'Parent in God'?

The titles we give things in organisations can be funny at time. Of course, many are straightforward and describe an individual's job, but other times you have to wonder what whoever came up with title was thinking.

This week my supervisor was talking about the minister he worked under when he was at the same point in his training. But this minister was not my supervisor's supervisor, he was his 'Father in God'! I have to admit, this did make me giggle - not because my supervisor isn't old enough to be my father, because he is - but because it has the sense of one of those titles that gives a strange gravitas. What was the church/college thinking when they came up with this idea?

Now this was 40 years ago, so inclusive language wasn't such a big issue. I guess if we were to reinstate such terminal for our supervisors today, they would now be called 'Parent in God', but I have to say this does not help the title any and does conjure up the image of the Godfather! But although it does seem a slightly ridiculous title, and one that many would find awkward to use today, I suppose I can understand it. This year for me is about learning from someone who has significant experience in ministry and to some extent the relationship that will form is very much like the relationship between a parent and child. My 'parent in God' is here to shown how to do and not to do things; to explain things to me, that I don't understand; to encourage me when I find this tough. And it is not just about my own learning, for as many of the parents I know tell me, they are forever learning from their children.

Now I don't think I will ever refer to my supervisor as my 'father in God' or even my 'parent in God', but I do, on reflection, like the concept especially as I know the guiding hand my supervisor will be over the next nine months.

Reflection on a year

Whilst I have been attempting to write my sermon for tomorrow, my mind is wondering to the other things I have to do this week as my placement at St Columba’s Church and Fulbourn URC draws to an end. One task is to write my reflection for my final placement supervision, and so I thought I might as well post this on my blog as well as submit to my Supervisor.

Over a year ago I went to see my College Principal, who was acting as my Tutor at the time, and said I needed experience and guidance in how to tackle pastoral encounters. I am an introvert, so putting me in a room of strangers with whom I am suppose to talk to kind of doesn’t work (it doesn’t always work when I’m in a room of people I know). Even if I dare to step out of the corner I have placed myself in, I struggle to make contact because I really have no idea what to say. Maybe it is something in my subconscious: a deranged idea that I have nothing worth saying, or that if I say something no one will hear me anyway. Who knows, all I know is that I’d rather not be there, as well as, very oddly, at the same sort of wanting to be there. If I had the power of invisibility I think I would have it sussed. However, ministry is primarily about pastoral encounters, so if this is what God has called me to do, then there is no hiding in the corner anymore or wishing I was invisible. I needed help to work this through and that is just what I was given.

From day one of my placement, I learnt that this was something that I was not going to overcome, but like my dyslexia, something that with time and perseverance I would learn to manage. A year down the line, walking in to the hall after the morning service isn’t quite as daunting as it once was. I do still find myself wondering what I do once I have my cup of coffee in my hand, but have moved towards making my way around the room and talking to people. Going to visit someone at home or in hospital is another task I have found very difficult to do. However, with the experiences I have had and the visits I have made accompanied and unaccompanied over the year, have given me confidence that this is not something I will never be able to do. This past week particularly has shown me this, as I have managed to do my first home visited when I hadn’t even arranged to go and see people. This required me to be strict with myself and not let the other things that had to be done push it of the bottom of the ‘to do’ list, I had to fix the time I was going in my diary, but once done, felt like a massive step forward. I still have a long way to go, and need to build my confidence in not being scared of silences or knowing what to ask or how to respond, but I am being to learn this is doable.

