We’re having a session with clergy tomorrow looking at the SEC’s plan to have a Year of Stewardship.  Two things most clergy dread, in my experience.  Not the Sunday Sermon – nor difficult pastoral situations, however distressing they may be.  At least we feel that’s what we were ordained to do.  No – it’s the Annual Meeting or a Stewardship Campaign because in each case you’re in the stocks and fair game for anything anybody wants to throw at you!  Stewardship Programmes come in many shapes and forms – at heart, it’s about encouraging people to see financial commitment as an expression of their faith commitment and thanksgiving for what they have received.  Our finances are not disastrously bad – but they are not all that good either.  I hear people talking about fundraising and how much it costs to run the church – not so much about giving and what it might take to enable the church to engage seriously in mission.  There is a difference!

Forfar 29th October 125 Anniversary.doc

Can’t resist one more visit to the issue of clergy employment/office holding. It is probably inevitable that the privileges attached to clergy freehold and the stipend arrangement under which one is supported while ministering – rather than paid for work done – will be eroded. That’s not all bad. Clergy do not all enjoy the same security at present – for example those who are ‘Priest in Charge’ rather than Rector. But it is often not recognised how vulnerable clergy are – ministering often in small, relatively isolated communities, they function without many of the boundaries and everyday employment protections which other members of the workforce enjoy. A minority, of course, abuse the security which they have – and bishops struggle in vain to extract square pegs from round holes. But we should not forget that it may just be the restless, energetic, troublesome, prophetic square peg which God sends to stir, challenge, proclaim – as that nice prayer so nearly says, ‘Comforter of the afflicted and afflicter of the comfortable’

Important day today. Rev Sylvester Stuart of the New Testament Church of God won the right to take his case for unfair dismissal to an Employment Tribunal. I suppose it is another stage in a sort of lost innocence of the church – rather as today people were being nostalgic about the gentlemanly [sic] ways of the Stock Exchange in the days before the Big Bang – 20 years ago today. So out here in Blogstead Episcopi, we mourn the loss of the days when Mr Quiverful sought a living which would enable him and Mrs Q to bring up their little pledges of affection. But, whatever the nostalgia, I think anything which brings clarity to a muddled area of life [and episcopal management task] is to be welcomed. Although clergy may find that it is something of a two edged sword as people apply [as they are already doing] the same standards of accountability to clergy as they experience in their own workplace.

Sorry – missed Green Wheels Day yesterday.  Another trip to Edinburgh Airport and another flight.  The websites report that ‘if all commuters left their cars at home one day a week, that would save enough fuel to drive to the moon and back 35000 times’.  Why would one want to do that – drive to the moon and back 35000 times, that is?   But,  in my defence,  the faithful Passat, with sauna effects from the leaking heater cured [?] by a £2.99 container of radiator sealant, continues to be greenest of the green.  We drive downhill a lot and use the brakes sparingly.  I even washed it on Wednesday.  Over 130000 miles and more than 50 mpg – long may it continue.  Still, I regret the fact that the big spaces of Scotland make it very difficult to use the bicycle for more than pleasure and exercise.

Ireland is suffering an epidemic of road accidents which are claiming the lives of young people – in the most recent, four young men died in a head on collision in Co Monaghan. One of the papers claimed to have taken a photo of the speedometer of one of the cars frozen at 140 mph. At the funeral of two of the victims yesterday, Fr Martin O’Reilly, Youth Director for the Diocese of Clogher, made an extraordinarily passionate statement about how Irish society has neglected its young while it has got on with the Celtic Tiger economy. ‘We have thrown everything at you except our time. Forgive us for neglecting you …’

Extraordinary .. There can’t be a single cause for such a thing – any more than there is a single cause for the epidemic of suicides of young people in Northern Ireland. But maybe when you put together an undreamt-of prosperity and the secularisation which accompanies it, the collapse of the Catholic Church as a significant upholder of moral values and the unprecedented strains on family life which go with rapid social change … maybe it’s not surprising that the strain shows somewhere.

It makes you ponder where a society is to find its stability – for prosperity is no substitute for relationships

Trinity 19 Elie & Pittenweem 22.10.06.doc

Elie and Pittenweem are old fishing villages in the East Neuk – on the south coast of Fife.  Pretty as a picture and worth a visit if you haven’t been there.  Pittenweem has two new windows designed by Ursula, one of the parishioners.  It’s tough having to spend a Sunday there!

Looking at membership and church-going figures is a bit like taking a peek at your bank account on line on the days when it doesn’t make comfortable viewing.  But decline is endemic, isn’t it  … so why would we think that the tide might come in on our stretch of the beach when it is going out everywhere else?  Except, of course, that we have growth as well as decline.  And sometimes the decline is entirely understandable and predictable – places where there has been a long vacancy or where relationships have been difficult or where the diocese has failed to sort out long-standing problems.  But sometimes we have growth and sometimes decline and there doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason for either.  And numbers don’t tell you about quality or about what is happening in the micro as well as in the macro.  I’m a great believer in trying to sort all this out – planning, organising, being business-like about things.  You can’t just keeping on doing what you do and hoping for the best.  But the glory of it is that you can’t predict or control it either.  Hence my underlying belief that, when I apply all my energies at point [a], I shall probably see nothing whatsoever change.  But my efforts at [a] are almost a precondition for something surprising happening at [b].  It’s obvious, isn’t it?

I was thinking that, after what seems like a lengthy period of rushing around and disturbance, some sort of order had been restored.  In the good old days, I suspect that when one went off to a conference – or whatever else bishops do – one just stopped dealing with post and E Mail hadn’t been invented.  But it isn’t as simple as that now so that one feels simultaneously on top of things and miles behind.

Meanwhile, Blogstead Episcopi at the moment is far from being the vibrant community we know and love.  Poppy is here – back from her extended stay in Belfast.  But Spice next door is away.  As are +Bruce and Elaine who are sending back dispatches from the ecclesiastical front line in Virginia.  Obviously, in deference to Bishop David Gillett, we are doing an alternative Hallowe’en.  But my focus is increasingly on the need to convene the Christmas planning meeting – tree and carols in the courtyard, illuminated Santa with sleigh, etc

Missed a day yesterday going to London for a meeting.  I’ve become part of the ‘have laptop will travel’ brigade but I got some quite difficult stuff dealt with just by being away.

Interesting to see how the veils issue moves on.  The teacher, of course, lost her case yesterday.  As so often in clashes of identity and culture, there is not a direct opposition between the view expressed.  The western secular mind says, ‘I – and the children you teach – need to see your face, your eyes, your mouth because so much of what is communicated is subliminal …’  The Moslem response is, if I understand it right, ‘I cannot appear in front of other men unveiled’   Meanwhile, it was interesting to hear the thrust of the speech last night from Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice.  He warns against erosion of human rights – I suspect what he may mean is selective reductions in human rights legislation as applied to particular racial, religious or cultural groups.  I’ll allow myself one ‘back reference’ to Ireland – the security-driven response to IRA terrorism had the effect of alienating the mainstream Catholic population.  It doesn’t mean that they became active supporters of terrorism – far from it.  But they became ever more separated from the mainstream of the community and young people in particular moved towards Sinn Fein in large numbers.  I believe that these security-led responses were counter-productive then and they will be counter-productive in Britain.