The Word of the Lord surrounding all being

After four years of theological study and church placements, my pre-ordination training draws to a close. Hopefully, in 10 days time I will receive my leaving certificate from Westminster College, Cambridge, which will state that I can go forward for ordination into ministry of Word and Sacraments in the United Reformed Church. A long, tiring, exciting, and sometimes scary journey is coming to a close, although in fact it is only the beginning!

So how do I feel about this?

Well, in my normal style, as I think my tutor has come to know so well over the years: I don't really know! Or do I...

Meet Henri, my third morph sculpture...

When I started to think back over my time on the living ministry programme, which is the final piece of my pre-ordination training, I came to the conclusion that the only way I might go some way to expressing where I have come to is through another sculpture. Here is a figure, who could be controversial; who speaks of insecurity; who is open to receive whilst quietly, even prayerfully, reflecting on all that they see and hear. The words of Scripture have come to cover them, some words and phrases standing out, whilst others have been interpreted to give meaning to what lay ahead in the future. What it means to live with and in the Word of God is a reality, yet causes the individual to bow their head in humility and honour of the awesomeness that knowledge holds.

The prophet Isaiah wrote: "All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flowers fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever." (Isaiah 40.7-8, NRSV) The words of God are weighty and can cause one to crumb and wither. Yet, there is much strength, freedom and reassurance in the words of God.  The fact that it was there in the beginning and will be there at the end, should prevent one from fading, and really truly enliven them.

In the past four years, in just the past nine months, I have wrestled with Scripture. I have listen for God's word and struggled to hear. Yet, as I have found myself more and more drawn into Scripture, I have come to know although I may not always hear it, God's Word surrounds me and is within me. And for this I am truly thankful, because it is this that has truly prepared me for the next phase on my journey as a Minister of Word and Sacraments.

'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.

Am I really ready for this?

Today the reality that my final year of training for ministry in the United Reformed Church is about to start hit. Although it has been a week since I moved out of the comfort of Westminster College to a flat which is a very long way up with a view across London, it wasn't until I walked into town to meet a member of one of the congregations I will be working with over the next 9 months, that it really sank in that 'this is it' and all being well 12 months from now I will be gearing up for ordination (if not already ordained)!

Four years, when you start out, seems a long time. It lures you into a false sense of security that by the time the four years is up you'll be ready for anything that life as a minister will throw at you! Well, with only 12 months to go, and just about to embark the part of my training which puts me within a church-setting for most of my week, I can in no way say I'm ready! I think I'm still trying to get over the shock that God thinks I'm the right person for this.

Yet here I am at the start of year four, with the process of finding my first pastorate about to beginning and the start of my internship (or living ministry programme year) a few days away. I don't feel ready for this, but as I learnt this morning, I am ready for this. I may not know how to deal with every situation I might find myself in the next 9 months, let alone the rest of my ministry. I may not know the right words for every encounter I will have and I will definitely get them wrong at times. There is every possibility that I will stumble and even fall flat on my face. But none of that really matters. What matters is that I'm ready to give it go and answer the call God has made on my life.

So although my knees are knocking and I would rather hide away than head out into the big scary world on ministry, bring it on! I am not ready, but that's ok because apparently I am ready! (And once I know what that means I will let you know.)

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.

Odd socks...

So what to do with the long Christmas vacation in Cambridge? Start writing essays? Catch up with reading? Put your feet up? All superb ideas, and maybe options I should have opted for... however, I didn't and now I seem to be continually wearing odd socks!

I decided that it would be good to experience ministry during the big Christian festivals this year. So with agreement from the Minister who supervised me over the summer and my College Tutor, I am now back on placement. It was a fantastic idea at the beginning of term, but maybe not anymore!

You would think that Christmas was easy, the story's the same every year and so are the carols. The Sunday School will have to do a Nativity and people won't feel they have had Christmas without Nine Lessons and Carols. Then you have the Luncheon Club's Christmas Lunch, the Women's Fellowship Christmas Tea and all the others. It is the season of no sermon writing and mince pie eating!

If only...

You may have three carol services on one day, but they all have to be slightly different, because you can't use that carol in one church and someone is singing a solo in another and in the other you can only find eight readers! There is the Christmas Eve and the Christmas Day addresses, which have to be short but pack a punch as this may be the only chance you get to share the message with some people till next Christmas. Then after all the lunches and teas, there are all the folk you need to visit before Christmas. Your days start early and finish very late. You loose the ability to find matching socks.

It sounds like Christmas really is a chore for a Minister of Word and Sacrament, but from what I have experienced in the past ten days, that is far from the truth. It's hard work, but it is also a huge privilege. To be able to take Communion to someone who is house-bound with Christmas greetings from the Church. To be able to share the good news of Christmas with people who may have just come to hear the carols. To do what God has called me to do is no chore but a blessing, even if it means I end up wearing odd socks.

