Mission Partnership 

29th March
It was a great joy and privilege to be able, (together with our Deacons) to pray for David and Vera Pinheiro our church supported YWAM leadership team missionaries during this morning’s service as they prepare for a time of sabbatical leave and mission work. I’m delighted with a growing partnership and working relationship with them, and other wonderful folk from the YWAM Harpendon campus. 

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Catholicity worked out

28th March
Dagnall Street Baptist Church is one of the nine earliest founded Baptist congregations in the UK. As well as reading about the churches long history, I love hearing about my predecessors. Rev Dr Morris West is best known as a President of the World Council of Churches and a Principal of Bristol Baptist College as well as a Minister of Dagnall Street. This week I discovered that he was also in the habit of appearing at the houses of ill church members and doing their washing for them.  In my view, this loving care is as important as any other distinction. Doc West as he was known, was passionate about the ecumenical movement. Today, I honour his memory as I serve by speaking in Churches as diverse as Salvation Army Devotionals and a Liberal Catholic Anglican Cathedral. I was once described as someone  who if pictured as a stick of rock would have the word, catholicity running through me. So I am careful to learn and speak the language of each tradition whilst bringing my own particular insights as I reflect upon scripture, and I hope, to embody their positive attributes.  May God give us generous hearts and a love for our Christian brothers and sisters that enables us be be firmly rooted in our own tradition and utterly committed to learning from and honouring every part of God’s diverse holy, catholic and apostolic Church. 

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A Minister's week 

25th March
Monday was an opportunity to join a Ministers Forum and enjoy conversations whilst hearing about financial restructuring and write a sermon on diverse theological ways of explaining how the cross works.

Today has been varied and illustrates the diverse nature of Ministry.

Some final draft sermon tweaking, this is enjoyably creative.

Then a very enjoyable and productive meeting on big picture strategy. I am so privileged to work with such a wise, knowledgeable and gracious Church Secretary and Diaconate, without whom I’d be as much use as the proverbial chocolate tea-pot.

The inevitable admin that keeps the show on the road had to be done. Not my favourite task.

Finally, a joyfully authentically real ALPHA course evening. I have two wonderful people working with me who provide such wise, pastoral and theologically insightful contributions to the question and answer part of the evening. Together we are able to provide a theologically broad spectrum of answers in a way that is enabling the course participants to grow in their knowledge and faith in leaps and bounds.

Tonorrow will include meeting a new person to build the relationship and talk about how their professional expertise can fit into our growing pastoral programs and preparing to speak to a preachers group as well as arranging a brass fanfare leading into the opening hymn for our Easter Sunday Service. Musical experience is very useful in Ministry.

Thursday will include a Directors Meeting for the Cross Street Centre Cafe where a wonderful team of talented staff and volunteers enable our ministry of hospitality to the St Albans community. My time working for an accountancy and management consultancy firm helps with this.

Friday is primarily for pastoral stuff.

I can’t think of any other job that is so varied. 

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Regent Hall Band of the Salvation Army Spring Brass Festival

7th March
It was a huge privilege to play in this concert. Wonderful vocal solos with piano, and an amazing fantasia for band and piano. Wonderful solos on cornet and on trombone from David Dawes. So what do you do when you are on stage and God speaks straight into your heart and mind through the devotional time? You get on with job of course, but play on through the breath of the Holy Spirit, you forget about yourself and God takes over. Quite an experience. An amazing finale. I have played in many memorable performances, but this tops them all. I also had the privilege of listening to a grandmother who had lost her daughter and is now bringing up her granddaughter and helping a homeless person find shelter, having worn my uniform on the train home. 

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War and Scripture 

4th March
I commend this excellent blog post by Rev Dr Helen Paynter, also drawing  on Dr Ashley Hibbard and others, as a corrective to the abuse of scripture within the American Military at this present time. 
Click here to read it.

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Reflections on war 

3rd March
How to reflect on the Israeli and American Middle East War?

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have Mercy.

Firstly, I’m offering pastoral support to our small but growing number of Iranian folk.  Some Iranian Christians are saying, “God has used Donald Trump to overthrow Ayatollah Khomeini.” (That does not necessarily mean they are supporters of the Trump Administration.) If I am hearing them correctly, their theological reflection is much deeper than that. I listen attentively and deeply. Their years of suffering for their faith and having to leave their country mean they are thoughtful people. They are recognising that God can use even degenerate people to bring about some of his purposes, even as they pursue a degenerate agenda. From Old Testament passages, we know that this does happen.

