I’m tempted by the story of Steve McClaren. I have no interest in football but, after a lifetime around churches, I know the smell of death and decline when I meet it. And the FA Board are right there. Thank goodness for £2m pay-off’s I say. I’ll come back to it because I am fascinated by the way in which the mindset of decline – like sectarianism in Ireland – gets a grip without people realising that it has happened. And it is difficult to turn around. An imprisonment.
Prisons Week this week and I preached at the local service in Perth .. which happens to have a prison with more than 600 in it. I doubt if I could cope with Prison Chaplaincy but all the issues are there.