Who Turned the Hard Rock Into Pools of Water

... goes Psalm 114, the traditional psalm associated with baptism. Anything watery has particular resonances in this area today. Yesterday evening I noticed my kitchen cold tap running less strongly until not long before I went to bed it gave up entirely. Today was supposed to culminate in us hosting the Deanery confirmation service with twelve candidates from six different congregations, and I did think that the sense of dread and foreboding that strangely affected me when I first woke up was to do with that. But now I wonder. Sandra our pastoral assistant and her husband, who were organising the food after the confirmation, unusually turned up at the 8am mass to tell me No, the problem wasn't with my kitchen mixer tap but with the water supply generally. Through the day it got worse and the water company organised bottle distributions in a couple of local car parks. I was OK - a large house with only one person in it retains quite a bit of water in its pipework - but I ended up delivering some water to Trevor, and church members collected more for others they knew. People said intemperate things online to local councillors and anyone else who would listen. The problem seemed to originate with a local water treatment plant being deluged with dirty water after the recent storms. Hopefully the situation is now improving, but it'll be hours before the reservoirs fill up again enough to apply pressure for the pipes.

Everything went wrong with the confirmation. Somehow I'd missed one of the candidates off the order of service, and mangled printing the first hymn so had to run it off on a separate sheet. I forgot about microphones and the card reader until the last minute. The retired bishop leading the service forgot his kit and had to go home to get it: he was so late we assumed he was stuck in traffic trying to get to the water distribution point. But we got it done and I think even the toilets somehow kept working thanks to our own residual water in the system. The choir sang Psalm 114 as the bishop led the confirmands to the font. I'm glad we went ahead, though as much official advice I had was to cancel. I can now barely think two things in a straight line, if you see what I mean.

Synchronicities

It was just as well that nobody taking part in the Royal School of Music exams at the church today around noon was learning the tuba, and instead were all angelic children plonking out whatever the current version of 'Chopsticks' is, as that was when, rashly, I had chosen to revive a midweek Eucharist at Swanvale Halt, celebrating for the first time since March and at several points realising that neither I nor Rick had remembered to put out this or that bit of kit we needed. It was me, and him, and Eva, the only member of the congregation who'd taken notice of the several emails and other mentions I'd made of the change. And even she'd only seen the message an hour and a half before. The old and holy words competed with the modern and less sacred ones of a music teacher chiding his small charges in the midst of their scales. This does often happen in normal times, to be fair.

The reason Eva was especially moved to come to church today was that it was the anniversary of her confirmation, many years ago. By chance it is also an Ember Day, one of the occasions set aside by the Church to pray for the vocation of all God's people, and your confirmation is a step forward, at least, in discovering your vocation. There are all sorts of routes we do not take in our lives, identities we do not take up and possibilities we have to surrender for our genuine vocation to come to birth. Concert pianist was not one of Eva's rejected life choices. As she listened today to the students banging out scales on the practice piano before facing the ordeal itself in the church hall, she remembered, she told me, he own struggles aged eleven with exactly the same things. We prayed for the examinees in the mass. 'It was good to be part of that,' Eva said, 'and', she added definitely, 'apart from it, too.'

Confirmation Again

Dr Abacus responded to my previous post to say that his daughter was confirmed with a group of others from a range of local churches, so that was a shared event. This is standard practice, in fact, unless a single church can muster enough confirmands to justify a bishop turning out to do the magic, and that rarely happens (in Guildford Diocese you are now supposed to have at least twelve). In fact, the usual time you see a bishop visiting a church to confirm its members alone, it tends to be at trad-Catholic churches under Alternative Episcopal Oversight, as they are usually so far between that joining up isn't feasible.

As I said, my issue really is with what might get taught, unquestioningly, in confirmation preparation. Different groups also require different approaches, too, and paradoxically the smaller the group the more you can spot their individuality and the sense a tailored approach has. I haven't had that many confirmands since I was ordained, so I can pretty much remember them all.

At Lamford: Seven teenagers and one retired professional man.
At Goremead: One teenage girl.
At Swanvale Halt: on separate occasions, a teenage boy; a middle-aged professional woman; six mixed adults aged 40-60; another teenage boy, the curate's son; a professional young man; two middle-aged women.