A third of the way there

I have survived another term! Term number 4 of 12 is complete, which I guess means that I'm a third of the way to ordination! Gulp!

It does seem a bit strange to say that "I've survived", but some days that is what it feels like. If I'm not battling with Scripture, I seem to be battling with theology or trying to work out exactly who the guy with the beard was who said some when back in the depths of time something that shifted the sand on which the Church stands. I get to the end of the day worrying about whether it was Zwingli or Calvin who liked to eat cream cakes on a Sunday after preaching four three-hour sermons. Once upon a time, well 15 months ago to be a little more accurate, I had a job, a house, heating and a shower. Now I have a vocation, a rented flat, heating which needs supplementing with woolly jumpers and a bath! However, I do still seems to spend the majority of the day doing one of my least favourite activities: reading. (Another battle in my life - words!)

All this paints a rather negative picture, but where I am now is far from negative. The last 15 months has been a hard slog and that wont change. If it starts to get easy I think I might worry more. But not once can I say I have looked back to where I have come from and wished I was back there. Yes, some mornings it would be nice to walk into a warm bathroom and jump into the shower, or it would be nice to be spending the day collecting temperature readings from a potato rather than tying myself in knots over what Paul actually meant when he used the word 'righteousness' in his letter to the Romans. But hopefully one day soon I will again have a bathroom with a radiator and a shower, and really spending the day measuring the temperature of a potato is not nearly as satisfying as even making the tiniest bit of sense out of what Paul was saying about righteousness.

I know I still lack confidence in my own knowledge, that I would still rather sit and say nothing than say something that may be wrong. Every sermon I write, I doubt myself and worry that I may have strayed into some area of heresy which I am completely oblivious to. But I can now stand up in front of a group of people and share some of what I have discovered during the week with some element of confidence (though deep down I am a gibbering wreck). I can even have unscripted moments!

Theological college has changed me and will continue to change me, as will my ministry in the years to come. I can no longer (and at some level no longer want to) hide away in an office in the background. There of course will always be those moments when I wish the ground would open up and swallow me, but I'm learning that is ok. And maybe, just maybe, I am beginning to really make a start on understanding who God wants me to be.

What is the priority?

As this term progresses, weeks seems to be getting shorter and shorter whilst the 'to-do-list' gets longer and longer. So when I sat down to plan my morning prayers, that I had lead this morning, at the end of last week, picking up a bit of liturgy I had sat on my computer would have been the sensibly and less complicated thing to do. However, why make life easy for myself, starting with a blank piece of paper is so much more fun!

Not that I was actually starting with a blank piece of paper per se, because as I have found the busyness of term taking over life and seen others beginning to become swamped by work, the words 'cast your burdens upon Jesus, for he cares for you' have entered my head. They are of course Biblical (I am an ordinand after all), but not a direct scriptural quote. I think I possibly learnt them from a song (as that is where I seem to learn most of my almost scriptural quotes I ever remember). But what to do with that - well link it to an image of course!

Now this sounds all very simple, and actually it was, apart from the fact that I needed the image to be the size of 2A0. Surprisingly, I don't own a printer that prints that big, neither does the college - so 36 sheets of A4 and a role of sellotape later, my image appeared on the floor. This was excellent work (well almost), but it also consumed quite a lot of time. Time that I could have been using to read or write an essay, I spent on my knees in chapel sticking pieces of paper together. Do I have my priorities wrong?

As I have sat and reflected today I realise that I didn't have my priorities wrong. Yes, my essay of Righteousness is not going to write itself, but leading the Community of Westminster College in an act of worship, however short, is just as important. For this not just an academic community, it is also a worshipping community; something that is easily forgetting in the stresses and strains of academic life.

Besides which it part-fueled this evening's theological discussion in the pub! Result!!

And life changes again...

Tomorrow I officially start my second year at Westminster... the summer is over and its time to get back to the books!

Where have the last three months gone?

It is quite strange to think that it has been three months since the college was full of students and I was living in a routine of chapel, lectures and supervisions; but then over the summer, apart from a couple of short breaks, I haven't left the college. And the college hasn't been quiet and deserted over that time, there has been a constant flow of people through the doors. We even managed to have a fire alarm at two in the morning! My daily routine may not have revolved around college-based activities, but I have still lived as part of the college community and I think most days I have found myself walking the college corridors.

So being 'back at college' is a misnomer for me or is it? Yesterday, I met someone in the college corridors and they said to me 'how does it feel to now be a second year?" and that was when it hit me... life is about to change again! I am going to be seen as someone who has some idea of how things work, know where things are and what it means to live as part of the college community.

Well, I don't I know how everything works and I definitely don't know where everything is (I'm still trying to learn where all the light switches are). As for living in the community, well maybe the best advice I have on that one is that nothing can ever be described as normal and things are forever changing.

So life is about to change again, but if I learnt anything last year, life is always changing. It's not always a walk in the park, but it's what makes us who we are. So bring it on, I'm ready (I think)!

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.