Pastoral encounters are not confined to just visiting, coffee, or shaking hands at the door. They are also occurring in an act of worship. What is heard may or may not speak to a situation a member of the congregation finds themselves in. What is offered as worship may or may not provide the space for an individual to connect with God. Any act of worship must be constructed in the context of the pastoral concern for the congregation whilst clearing being focused on what we are about—worshipping God individually and as a community. This has not been an easy task, especially when preparing for Sunday morning is not the only thing that has to be achieved in that week. I know that at times I have lack confidence in what I have prepared and struggled to pick the right tunes for the right hymns. My lack of confidence at times has not been without cause, particularly if there has been one area of my sermon where I grappled with what I’m saying, where the words have not come together quite right. Having someone else look over what I have written to either reassure me or point me towards what I’m missing or not quite grasped has been really beneficial. For a relative novice at sermon writing, having someone who will critically look at my sermons has not only help my confidence but has caused me to wrestle more with the theology as well as the exegesis of texts, and I hope has caused my sermons to improve. However, it is very easy to get dependent on this and there is not always going to be someone there to do that for me. This summer, when I have had the time on my own in pastorate I have had to do the process on my own, which has not been easy with some the passages the lectionary has offered. It is something, however, I feel I have successfully achieved, although when you have spent a long time staring at your own work it is much harder to be objectively critical.

My time at St Columba’s and Fulbourn has been invaluable, and something that not many of my fellow students at Westminster College have had the opportunity to do so early in their training. Maybe it is something that not all of us need to do, but it is something that although it has been hard work and at times exhausting, I am pleased I have done. It means that now I am looking forward to my final year and my nine months of supervision in pastorate, rather than dreading it.

Two weeks later...

Wow... two weeks (well almost) of being on my own in a pastorate and I survived and more importantly they survived. Two weeks ago I was loosing sleep over whether I could actually do this, and two weeks on, I'm just about back to only loosing sleep over my sermon. It has been a couple of weeks which have I guess shown me more of the reality of ministry. There has not been any one checking up on me; however people have been emailing me or coming to find me to tell me what they are doing. I realised the other day that could have spent the last two weeks watching TV and nobody would have know. Me not being in the office wouldn't phase anyone. Of course you have to deliver the service on Sunday and turn up to anything that you're expected at during the week, but other than that, the only person you appear to be accountable to is yourself.

This is something that I'm just not use to. When I was working for the NHS, my boss was pretty flexible, but we were expected to be in the office each day, unless otherwise agreed, and we did have weekly progress meetings and he'd appear every so often during the week to check up on something or other.  Then, of course, there were annual reviews. Now, annual reviews do exist within the church, as well as in college life, but weekly progress meetings or someone popping in to see how the sermon's going? I suppose you could say as ministers we are accountable to our congregations every Sunday - however, some of us could get away with spouting rubbish from the pulpit, as long as we have picked the congregation's favourite hymns.

Sometimes the only critic you have is yourself. But there is being critical of yourself and being critical of yourself. I know I am very good at putting myself and what I do down, but I also know when I could have done better or haven't put as much effort in as I could. And in ministry, this we then have to reconcile with God, for its for the good of God's kingdom we are working. It's not always going to go exactly to plan or be exactly right, and there will be weeks when however hard I try, my sermon will be far from perfect. But if I can honestly say on Sunday morning that I have at least attempt to wrest with what God's say in a text, its ok to pick the congregation's favourite hymns to cover up the interpretive mess that seems to be the resultant sermon.

Two weeks...

So another new week, week 4 of this part of my placement and now I'm on my own. I have just left my supervisor waiting for a bus, so that he can jet off to Ghana to attend a conference and visit some projects that St Columba's United Reformed Church, Cambridge, support. All will be well, and if it's not, it will soon be over!

Sat here this morning, thinking that I have pastoral charge of two congregations for two weeks, is really very daunting. Having just spent the weekend attending inductions and ordinations thinking I'm no near ready for that, whilst knowing it will be here sooner than I think, coupled with this morning's reality makes me want to hid under the desk for the next two weeks with my fingers in my ears. Alas, that is not an option, how ever much I wish it was, and at least it is only two weeks. What can go wrong in two weeks? Ok, a lot can go wrong in two weeks, but its not and if it does the opening verses of Psalm 121 come to mind:

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
   from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
   who made heaven and earth.