On none of these occasions was I able to use exactly the same preparation; I found myself adapting my model material to each of their specific circumstances and background. The earlier teenage boy at Swanvale Halt was especially interesting as his level of comprehension was pretty basic. The host parish for the confirmation service had asked for written 'testimonies' to include in the order of service and I had to write his for him (at least he wasn't expected to deliver it out loud); when we arrived, we discovered that all the other confirmands were confident, slightly hyper middle-class teenage girls from prep schools. Poor Luke stuck out dreadfully and he would never have got on with combined preparation. I do deplore the habit of asking confirmands for 'testimonies' which is a typical middle-class Church practice. What happens if you're inarticulate, or just shy? Furthermore it pushes you towards thinking about your spiritual development in a classically evangelical manner, identifying the point of catastrophic crisis at which you 'turn to Christ', and for most people exaggerates the darkness of the time before and the light of the time after. I don't want to launch tender souls into that! So, again, if there's going to be joint confirmation prep anywhere near here, I want to do it ...

Pooling Resources

'Thank you for your card', Fr Andris's email began. I was uncomfortably aware that we hadn't spoken about the Mission Planning process for at least 18 months and I thought I'd drop a line to say I hadn't forgotten him (or at least I had intermittently remembered him) but that our experiences didn't seem to require a meeting.

However he did say that in his Deanery they are thinking more about collaborative working between church communities; in Germany, where his sister-in-law works as a Roman Catholic Pastoral Assistant, the local diocese has amalgamated parishes quite radically and such things as confirmation classes and activities for teenagers are now operating on that broader scale, making life easier for clergy and more rewarding for them. Lessons we could learn, suggests Fr Andris.

While people identify with their own church and the community which uses it, it would be very beneficial to organise such things as confirmation, baptism and marriage preparation, or youth activities, at a higher level than the parish. There are also the environmental drawbacks of getting groups of people travelling to a central point rather than a series of local ones. But it occurred to me that the main obstacle to doing this in the Anglican context is the variety of churches. A group of Roman Catholic churches could be expected to have a degree of uniformity in teaching which you wouldn't necessarily expect between Anglican parishes. I would be most reluctant to hand any confirmands, for instance, that might come from Swanvale Halt (and there are occasionally some!) to conservative evangelical churches to be taught silly things about the Bible, and would want them to think about sacraments and spiritual life in a broadly Catholic way. So I would want to do it! Of the churches that are our most natural local theological and spiritual bedfellows, some are in our Deanery, some aren't. I like the idea of working across boundaries, but it's not completely straightforward.

Prejudices Confirmed

It is a rare privilege to be able to offer parishioners from Swanvale Halt for the sacrament of confirmation. In fact, with Wilma and Elaine, our two candidates this autumn, my average is now ever-so-slightly more than one for every year of my incumbency. On Sunday evening I took them to the church of Tophill where our suffragan bishop would anoint and lay hands on them and sacramentally admit them to the fullness of the life of the Spirit. It was a great pleasure I was looking forward to.

Tophill is a very inconveniently arranged church from whose impediments the congregation has only just liberated itself by ripping out the pews. The church has only put up with them as long as it has because its Evangelical tradition has led it to hold services in the local school hall as well as the church itself. But now the building is filled with nice chairs which don't actually look too bad. 

I have a longstanding prejudice against the use of drums in church worship. As we began the first hymn on Sunday it occurred to me that it wasn't going to be too objectionable after all, but the moment of hope passed very quickly as the percussion swiftly took over from the gentler instruments, hogging attention and buffeting the ears. We sang the same creed setting as we did at the Clergy Study Day a few weeks ago, and once again I found myself reflecting how pleasant it was until we had to sing some bits over and over again to no very great effect. 'I believe in the resurrection ...' 'Well, I believed in all of it when we started,' I muttered to a clergyman next to me, 'but now I'm not as sure.'

The altar still sits against a marble reredos at the end of the chancel, not moved forward. To my astonishment the bishop - arrayed admittedly in choir dress rather than mass vestments - moved up and celebrated the eucharist ad orientem. I made a point of mentioning it to her afterwards. 'Well, they said they usually do North End but I wasn't doing that,' she said. 'And pulling the altar back when you're the only person standing behind it is just ridiculous. I like eastward-facing. So many clergy preside like they're doing show-and-tell, rather than speaking to God.'

