Distance Learning

One of the few boons of the pandemic period was that we all became accustomed to online meetings. Although they are, in form, horrible, they can sometimes be a great mercy: you don't have to drag yourself to a distant venue with all the palaver that entails, especially when rail strikes mean the alternative is driving to Woking, dumping the car somewhere, and sitting in a bleak independent church for an hour listening to the speakers at the Bishop's Study Morning. Had I been at home on my own with all the proceedings beamed in on my laptop I would have got on with some sewing, but, as it turned out, going to the neighbouring parish of Tunfield and sitting in Fr Jonathan's ancient church with him and retired SSM Jean in front of his laptop wasn't all that bad. 

The theme was 'Leadership and the Abuse of Power'. The first speaker, Debbie Sellin, used to be an incumbent in Guildford Diocese, but is now Bishop of Southampton and in fact Acting Diocesan Bishop for Winchester after the forced resignation of Bishop Tim Dakin. Frustratingly, if understandably, she wouldn't say anything about that. Nor would the next speaker up, Marion Peters, talk in any detail about her experience of 'spiritual abuse', just her reaction to it and what it felt like to be a victim. Finally our own Bishop Andrew came on to talk about Christian leadership styles with the aid of pictures of gardens. It was all completely irrelevant until the very last couple of minutes, when he mentioned accountability mechanisms, before running off the platform so that, we all agreed, the Director of Mission couldn't pray for him as he had for the other speakers before and after they spoke. Can't we give the Lord an occasional rest from our jabbering? 

I, Jonathan and Jean agreed three things. Firstly, and positively, it was remarkable that the Church was even dealing with this subject in such explicit terms: we couldn't imagine it being done even ten years ago. Secondly (and less positively), we noted the the focus on experience rather than theology which does seem to epitomise the approach of the Church to a whole variety of issues currently. Thirdly (and linked to the second point), there was very little analysis, and therefore very little advice. We thought it would have been good to have a psychologist, or a management consultant, to talk about exactly why and how abuses of power happen in church contexts, and what might be done about them. Instead - as the Church seems reluctant to draw on the insights of anything outside itself - the only advice we got was 'be more like Jesus', which is pretty useless as advice goes: we know that, thank you.

Unbeknownst to him, Bishop Andrew had already provided us with the high point of the event before he even began his talk by saying, invisibly and therefore completely out of context, 'I can never remember which way up these things go'.

Scrub-a-Dub

At the Museum our cleaner was Vin, who along with quite a chunk of the population of High Wycombe came from St Vincent, and who was laid-back to a stereotypically West Indian degree. Skimming a mop over the carpets was his speciality: perhaps the intention was to keep dust down, but we never questioned him about it. Spiders in corners had no fear of being badly disturbed. When you find a good cleaner, then, you do your best to retain them.

Pre-pandemic, our cleaner at church was Jenny who was efficient and obliging and would always try to come in for a special session if we needed it: her husband has health issues so she made herself scarce as soon as covid kicked off. Since then either I, Rick and Rob, or Sandra and Carrie in the office have done such cleaning as has been necessary but with some of our groups starting up again we need something a bit more systematic.

Our social media adverts for the position brought in four applications. Two were from young mums who were looking for a bit more flexible work; they were both married in the church (one by me, one by Marion) and both have had children baptised with us so I was disposed in their favour. One was a woman who had her own small cleaning company and was well set up with all the necessary requirements. The fourth was a girl who gave as her reference one of our local beat police officers. 'She's got her heart in the right place,' PC Terry told me, 'if I need to know what's going on on the estate I always ask her mum. She's 17 but looks about 12.' There was a fifth message from one company which just read 'We have contract cleaners for all your needs', and that was so lazy I just discarded it.

Sandra the office manager and I did a couple of interviews yesterday and as suspected Diana who has been doing this for years was clearly the best bet. She even told us how much she enjoys 'going into somewhere really dirty and leaving it clean', so we might have to get the Toddler Group, when there is a Toddler Group again, to be especially mucky just so she gets even more out of it. I felt it wasn't necessary to have someone who was 'passionate about cleaning' but Sandra pointed out that we've both had experience of cleaners who are not only not passionate but would observably rather be somewhere other than standing in a church hall with a bucket and a pair of marigolds. As for pastoral connections with the two young mums, it turns out I took Diana's mother's funeral eight years ago and baptised her granddaughter a couple of years after that!

