. . . So many blessings, it make sure your head spin!
Today started at twenty to four with, as always, my daily Office. This was quickly followed by a bit of a read and then, unusually for me, an nap as the wretched cold began to bite again (no, it's not man 'flu').
Woke up and did some admin' (we live in difficult times indeed) and then OFF to breakfast meeting with the architect to discuss potential building plans. All very exciting with the prospect of servicing and transforming the community we serve becoming just a little closer. So many questions to answer before we get planning permission but it feels like the project it is on the way to become real. Hallelujah or what?
On to next meeting, arriving later than I would have liked, where we looked at remembrance and related issues and then, another rush and into another meeting, this time about law and policing and helping the community.y to understand the facts and feel safer because of it! No sooner has this meeting ended than I find myself rushing back to set up our 'Kid's Club' work: 120 minutes of exquisite joy or amazing pain depending on how they are doing. Unbeaten at table football (misspent youth) and pool (even more misspent) and taught two young ladies how to play Battleship's too! The relationships we have and the opportunities for conversation with them on life the universe and everything is wonderful.
Think there might have been a leak in a nearby, hithertounknown, testosterone factory tonight as they kept chasing each other and ca.uing mayhem (bless them)!
KId's Club finishes and no sooner have we packed it all away, set out the room for Sunday services and tidied stuff, and I find myself off to another meeting; sensitivity of the utmost import with this one. That done, it's back and into the church building to do some more tidying up of things.
Between then and now there was a quick bit of the pastoral stuff and a bit of a chill (tired thanks to the cold - not used to tired, don't think I'll order a subscription!).
So many conversations amid the meetings and so many challenges, blessings and opportunities tinged with the odd niggly bits; like why do people read to you the things you have in hand?
So thank You Lord for the ability to be part of so much and have so much fun.
Thank You Lord for the mundane, for without it how would we know what the special bits are?
Thank You Lord for those who are being drawn close through the things you do in their lives - good job I stand back or else I'd probably mess it all up.
More sadness came as a member of on of the churches passes into glory - may they rest in peace and rise in glory.
Midnight is here and I'm having an early night in readiness for my equally early start - PTL
Showing posts with label the joy of ministry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the joy of ministry. Show all posts
Friday, 2 December 2016
Saturday, 26 November 2016
What's the 'best' bit of the job?
It's amazing how many people ask me that question during the week, and when they do there are normally a few assumptions made along with the asking - so how's about we have a quick consideration of what they think might be true concerning me and my ministry:
The most common assumption this time of the year is, with Christmas just around the corner, that I'm coming up to my 'busy' time. In fact this is a smoke and mirrors moment because I always feel that the run up to Christmas is perhaps one of my quietest. Since people assume I'm busy, they leave me alone and so I'm left with the highly visible carol concerts, Christingles, school plays and the like which in turn confirm my busyness. I'm never any more busy during the Christmas run in and what is before me is always, generally speaking, fun.
The most common assumption all year round is that weddings must be the 'best' bit and funerals (which is where the topic is often raised) must be the worst, or at least saddest, and therefore probably the 'worst' bit! Here, perhaps surprisingly for the many who present me with the, "I bet weddings are the best bit of the job, aren't they?" I have to say that that title would go to the funerals I conduct. This generally results in a bit of a shock and the question, "Really?"
One of the most amazing opportunities I have is that of making the experience of someone about to be in the same physical space with a loved one for the last time as positive and enjoyable (a word people often look shocked at) as it can be. If I can bring the person to life in anecdote and confirm the positives and demonstrate how the negatives we're part of the journey and therefore part of the person (without diminishing the person making things a curse) and do all this with the opportunity for them to laugh, smile and remember the deceased - and in so doing create a service the deceased would enjoy being at (because they are, aren't they?)- then I've done it right.
Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy weddings, but they are a different animal and the connections made (regardless of how hard you work at them) are not the same as those made at a funeral.
The most common 'funny' assumption is that old chestnut which states hat we clergy only work one day a week, and that's Sunday. Of course, being a bit of a fundamentalist fanatic (a label I won after telling a churchwarden in a place I was visiting that he needed to be modelling Christ for the congaregatiin and the community of which he was a pillar) I have to tell them lthat, because of the fourth commandment, I never work on Sunday! Now that's an invitation to an interesting conversation for sure!