As we all chewed cheese straws and sipped wine some of the Swanvale parishioners who'd come along crowded round. 'We won't have to sing those hymns when we have a screen, will we?' grinned Sandra who runs Messy Church. I said that merely having a screen didn't determine what you projected on to it. Lillian the ex-Lay Reader was more concerned that whatever went on it had proper punctuation.

Playing Host

Before 2013 it had been back in the 1990s that Swanvale Halt had hosted a confirmation service. Apparently the 2013 gig went so well that our Area Dean asked us to do it again last Sunday. It was a somewhat smaller affair because the whole Deanery could only rustle up four candidates as opposed to the 16 we had last time, but our new suffragan bishop was happy to come for that many, or few (she is 'keen to get out and about' according to the diocesan newspaper) and apart from asking to change one of the readings acceded to everything we would normally do here. That meant a touch of smoke and wearing my old gold Roman set to preside.

Bp: What do you want me to wear? I've bought my cope.
Me: Well, we'd normally use a chasuble.
Bp: Ah good, wearing a cope at the eucharist is really hard work. Have you got everything?
Me (opening drawer): Yes, it's all here.
Bp: What's that?
Me: It's a chasuble.
Bp: I've never seen one like that!

Considering the bishop is married to a prominent incumbent in the City of London this is quite a surprise, but doubtless when she does the New Bishops Course they'll explain the differences between Roman and Gothic. If anyone running it knows. I didn't mind at all, as our former diocesan positively blanched when I showed him the Old Gold Set whereas our new suffragan was blithely unconcerned. 

St Rita of Cascia made her presence felt during the proceedings only in the fact that our visitors from other churches of course had no idea what to do at communion (next time I will prime everyone what to expect), and that I, acting as thurifer, and the bishop had great fun with the business of passing the thurible to one another. She'd told me she was left-handed, so I tried to pass it the opposite way round to usual, but we got so confused we both ended up crossing our arms over in all sorts of bizarre ways, biting our lower lips to stop ourselves giggling. Jesus would have done the same. 

As ever Swanvale Halt did itself proud and provided a wonderful spread after the service. The bishop and everyone else who expressed an opinion were fulsome in their praise of the building, the service, the food, and the general ambience. It was a lovely party to celebrate four people's faithfulness. 

Confirmed!

We hadn't hosted a confirmation service at Swanvale Halt for years; nor had we had many people to offer as confirmation candidates for years, I think five since 2000 to be precise. So I was very keen indeed to secure a Deanery confirmation service for the refurbished church, regardless of how many people we actually had ourselves to offer forward. As it turned out, there were eventually five of them, all adults - a civil servant, a school caretaker, a plumber, a mum and school assistant, and a civil engineer - and we had a really good series of sessions in preparation. They joined another ten candidates from across the area, and enough of their families and friends to fill the church. The only elements over which St Rita of Cascia made her presence felt were the thurible coming open and spilling incense and charcoal over the floor (thankfully during a hymn so the frantic scrabbling around after bits was possible to disguise) and the bishop's microphone going haywire so that, from behind at least, it sounded as though he was doing a passable impersonation of the late Norman Collier. It was, however, lovely. I insisted that we not water down the service to the usual middle-of-the-road common-denominator and instead give everyone something to remember, which is just what happened. I also insisted we put on a really good spread after the service was over, and that happened too. Heaven knows how much that cost, but I can think of few things better to spend money on than a party to celebrate fifteen people making a public declaration of faith.

However once upon a time this wouldn't have been anything much to get excited about. The modern custom of confirming people (and baptising them if need be, as two of ours were) and them taking communion at the same time has only arisen because numbers are small enough to make this feasible, whatever the Church may argue in terms of this being the right way of doing things, which is of course true as far as it goes. I checked back through the old confirmation register in our strong box, and discovered that Swanvale Halt had on its own produced 48 confirmation candidates in 1960, 18 in 1961, 40 in 1962, 34 in 1963, and 48 again in 1964. Of course the majority of them were aged under 16, but not all - the number of adults being confirmed was never below 7 in any year. Equally striking was the gender imbalance: the figures hovered around one-third men and boys and two-thirds women and girls, except in 1964 when 83% of the confirmands were female. That tells you a lot about the sociology of the mid-century Church of England.