Then I'll go banging on some doors in the hope that not everyone has gone on holiday this week.

Church History... to study or not to study it?

As the weeks of the summer vacation quickly disappear, I seem to have embarked on a whistle stop historic tour. Last week I spent most of the week talking, or rather listening to numerous papers, about the church in England during the 17th century and tomorrow I head to Belgium and the Western Front to find out about what the Church was doing during the First World War.

But I'm training to minister in the world today, so why bother with what happened in the past?

Well, as was pointed out to us last week, Christianity is a religion rooted in history. The Bible is full of historic stories. The Church, its faith and mission, have been shaped by history. The Church today is the result of what happened in history.

And as I train for ministry in the United Reformed Church, I am training alongside others who are training to minister in the Anglican Church, the Methodist Church, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. There are of course theological differences between the denominations, but the only way to truly understand where these difference emerged is to look back in history. It is also a good place to start when trying to work out how we can work together.

1662, the year of the Book of Common Prayer or the year of the Great Ejectment - depends which denomination you are - but an important date for the church in England. However, what happened has, for most, been lost in time and as the church in England we have just been living with the consequences. But maybe its time to stop living with the consequences and start trying to understand what happened and how what seems on the surface to be a negative event can be something positive. So as denominations together we come to understand more about our differences and use this knowledge to allow us to work together for the glory of God in our neighbourhoods.

See Church History does that a point!

This week's lesson...

Well, I have survived my month as a Student Minister and what a month it has been. A funeral, two weddings, meetings about new church signs, meetings about meetings, visiting the old, visiting the young, and a few acts of worship to top it off. I have been pushed to the edge of my comfort zone and beyond, but not without being told first!

After a year of academic study, it was really good to get out and get experience of what it really means to be in pastoral ministry. Standing in the pulpit occasionally is not the same as working a six day week where preparing Sunday's morning service, though an important part of the week, sometimes takes a backseat to everything else. This I think has been one of the most important things I will take away from this month, and today it dawn on me why. My supervisor was talking about how he has always considered pastoral work as being the things that needs to be got right if you want a church to come together. The one thing that most people need is to feel valued and that is one of the key purposes of pastoral work. And how true this is, if people feel like valued members of a community then they are more likely to work at being part of that community.

So as I put my feet up for a couple of weeks, here are a couple of other important things I have learnt over my month as the apprentice:

• Always write in pencil in your diary
• A fountain pen is an essential piece of stationary
• Black coffee is drinkable

A fantastic month and I'm going to miss it.

What's the difference between a URC minister and an engineer?

Well if I was under any illusions of what life would be like as a minister in the United Reformed Church, I'm not any more! Two weeks into my month-long church placement and I've realised the value of that one day of the week I get off! Though days can be long and it can be hard to see when you will get time to actually prepare Sunday's morning worship, it does have its perks... for one thing you get to sit and drink coffee with people and call it work :o)

So now that I've seen what lies on the other side of my four years of training, do I want to put the theology books back on the shelves, wave 'goodbye' to my library desk and return to the piles of medical journal articles and further ponderings on how to cool the kidney?

This weekend I was very much reminded of my old day job and what use to get me excited (and if I'm honest, still does a little). And yes to design something again, see it built and then being used to make a difference would be amazing, but that isn't the only thing engineering is about and was only a very, very, very small part of what I did. Learning about new technology, understanding how, if at all, it could make a difference to patient care, was a lot of what I did. But is being a Minister of Word and Sacrament very different to that? Ok, maybe I'm not reading articles on the latest methods for measuring levels of B-type natriuretic peptides, but I do have to read about and interpret what God was saying to Amos in the vision of the plumb-line and then communicate what I've found out to others. Requires the same skills, there are just fewer pretty tables involved!

So apart from the reading material, life really hasn't changed much. I still sit through endless meetings, try to read my way through piles of books and even consider the pros and cons of purchasing a defibrillator!