But I pray together with my Iranian Christian brothers and sisters that a more tolerant and open Iran where Christianity is tolerated may come, and for the safety of their family members and all the people of Iran, where both schools and hospitals have been hit.

My Muslim friends are not supportive of the hard-line theocratic regime in Iran because they value Western democratic and tolerant values, and are not supportive of the Trump Administration either for obvious reasons.

And me? I’m unconvinced that Military intervention will achieve regime change. Uncertain that the motivation is rational or good, and concerned that the UK have breached international law, even though technically they are only supporting defensive measures by allowing the US to use British Bases, because the offensive initiative was American. The case made by the British Government is a null and void legal argument, since you can’t have a defensive offensive.

So I’m praying for the people in my care and for their relatives back in Iran, and for everyone who is affected by this escalating conflict and economic disruption. As so often in life, the best prayers of the heart spring from liturgical spiritual formation so the words are loaded with the cries of our hearts.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have Mercy.
 

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On Grieving 

28th February
As I negotiate the process of grieving, I cannot help but reflect on my upbringing and how it has shaped the process. We were very well looked after with a wonderful nanny, but within the family, emotional expression was not encouraged. We were pretty much an Edwardian family transplanted to the 1960,s onwards. Duty, a stiff upper lip, emotional control, and devotion to the Tory Party and the social status quo of a Cathedral City were the largely unspoken creed, and as children do, we absorbed this unquestioningly and without much awareness of ourselves, or our environment.

This has not helped me in admitting to, or processing grief. Add to this a professional life which is privileged, but requires the putting aside of my own emotions so I can concentrate on the needs and healing of others, particularly where death and its rituals and ceremonies are concerned, and you have the perfect recipe for producing an emotional basket case.

So how has grief manifested itself? Perhaps the best answer to that is, you tell me. But for the benefit of others who are negotiating a grieving process, here’s what I’ve noticed within myself. Life is a never ending to-do list and coping with that normal pressure subtly morphs into a work centredness that creates unsustainable routines. You might say that our normal unhelpful traits can become magnified as an unconscious way of avoiding confronting one’s own grief. Add to this personal neurodivergent conditions that make writing slower, or rather the process of editing the poorly rapidly typed text of sermons and an ever changing 64k word book manuscript into perfect spelling and grammar, and you have the perfect recipe for a spiral of ever expanding hours leading to ever decreasing productivity and displacement.

The thing is, these things happen below the radar of our self awareness until the pattern becomes evident to us, probably after it’s become obvious to others. So I’m having to understand why my actions may be, to use a technical psychological term, a bit bonkers. So part of the process of grieving is recognising that whilst managing a complex and crowded multi tasking life I may be, under the surface just a little bit, (OK well quite a lot really,) out of my normal mind. So as I pick up on the signs that surprise even me when I analyse them, here’s what what I need to do. Recognise that staring into the darkness is both necessary and healing, and that displacement or avoidance activity needs stopping. Give myself permission to allow grieving emotions to be felt , and (in the right circumstances), to be expressed.

So, if you are grieving too, maybe my self disclosure may ring some bells or help your journey
 

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What to pray about 

26th February
I don’t know what you pray about. For me, it might be a passing ambulance, a news headline wirh real people behind it, a pastoral issue. I love living in St Albans, a place where you can go into the independent booksellers and join in a passionate discussion about Wuthering Heights without anyone thinking you are mad, or enter into the prayer inducing scriptural delight that is Choral Evensong. The downside is an asking price of £825k for a two bedroom terrace house.

So today I am praying for the young people for whom Masters Degrees don’t lead to employment, or who have no hope of owning a property, and for those who struggle just surviving mainstream education. For the hidden but ever present poor, for a world in which so much wealth is held by the top one percent and capitalism is only working for the few, where money speaks so loudly that genocide is only whispered about and Governments look the other way whilst selling the arms that enable it. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
 

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Makes you think 

21st February
 

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Ash Wednesday 

18th February
We have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.
In your mercy
forgive what we have been,
help us to amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be;
that we may do justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with you, our God.
 

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