And I don't work on a Sunday - I worship - just as I have done on a Sunday for as long as I have realised my salvation lies in Jesus, the Christ, and called myself a Christian. Oddly, some of those I meet (including clergy) seem to think that being a cleric is a job and that when they have a Sunday off this means they don't have to go to church* - church on Sunday is not a workplace to be set free from, to see it as that is to forget that underneath it all we are all laos (The people of God) and reduce calling to nothing more than yet another job, albeit a job of a very different kind.
Perhaps that's why some of those I meet tell me of how they operate Office hours, answerphones going on outside of them, and how the Vicarage is their home and not a place that people should be visiting coming to engage with them. Meanwhile I long for the days when the daily routine was walking (or in some other way covering) the patch and engaging with the people of the parish.
Ministry is about relationship and relationships are about people and underpinning, and overarching, that is the reconciled life in God the Father. enabled by the Holy Spirit, won for us by Jesus, the Christ.
So the real answer is all of it, all of the time - yes even at 2:30 in the morning when one of those in the patch who is mentally ill is having a crisis, because we stand with them as Christ stands with us - and who knows, they might just be an angel ;-)
So Lord, Thank You for today, the opportunities, the blessings and the challenges, keep them coming.
* I love holidays amd the opportunity to go worship somewhere different and, best bit for me, be on the receiving end of a blessing.
The most common assumption this time of the year is, with Christmas just around the corner, that I'm coming up to my 'busy' time. In fact this is a smoke and mirrors moment because I always feel that the run up to Christmas is perhaps one of my quietest. Since people assume I'm busy, they leave me alone and so I'm left with the highly visible carol concerts, Christingles, school plays and the like which in turn confirm my busyness. I'm never any more busy during the Christmas run in and what is before me is always, generally speaking, fun.
The most common assumption all year round is that weddings must be the 'best' bit and funerals (which is where the topic is often raised) must be the worst, or at least saddest, and therefore probably the 'worst' bit! Here, perhaps surprisingly for the many who present me with the, "I bet weddings are the best bit of the job, aren't they?" I have to say that that title would go to the funerals I conduct. This generally results in a bit of a shock and the question, "Really?"
One of the most amazing opportunities I have is that of making the experience of someone about to be in the same physical space with a loved one for the last time as positive and enjoyable (a word people often look shocked at) as it can be. If I can bring the person to life in anecdote and confirm the positives and demonstrate how the negatives we're part of the journey and therefore part of the person (without diminishing the person making things a curse) and do all this with the opportunity for them to laugh, smile and remember the deceased - and in so doing create a service the deceased would enjoy being at (because they are, aren't they?)- then I've done it right.
Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy weddings, but they are a different animal and the connections made (regardless of how hard you work at them) are not the same as those made at a funeral.
The most common 'funny' assumption is that old chestnut which states hat we clergy only work one day a week, and that's Sunday. Of course, being a bit of a fundamentalist fanatic (a label I won after telling a churchwarden in a place I was visiting that he needed to be modelling Christ for the congaregatiin and the community of which he was a pillar) I have to tell them lthat, because of the fourth commandment, I never work on Sunday! Now that's an invitation to an interesting conversation for sure!
And I don't work on a Sunday - I worship - just as I have done on a Sunday for as long as I have realised my salvation lies in Jesus, the Christ, and called myself a Christian. Oddly, some of those I meet (including clergy) seem to think that being a cleric is a job and that when they have a Sunday off this means they don't have to go to church* - church on Sunday is not a workplace to be set free from, to see it as that is to forget that underneath it all we are all laos (The people of God) and reduce calling to nothing more than yet another job, albeit a job of a very different kind.
Perhaps that's why some of those I meet tell me of how they operate Office hours, answerphones going on outside of them, and how the Vicarage is their home and not a place that people should be visiting coming to engage with them. Meanwhile I long for the days when the daily routine was walking (or in some other way covering) the patch and engaging with the people of the parish.
Ministry is about relationship and relationships are about people and underpinning, and overarching, that is the reconciled life in God the Father. enabled by the Holy Spirit, won for us by Jesus, the Christ.
So the real answer is all of it, all of the time - yes even at 2:30 in the morning when one of those in the patch who is mentally ill is having a crisis, because we stand with them as Christ stands with us - and who knows, they might just be an angel ;-)
So Lord, Thank You for today, the opportunities, the blessings and the challenges, keep them coming.
* I love holidays amd the opportunity to go worship somewhere different and, best bit for me, be on the receiving end of a blessing.
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