Choose Your Battles

We've talked about the Swanvale Halt Branch Mothers' Union before. Things have not been easy for the Branch, with several longstanding members dying or moving away, and a hard time had finding anyone to do the work the Branch needs doing. A couple of weeks ago the Chair, who had decided to retire, asked me 'what I was going to do about the MU'. 'We could close the branch, or amalgamate it with another', she went on. After a bit of thought I wrote to her setting out all the options, and my impression that, while the purpose of the MU was as a campaigning organisation, locally there was a tendency to become a fellowship group for its members, and Swanvale Halt Branch had to decide what it wanted to be. 

This was intended as part of a conversation with the branch chair, but she promptly read it to the Committee. I wouldn't have expressed myself quite so unguardedly had it been going more widely. While I was on leave I had no fewer than three outraged communications as a result ('There was no bedside manner!' commented one, and there shouldn't have been a need for one), so when I got back suggested gingerly that we call a meeting of the Committee to talk about it. 

It was all rather good-natured in the event. One typically very mild lady smiled that she'd wanted to 'come round and give you a slap', but as I was determined not to be self-justificatory or defensive and they wanted to get some things actually sorted out about the future, the hour went very positively. Some administrative and promotional changes will take place, I'll help with the latter, and we'll see what happens. 

Now, this should not have happened and is a cautionary tale about what amounts to a private conversation being opened more widely. I could have made a fuss about that, but didn't as there was no point, and the MU committee could have been far more stubbornly upset, but didn't see any point in doing that either. In a great number of parishes this could have been something that would poison relationships for years to come but, as I've had cause to be grateful for in the past, Swanvale Halt is a parish composed of strikingly sensible people. 

Slapdashness

I went to see my S.D. and told him about a funeral I did recently. It presented a few organisational difficulties in that the deceased gentleman actually lived in Kent and was being buried in Swanvale Halt only because he used to live here and his son, who died a long time ago, is buried locally. I met with his widow and talked through all the arrangements, and thought I'd got it all sorted. Then when they actually turned up, I discovered there were all sorts of things I should have known but didn't, such as whether the family wanted to follow the coffin into the church, who was doing what readings, and whether the biographical details I'd been given were supposed to be read or were covered by what someone else was saying. Someone delivering a tribute who I thought was the gentleman's brother turned out to be a friend. It meant it was all far more stressful than it should have been, made worse by matters such as a jamming CD, and not having much time to conclude matters before catching a train. 

'When you start out,' I told S.D., 'you dot all the i's and cross all the t's and are obsessed with getting everything right. Then once you've got it all more or less right for some time you rely more and more on your ability to wing it. But it's not just that: I think that because I don't find interacting with people very easy I'm subconsciously wanting to finish any encounter as quickly as is decent to do, and this leads to a temptation to cut corners.'

S.D. said, 'I think this is actually very common, and it relates to the priestly life. We do so many different things that we're never quite sure what's going to be happening next and what we're going to be asked to do or say, so we live in a state of constant mild tension, always looking ahead to the next thing. That leads to a desire to want to be free of that tension as soon as we can and go home and flop. That creates the risk of giving people less attention than they have the right to expect from us, and the kind of person you might be exacerbates the situation. I don't think this will ever go away; all you can do is try to counteract it, by going very deliberately back to dotting the i's and crossing the t's like you used to do. I observe quite a number of lazy priests, but there's a sort of spiritual laziness which is different from mere bodily laziness.'

He came out with this with such facility I suspect he's thought about it before ...

You Don't Get Many of Them

Most of the time, the major problem clergy face in organising a parish's life is finding people to do things, as it is in any structure which largely relies on volunteers. People have little time to spare, or little confidence in their own abilities.

Occasionally you are landed with someone who is very determined to do exactly the thing they're not suited to: the person with a speech impediment who wants to read the lesson in services; the Sunday School teacher who scares children.

The difficulty most rarely presented is the person who wants to do too much. They may have very valuable talents and abilities, but their intervention in all sorts of areas causes confused lines of communication and accountability. As somebody who is very, and perhaps too much, governed by self-imposed and organisational boundaries - 'I don't need to think about this issue because it's so-and-so's task' - I find this hard to deal with to a degree which surprises me.

