreshments: Poll Results

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 23 December, 2010| 2 Comments »

So it seems we all love our mince pies and some of us really go to town and drink champers at our festive services. If we’ve not had to cancel them because of all the snow and ice. Sigh. Actually, we’ve had a very encouraging time here with our festive services. And are hoping that the most recent dump of snow followed by freezing conditions won’t dampen the enthusiasm of parishioners for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services.

I hope this shows the main results okay for you – I’m trying a new way of displaying them which involves far less typing. As always, the ‘other’ category gave some fun and interesting answers. I think some of these answers locate the church – I’m guessing that the samosas aren’t on offer in a rural parish…

  • Stollen
  • Samosas
  • Sloe gin, apple juice, nuts, crisps etc
  • Fresh baked cookies
  • Yule log – we’re BIG fans!!

A single sad ‘other’ answer was that no refreshments were being served. I just hope that this was only because the respondent was thinking about the Midnight Communion service. Christmas is such a great time for God’s people to show expansive hospitality that I shudder when I think of churches who might not be taking up that opportunity.

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