Category: Blog Entry

I’ve just spent the weekend at a Conference of our Lay Readers and a remarkable event it was. I think it was a first for them. They succeeded in gathering 60-70 people and persuaded Dr Christina Baxter of St John’s, Nottingham, to come and speak.

What was most interesting was that many of them didn’t know one another. Even more refreshing was the fact that some of them had successfully avoided contact with the church at provincial level – and they seemed none the worse for that!

I found them greatly encouraging to be with. Not at all wedded to the structures and patterns and very happy to talk about new approaches and new challenges. I gave them my usual ‘Our Time will Come’ speech.

I spent the afternoon with a group of retired clergy in Perth and a nice group of people they were. I know that they are probably all very busy – because retired people often say that they don’t know how they managed to fit in time for working life, etc.,etc – but it was great not to have to do any persuading or encouraging, etc. Meanwhile I gave myself to some pondering about retirement and how it might be managed. The key question seems to be what happens in the space between thinking how nice it would be not to have a full diary and not being sure who I would be if I had an empty one.

And then I visited another Vestry on my tour of congregations which have signed up to be part of the next phase of Casting the Net – eight at present. It’s looking good – indeed, it’s about all that our resources can cope with. We decided that a visit to each Vestry from the bishop would be a useful part of the ‘sign-up’ process so I’m working my way round. I always enjoy visiting Vestries – mainly because they don’t understand the rule which says that whatever the bishop says they must answer ‘Yes’.

By the way our Casting the Net Gathering in the Cathedral on May 15 is also looking good. We’ve deliberately kept the mesh pretty big for this one so we’ll see what happens.

I’m moving on from reading the Ministry ‘n’ Management material to the 360 degree appraisal – all part of the preparation for next month’s training course at the boot camp for bishops. So I’ve had to find 10 people to complete an on-line appraisal of me – obviously I’ve had to find ten people to whom I have been particularly nice or where our shared endeavour has turned out well. So that’s been a bit of a struggle, as you can imagine. Then I’ve had to fill in a self-appraisal – 93 questions asking how I rate my performance .. and how important is this. And I’m not allowed to argue with it or say I don’t like the questions or maybe they could be better phrased or that I don’t know what they mean or that they are ambiguous …..

All in all it was a relief to join with the neighbours in shifting the eight tons of gravel which were delivered on Friday – because of course they sent a tractor which wouldn’t go through the arch so we had to wheelbarrow all of it.

And I’ve also been struggling with Vodafone’s Sure Signal – a handy device which is supposed to produce a sparkling 3G mobile phone signal so I won’t have to hang out of the upstairs windows or pace the garden any more. Except it won’t work. Tim the Geek and I have been delving into its innards and the firewall protocols in the router and all sorts of stuff which I don’t know about.

It’s all change here. Poppy is wearing her safety helmet because the house martins are back. They swoop on her in the middle of the back lawn and thoroughly frighten her. No 1 has suggested that what we need is eight tons of gravel next Saturday so that we can recapture that satisfying crunching sound as we drive through the arch. Perhaps we might have a party when it is over.

I’m still trying to stir myself to some interest in the Election Campaign – most unlike me because I am at heart something of a political junkie. For the moment, I am contenting myself with saying ‘balanced’ every time somebody says ‘hung’. I think it may be some time before we achieve the sophistication of PR elections in the Irish Republic where political parties sometimes seek to maximise the vote by listing different candidates from the same list as No 1 at different ends of the same town.

Maybe it would be safer for me to ponder Stephen Hawking’s warning that we should not attempt to engage with aliens if we happen to meet them. But how will I recognise them?

I’ve been reading Hans Kung’s letter. It remarkable to see him still plugging away after all these years … Consistency and stamina are remarkable things.

Those who have travelled with me through Holy Week will know that I get particularly upset about Pontius Pilate. I see in him the person who could have acted but chose not to – who had leadership authority invested in him but failed to exercise it. Why chose that issue? Because I lived most of my life in a society whose leaders lacked the moral courage to address deep-seated issues. And people died.

So that’s why my eye is caught by Kung’s repeated charge, ‘Missed .. the opportunity … for rapprochement .. for reconciliation .. for help’

There is a side to leadership which is about recognising the signs of the times, seeing the opportunity or the unavoidable necessity of taking action. I believe that the toughest leadership of all – but that which is most worthwhile – comes when the leader challenges his or her own people. Strangely, leaders who miss opportunities are seldom criticised because people don’t see what isn’t there. So life moves on in a spurious calm. Yet it is the role of a leader to see, to call, to challenge.

The time will come.

