And they danced...

Wow, it has been nearly a month since I last posted anything... really doesn't seem that long! But then it does seem like only yesterday that it was the end of term and these coming two weeks were months away! "Time flys when you're having fun" the saying goes!

Over the past two Sundays I have been doing a good impression of a travelling preacher... I've managed to travel from the very north (Newcastle upon Tyne) to almost the very south (Maidstone, well Bearsted to be more accurate). And I discovered that it was the church in the south that laughed at my jokes... not sure whether that proves southerners have a better sense of humour or that because I'm a southerner I only know how to tell jokes other southerners find funny!

Anyway... moving on...

Doing this bit of travelling around has meant that I have spent a little bit of time out and about in the places I have been visiting. Maidstone sits just at the bottom of the North Downs, a chalky band of hills that spans the county of Kent and is an important habitat for a wide variety of wildlife. Though I have spent many a holiday in and around these hills my knowledge is very limited, but luckierly for me I have an Aunt and Uncle who know the hills like the backs of their hands and know where all the good spots are for seeing rare insects, flowers etc. So after a hard morning in the pulpit on Sunday, we headed for the hills on not a bear hunt, but a butterfly hunt.

And what butterflies we found: Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers, Common Blues, Chalkhill Blues, a Small Tortiseshell, a Silver-spotted Skipper and Andonis Blues.

However, the thing that will stay with me from our walk is how when the sun came out from behind the clouds the hillside became alive. Everything would be still, butterflies hidden from sight, very little movement amongst the flowers, then the sun would come out and the butterflies would fly, then as the sun went once again behind a cloud, all would again become calm. It was like a musical swell being repeated over and over again... Amazing!

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.

A shacking and a quivering...

This Sunday I had my first experience of preaching in a Cambridge church. Now, this isn't the first time I've preached and I'm always a little nervous; but this week...

But why? What made this congregation any different from all the other congregations I've stood in front of? Well, my College Principal was there, then there was a former College Principal, several other retired ministers, quite a few people with PhDs and the list goes on. The CVs of the congregation are impressive to say the least. But should people's qualifications really matter on a Sunday morning in the pews?

If I was presenting an academic paper I could understand why it matters. Not that I'm saying a sermon should not be well researched or be without academic rigor. But, a Sunday morning (or any other time in the week when God' people gather) is about worshipping God together; offering the events of the past week and the events of the coming week to God and exploring together God's message to us in the Bible. It is the place where everyone is equal, because we are all equal before God. And we are all human--though some may seem super-human at time.

All I have to do now is remember this the next time...

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!

A long road trip for a very good reason...

So I've completed an academic year of study, but of course this is not the only education an ordinand needs if they are actually going to minister effectively in the Church. And though I am training to be a Minister of Word and Sacrament, leading worship on a Sunday morning is not the only thing I will have to do, as I have discovered this week. In fact, finding time to prepare worship for a Sunday morning will be a challenged!

Though as a first year, it is not a requirement for me to undertake a placement this summer, I thought that this might be a good use of some of my summer vacation. Yes, I know some of you are now saying "what a swot" and maybe I am, but would you have me any other way! However, there is a specific aim to my placement - pastoral encounters - which has led me not just to be a shadow to my supervising minister over the past week and for the coming weeks, but to also spending time reflecting on what relation things have to being a pastor, as well as going a long road trip.

As I sit blogging, in another window I have the live stream from the United Reformed Church General Assembly running. Ok, maybe I should find something else to do with my Saturday afternoon, but there is a point to this. As part of my consideration of pastoral encounters, my Supervisor and I felt that though we were not to be members of General Assembly this year, it was actually very important to be there, if only for a short time. Therefore, I found myself in Scarborough for a day, and now find myself listening to the live stream.

