One of the challenges all ministers face is writing addresses for funerals.  Many factors affect this, but it always seems especially tricky when the service takes place at a crematorium and time is very limited.  One consolation in dear old Dibley was that slots were 45 minutes apart which gave you the full 25 minutes you were permitted for the service itself even if there a lot of people to get in and out.  Here slots are 30 minutes apart and there is a tradition known locally as the 'penguin parade' (family greet those who have come) that can easily occupy 5-10 minutes if the funeral is large.  So, allowing for time in and time out, two hymns and a couple of prayers, the tribute and the promise of hope have to be very sparse.  Hence today I have been trying to describe a life in 750 words.

Makes you pause for thought - how would you sum up your own life in 750 words?  Achievements? People? Characteristics?  Faith?  Facts?  Feelings?

Sadly funerals seem to get shorter and shorter, increasingly the deceased doesn't even get to 'attend', and families often worry more about food and flowers than the rite of passage itself.  We need to rediscover the catharsis of real mourning, the strengthening of being reminded of our hope in Christ... that cannot be neatly packaged into 20 minutes and 750 words by anyone.

Courtesy of BUGB e-news sweep, a couple of things to note.

Firstly a blog to look out for - the blog of the BUGB/URC/Methodist Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) here.  Why BUGB and not BUS?  Well BUS aren't part of CCTBI and haven't quite got their collective brains around ecumenism yet.  Well, that's to say, they haven't formally.  Whether people in BUGB really have is also debatable.  Anyway, worth a look-see if public issues interest you.

Secondly one to coagulate my blood (blood doens't boil irrespective of what the popular saying may suggest)... BBC staff moving to Salford are evidently so stressed they need a clergyman (sic) to help them, here.  Of course moving is stressful, and of course enforced relocation is more so, and it's great that Auntie Beeb is seeking to offer support to people affected.  I just resent the inference that north (of England) is scary, harsh and foreign.  Salford being the city immediately adjacent to Manchester is a place I know a little and Salford Quays is very upwardly mobile.  No doubt many BBC people will afford to live in the leafy south Manchester suburbs or some of the delightful north Cheshire villages.  Hardship?  Hardly!  I feel for those who must up sticks, leaving behind friends and family, and hope the vicar proves a good investment.  But the implicit south-centrism annoys me (just in case you hadn't noticed).  NW England is a friendly, welcoming place to be, so let's hope folk give it a chance...

Lastly my essays have now been posted.  Hurray.  Now I can concentrate on other equally urgent, and far more pastorally significant, tasks.

For those who don't get the Baptist Times and have been bemused or bewildered by rumours of what's been being said about women ministers 'down south' you can read a letter written by four (male) Baptist ministers here.  If it looks very tiny on screen you can probably click on it to 'zoom' - it worked for me.

For readers in BUGB-land, all this is very confusing for folk in BUS-land who were sure it had been sorted long since down there...

Thank you Simon, Neil, Craig and Andy for a well-crafted and pertinent letter.

Hurrah!  I have completed my essay.  It isn't a piece of work I'm especially proud of - the haste of researching and writing (25 hours or so including the tidying up) is self evident - and I sincerely hope I haven't left in any howling typos.  Anyway, it is done and it pretty much covers the required ground so it will have to do.  In order for it to arrive by post by the deadline I have to send it tomorrow.  Just so long as I pass and am thrice-qualified in this particular field I'll be happy.

Whether this qualifiation justifies the better part of 100 hours it has taken to put together the assignments is debateable.  Anyway hopefully a few donuts sent in a certain direction may help...

Time to celebrate with chocolate methinks.

I decided I needed a blog break because this morning was singularly hectic and utterly unproductive.

Then I decided that actually this morning would make an ideal Work Based Learning (WBL) opportunity for someone being formed for pastoral ministry.  Never mind 'I want to learn about preaching' or admin, or pastoral care or anything on the list of core competencies, more along the lines of 'things they don't teach you at college' (of which my friends and I already have an enormous list).  It was fine, nothing that couldn't be done, and it did include pastoral care and admin along the way.  Just didn't do anything I'd planned or anything that was urgent (so why you wonder am I taking five just now); that seems to me to be an important experience for any would-be minister even if it can't be conjured ex nihilo for a placement.

Hurrah for Amazon MP3 downloads; hurrah for email, hurrah that the church phone can only receive one call at a time!!

Now, back to work and finishing that pesky essay.