Thought you might like a look at the family wedding last Friday. This is our Mark with Steph married in Pitlochry on a beautiful day. We were very fortunate with the weather – and extra fortunate that the travel problems were only just beginning to unfold. So there were some struggles to get there – bicycle rickshaw, hot air balloon, etc – and greater struggles to get home again. But that determination just added to the day!

It’s good to be back – I did the traditional clergy thing of greeting the Resurrection and then taking a break.

Easter Day in St Ninians was extraordinary – flowers, colour, wonderful music, baptisms and confirmation, crowds of people. I continue to be astonished at the standard of liturgy which our Cathedrals are able to deliver. In the middle of all that, this was the sermon.

A couple of days in Donegal restored body and soul. It included – as is traditional now wherever we go – some intensive and deeply satisfying rodding of the drains. The innovation of WiFi in the Workhouse in Dunfanaghy is welcome and long overdue. Just back in time for a visit to Oban – a continuing part of my life – and a wedding in Glenalmond.

Meanwhile, spring has sprung at Blogstead. The residents are emerging blinking into the daylight after the long, dark winter. And Blogstead will be en fete for the wedding of our youngest in Pitlochry next Friday.

Enjoy .. maybe not the word. But I did enjoy Holy Week in the parish and I sort of miss it. You would feed yourself in at Palm Sunday and emerge battered and bruised at the end. By contrast, I’ve had an extraordinary range of experiences this week – from the rededication of our beautiful church in Aberfoyle to Chrism Masses in Glasgow and Perth, Good Friday worship sitting in the centre of our Cathedral around a cross and more in Dollar – and today the blessing of Andrew and Lesley’s marriage in Auchterarder. Oh and tonight we did the Easter Eve ‘Christ is Risen’ shouting.

When I look back on that, it represents an extraordinary range of experiences. Piskie Cathedrals are in extraordinarily good shape as places of high quality liturgy and excellent music. In our churches, people have been sharing in the leading of worship with a sort of serious intent. And Chrism Masses are always intensely moving.

So …. just for the record … here are my words at the Rededication of St Mary’s, Aberfoyle, the Chrism Mass in Glasgow, Good Friday in Dollar, a Good Friday piece for the Scotsman, Thought for the Day on Thursday and Andrew and Lesley’s Marriage Blessing

I’ve just found myself saying to a friend that Holy Week is the time when I miss the parish most. It’s the consistency that I miss – the feeling of slogging your way through the week as the story is imprinted over and over again on your mind. And the people – wrestling with the question of how suffering can be redemptive alongside people whose story and suffering I know about as they know about mine. I really miss that.

But I’m looking forward to it – Chrism Mass with Bishop-elect Gregor and the clergy in Glasgow and Galloway and here in Perth; Good Friday in the Cathedral and in Dollar and couple of other things as well. I hope to step aside from the Via Dolorosa of the management and leadership literature which in which I have been immersing myself. Easy to be sniffy about that stuff – I’m old enough and tired enough not to want to start doing ‘command and control’ around here. Anyway I think they would just cut the phone lines and leave me to it. But it’s clarifying the way in which my role in leadership complements the contributions of all the other people who are helping us to move forward with Casting the Net.

Meanwhile, a couple of things from the archives …..

I was glad to spend Lent IV in St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow. Good liturgy and great music .. a growing congregation showing how good our church can be at building congregations in very secular places. The sermon is here
and the talking version is below.

You may also be interested in Lady Day with Mother’s Union at St Ninian’s Cathedral and today’s Rededication of St Mary’s, Aberfoyle

Well we’re all off to the Cathedral in Uppsala this morning and then to lunch with the Archbishop and his wife – before heading for the airport. We have been warned that the sermon will be in Swedish. But then many of the sermons which I hear and preach seem to be in strange languages.

I continue to ponder the way in which, even in my short contact with the Porvoo Communion, I can hear change in how the leaders of the Scandinavian Lutheran Churches speak. You begin by hearing institutional solidity and security, homogeneous churches in homogeneous societies, lots of money. But they are now talking of the erosion of that model, of the emergence of a proper and helpful distinction between church and a secular society, about the way in which that may free the church to pursue mission in a new way.

The thing is, of course, that leadership through that kind of change is very difficult. Easier to call for freedom for the captives. Easier too when, as is our experience, you can take risks because you have relatively little to lose. Much harder when visible strength is ebbing away, when nostalgia for the idealised past grows, when blaming creeps in. To lead in that phase requires real quality.

But they have to go through that during the next generation. From it will come a new engagement with society – which leads me to the Pope’s visit to Scotland. Of which more tomorrow or the next day.