As a denomination, the URC is trying to look towards a future that 40 years ago it didn't think it would be facing. It is a church of diversity, which we celebrate, but also one which seeks to be uniting, if not united. However, there are some issues that are difficult to discuss and discern the right way forward. But as a gathering a Christians we have a common mission (as we were reminded by the new moderator Michael Jagessar in his address to General Assembly) - sharing the good news of God's of full life (salvation) for all. And in what we do and say we are not alone, because God is there in the midsts.

Looking for answers from the great beyond...

Well having spent the week exploring Spirituality in the Reform tradition, I conclude that I am no more reformed or spiritual than when I started! But then was that the object of the week?

As I sit writing I have REM playing on my stereo and the words "looking for answers from the great beyond" have just been sung and I wonder whether this was some of what I expected from the week. I  have heard the words 'spirituality' and 'reformed' on a weekly if not daily basis over the past few months, which has been left thinking "ok, but what do we actually mean?" And now after spending a week dedicated to the discussion of these terms I'm still thinking "ok, but what do we actually mean?"
(Productive use of time!)

That is possibly a harsh analysis of the week. Maybe I didn't get someone giving me simple set of definitions, but then spirituality has many different levels as does being reformed. But I have come to understand a bit more about what it means for me in the context I find myself.

I live in communion and this has many different levels and connections. There is the community of Westminster College where I phyiscally live, a constantly changing community dependent on the hour of the day, the day of week and the day of the year. There is the community of the church: where I worship on Sunday; the denomination for which I am training to be a Minister within; the body of Christ. There is my family and my friends. And there is my communion with God. All these inform how I live a life in the Spirit, i.e. my spirituality, and they also require a 'we' rather than an 'I' outlook, which is partly what it means to be reformed!

So this week I didn't need to become more reformed or spiritual, I just needed to learn what it means to live spiritually in the reformed tradition. Now my job is to apply what I've learnt, remembering I'm a 'We' not just an 'I', because wherever I am, so is God.

Seeing a bigger picture

Well it has taken most of the week to think of something to blog about, but today I have been inspired!

I have done a couple of things this week, which have lead me to reflect again on how the world perceives Christians. First, I read a book! Now I know I'm meant to read books, but this is a book I sat and read from cover to cover in the space of about a day, which really is an achievement for me. The book was entitled 'The Auschwitz Violin', which was a novel, not a textbook, and it's subject as you can most probably guess was the Holocaust. I don't want to give too much away, just incase people want to read it (I do recommend it), but in one of the opening chapters, the main character emphases that the religion of the SS officers was Christianity.

Secondly, I visited the Imperial War Museum. This is a museum that I have wanted to go to for a long time, but never actually got to till this week, when I dragged a friend along under the pretense that we need to do some research in preparation for our trip to Flanders in early September. But as well as visiting the trenches, we also took a look around the Holocaust exhibition. And here the roots of antisemitism were clearly stated to be within the Church. But interestingly, though it stated this fact, it then said that this wasn't the root of the racial hatred under Hitler.

Now, I'm not denying that Christians over the centuries have mis-treated Jews. But how easy it is to make throw away statements, because of knowing a little history?

About five years ago now I visited Israel and Palestine and one of things I went to see was the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. This is a huge exhibition dedicated to the Holocaust. It was amazing in the fact that it really expressed the pain that was felt by Israel and the Jewish people, but it also spelt out who they blamed. Yes, they blamed Hilter and the Nazis, but they also blamed the Church.

Did the Church speak out against Hilter's ghettos and concentration camps? Well if you were a German Christian and you did, you ended up there yourself. Were there SS officers who saw themselves as Christian? Possibly. Did history repeat itself in the Holocaust? Not really, the Church has got it wrong in the past over its relationship with the Jewish nation, but my impression is that Hilter perspective was very different.

The Holocaust was an event in history that caused the end of millions of lives, both Jew and Gentile. It needs to remembered, but also considered with respect the point it history it happened as well as the history that happened before. The whole picture needs to be considered not just bits.

And there is a defining point that both sides of the Christian-Jewish debate must remember:
Jesus was a Jew, and he died a Jew.