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  • Annual Festival of the Tidy-ish Office

    It's that annual 'I really must clear this desk, tidy this office, and recycle all this stuff' day. So, finally, all the Advent resources have been re-shelved;  Lent, Holy Week and Easter are back where they belong; the new stash of stuff I bought to replace the stash of stuff I bequeathed last year had been put in a box (so I can forget I have it and buy more net year!).

    Annual leave begins officially on Monday (though Vicar School time kind of ended on Wednesday) and I have four whole weeks of not doing either of my roles... which is very odd but very needed.

    Just need to get my house and garden tidy enough for tomorrow's church barbecue, conduct Sunday's service and then, DV, I'm done!

  • A few 'hmmms' along the way...

    Sunday will be the fourth and last of my little series on Sunday School favourites, with a very quick (and woefully inadequate) look at the story of Esther.

    What has struck me as we've shared these stories is the way the Holy Spirit is still very active even when my logic for the series was about as deep as 'these are four well known stories beloved of Sunday schools, two men, two women, job done'

    We had David the week of the general election, and Ruth as the headlines on migrants/refugees/asylum seekers continued to dominate the news.  We had Daniel with thoughts of freedom of religion and peaceful protest, and end with Esther just as across the ocean a woman might face the 'for such a time as this' challenge.

    As a church we've hosted a General Election hustings, agreed to refresh a room for use as a Warm Hub, begun a thorough-going review of police and procedures, welcomed oodles of visitors to our services, and been faced with questions of how to respond in a 'Jesus' way to complex matters.  And yes, for the umptieth time in my life, there have been the 'for such a time as this' allusions about my own ministry.

    As year one of bi-vocational ministry draw to its end, and I have four weeks away from both roles, it's certainly been an adventure so far.

    So, today, I'll cherish the 'hmm' moments and be grateful to the one who calls and equips me to do this stuff the best I can. 

  • Brian Haymes RIP

    Tributes have, rightly, been paid to Revd Dr Brian Haymes, who died last week.  See here.

    I first came across Brian when I was a NAM and he was leading a session for us on sermon preparation.  It stayed with me, largely, if I am honest, because it felt so utterly unrealistic for those of us serving small congregations that still expected two full services a week.  There simply weren't enough hours in the week to produce one sermon of the standard Brian described, never mind two.  But even so, there were good 'take aways' that have stayed with me - an abiding memory of him saying that we should seek to hold the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other (not uniquely his idea) and to do so, using whichever newspaper our congregation members read.  One NAM from Merseyside quipped that in his congregation that would be the Racing Post.  Fleetingly, Brian looked nonplussed, but he smiled, took it in good part, and carried on... grounded, contextual preaching was the heart of his message.  He was right.

    Since moving a year ago, I had begun to get to know Brian as a 'real person' not just some Baptist Giant (literally and metaphorically) as I was invited to join a ministers' book group that met in his home.  Amidst such intellectual giants (I think everyone else had a PhD) I could have felt hopelessly inadequate, but Brian always, graciously, gave me a voice. Perhaps more significantly, for me at least, he welcomed us around the table in the family kitchen for steaming bowls of soup, sandwiches and homemade cake.  Here we would 'chew the fat', he would ask after the college, the church, the Union, always hopeful, always risking disappointment, and always true to his Baptist convictions.

    Brian had promised me the opportunity to choose books from his library, something we never quite managed to arrange.  But instead I carry the memories of reading books published in the 2020s and discussing them in Brian's home - that's way more precious.

    Brian preached well (teaching and encouraging others to do likewise) and kept the faith, now he enters his eternal rest, a good and faithful servant whose work here is done.