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Synod Snapshots #2: Hellos

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 21 November, 2021| 8 Comments »

There are 483 people on General Synod – and although I didn’t meet them all in Church House this week, at some times it felt like it. I met other reps from my diocese, old friends from the church where I was married, a mutual friend of a pal from Singapore, people I know from various Christian organisations I’m involved with and LOTS of people I know from Twitter, Facebook and other places on the internet. I failed to find the brother of another friend from Singapore, who I’m told is also on synod, but I shall seek him out next time. I chatted to people I sat next to, to people in the halls and corridors, to a lady who was having lunch at the same café, and to so many people in the tearoom. I’d almost lost my voice when I got home.

When I wasn’t talking I was absorbing information. We had an induction with an overview of synod work, lots of legal stuff, a trial vote using the electronic machines and a mock debate. Once synod kicked off properly, after the behatted service in Westminster Abbey, we heard speeches from HM The Queen (delivered by the Earl of Wessex) and both archbishops.

my prayer is that the Lord’s blessing may be upon you as you embark on your deliberations; and that you will find inspiration in the joyous words of the hymn you sang this morning:

O Comforter, draw near,

within my heart appear,

and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

Elizabeth R

It seems to me that the ‘hellos’ part of synod is a key part of its work – learning to love one another across differences, but also finding our connections and the ways that we can help one another to follow and serve our God, who sends his Comforter to kindle our hearts.

So do say your ‘hello’ below if you’re a fellow synod member reading this, and even if you aren’t.

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Channelling Creativity

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 28 March, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I thought I’d tell you something new I learnt about recently. I was introduced to Canva, which is a free site for creating publicity of all sorts – flyers, Facebook posts, animations – all sorts. I’ve used it for a couple of flyers before, and have uploaded them to our church Facebook page. But this evening I went for it and created a bunch of posts for our notices tomorrow morning. Nothing like a proper deadline to generate creativity. Here’s a sample:

So pleasing, eh? It’s so much easier when someone else has chosen the fonts! And made a layout too. I’m not on commission, honest, but it’s definitely worth checking out. Maybe a project for next week, now all the clergy have got live streaming sussed *laughing hysterically emoji*?

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Getting up to Speed

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 20 March, 2020| Leave a Comment »

So today was the day of the Vicarage getting up to speed with tech. The Vicar and I are  already fairly comfortable with technology – we both blog and tweet and have Facebook accounts. We’ve uploaded videos online before and we can populate a website. Perhaps the advantage of our backgrounds in engineering – we’re not scared by machinery.

Because now church is going mostly online – there will be no Sunday services or midweek meetings for the foreseeable future. And so we’ve had a big day of pretty fast learning. We had to get a church YouTube account, we’ve been drafting blog pages and we’ve been getting our heads round Zoom and finding out about Facebook Live.

The plan is also to record and broadcast a daily prayer service at the times we’d usually host our Open Church. So people will be able to connect when they might normally come in for tea and toast. And we’re going to broadcast a morning service live on Sundays. And we’re hoping to run youth Bible studies and prayer meetings and maybe even some toddler and kids work over the internet too.

We’ve also found a telephone service which is accessed through dialling in, so people who don’t have the internet will be able to listen to a short message or a sermon over the phone. And we’re going to deliver leaflets with details around the parish and service sheets to those we think would like to join in with the services. And of course we’re making lists and aiming to phone people up and contact them individually throughout the week too.

Phew.

And I’ve been having to remind myself that this Sunday is just the start of an extended time of doing things differently. So we can adjust and improve as time goes on, but hopefully start in some sort of helpful way.

The old joke made to vicars is that they only work one day a week. And now of course the joke will be that they don’t have anything to do at all. But actually what is happening is that the week long work is changing and there are steep learning curves being climbed by gospel ministers here in the UK and all over the world as they develop ways of pastoring through this pandemic. Pray for us – for videographic mercies, for photocopying grace and for our bandwidths on Sunday morning.

 

exponential learning

Graph of time vs clergy competence in tech since last week

 

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Gone Away

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , on 5 March, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I used to post pretty often (and on Facebook and Twitter too) about Gone, the gentleman who visited the Vicarage for help and company on a regular basis. There was a comment on yesterday’s post asking about him, but I don’t have much to say I’m afraid. He’s been about on and off. He had a good few weeks where he was housed and bringing his washing over. But that was almost a year ago now, and we’ve not seen him since. One of the hardest parts of Vicarage life can be that intense involvement in people’s lives, coming to love and care for them deeply, and then – like a puff of smoke – they disappear.

I do miss his random visits, even though he takes up an enormous amount of time and energy. We pray for him and from time to time I make a call to see if I can track him down. But mainly we have to trust him to our mighty God, remembering the Lord’s great love for him.

IMG_20200203_171224590-02

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Make a Monday Difference

Posted in Lads mags, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 5 November, 2012| 6 Comments »

Last week I didn’t shop at our local Morrisons as usual. I was making a point to one of The Sun’s biggest advertisers because I support the No More Page 3 campaign. It was a pain to change the routine, but I wanted to continue to add my voice to that of nearly 52,000 people who have now signed the petition. No More Page 3 are asking The Sun to discontinue their degrading and ridiculous habit of placing a large photo of a girl wearing only her pants on Page 3. The campaign has been gathering strength over the last couple of months and I urge you to sign the petition and check out their Facebook page and Tumblr blog. Lucy Anne Holmes, who heads up the campaign, compiled this great video of some interesting conversations with male Sun readers:

On a related issue, Mike Beecham has recently relaunched a campaign for Modesty Wraps – covers for the Lads Mags magazines which are stocked in supermarkets and newsagents. Although some shops have these publications on higher shelves and behind screens, many do not and they can easily attract the attention of children (as well as making adults feel grumpy). I have had success complaining about the positioning of Lads Mags in supermarkets, so let’s see if this campaign can also gain some traction.

You can follow No More Page 3 and Modesty Wraps on Twitter.

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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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Facebook Song

Posted in Fun, tagged , , on 7 May, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Colin Buchanan, our favourite kids Christian songster, has posted this happy song about Facebook.

[HT:Nicole]

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