Secrets

Through the ongoing autopsy of the Saville Business in the media the question ‘How was it allowed to happen?' continually recurs. Among the answers that get offered nobody talks very much about the institutional inertia which permits wrongdoing to carry on, based around what, I am absolutely sure, is an unspoken but nevertheless real assessment on a brutally rational level of what exposing the wrong will cost. A person who acts abusively, in any way, within an organisation is ipso facto going to be someone with a degree of power within it, which means that pulling them out of the structure is going to hurt. It’s going to take time and energy, and will entail loss. The other cost is that everyone else within the structure is going to have to reassess their relationships with the offender and therefore with the organisation. The offender is almost certainly going to have had a positive influence on the organisation over some time, otherwise they wouldn't be important to it, which means that some people at least will like them personally and find it hard to believe they've done anything wrong. Anyone who decides, against all these considerations, that the allegation, whatever it is, should be acted on, is going to have their work cut out for them. The brutal truth is that, very often, it is far less costly for an institution to stifle and ignore victims, who are powerless, have few relationships with other people within it, and are more likely just to go away.

I wonder how often we face such questions in churches? There are of course many well-publicised instances of sexual abuse, some covered up for decades, some swiftly acted on, but I suspect there are plenty of other sorts of hurt which go under the radar.

Once upon a time Miss Brown complained to me about Miss Black, who held a responsible position in the church. Miss Black had offered to do some cleaning for Miss Brown and, Miss Brown alleged, had found papers alluding to an old family matter; Miss Black was now going around the congregation and the area generally spreading rumours about her. When I asked about it, Miss Black said she had indeed found the papers while tidying up, realised they were personal, and put them back. Nobody else had said anything to me about this, and I hadn't noticed anything amiss in people's attitude towards Miss Brown. I asked the director of a local charity Miss Black had been active with whether there had ever been any hint of trouble during her involvement (as Miss Brown had alleged there had been), and got a negative response.

Over subsequent months Miss Brown’s allegations became more involved. Miss Black had somehow got hold of her bank details and was making online purchases with her money, then stealing the items from outside her house. Miss Brown changed her bank cards, saying that Miss Black had stolen them repeatedly. Finally she phoned me up to say ‘I reported it to the police and I'm pleased to say that woman has been arrested, so everything is all right.’ I even called Miss Black on the pretence of speaking about something completely different, just to see what she said; she had not, as far as I could ascertain, been collared by the constabulary.  

I was uncomfortably aware of the disparity of power between Miss Brown and Miss Black, and, although my minimal investigations hadn't discovered anything that suggested her allegations were true, I knew that reaching this conclusion was very much in my interests and the church’s. It would be so much easier just to dismiss Miss Brown, in her own words, as ‘a mad old woman’, as losing her would cost the church next to nothing on an institutional level. I think I drew the right conclusions about it all, but I look elsewhere, at other cases, and retain a tremor of discomfort.

Coming Around Again

You may recall Mad Trevor's ex-friend Mad Terry, who I'd thought I'd seen the back of after he was ejected from the apartment he rented in the village. He turned up again at Christmas, very unexpectedly bringing with him a fiancée from Lithuania who turns out to have been his mother's carer before that unfortunate lady's death. She doesn't speak much English. They want to get married 'as soon as possible', which won't be very soon given the legal implications and the amount it'll cost.

Mad Terry has been resettled not far away by the Council in a shared house, and wants me to come and bless it. I am definitely not going on my own after my experience last time and the palpable atmosphere of disturbance and discomfort that infested the apartment here.

He called at 7.15 this morning. 'I've been under spiritual attack,' he said. It turned out that he'd been making lots of noise in the new room in the middle of the night and one of the other residents had banged on the wall, then left a note on the communal noticeboard asking everyone in the house to keep the noise down after 10pm. This didn't seem unreasonable to me, albeit a bit passive-aggressive. Anyway, I agreed to see him after the first Ash Wednesday mass this morning to talk through the matter.

Talking through it took over an hour, endlessly trying to keep the conversation to the point, ploughing through references to spiritual warfare, the welfare system, David Cameron, lawyers and landlords, trying to work out exactly what was happening. Terry is now living round the corner from a large evangelical church. 'I went there for a blessing, and boy, are they in danger. They're all in the houses opposite, waiting.' It turned out, from the context, that 'they' are Muslims who are itching to take the place over.

I am angry with myself for giving the man so much time, and only write this to get it off my chest. I tell people God can speak through unlikely individuals, that you have to be alive to the possibility of the Holy Spirit working through challenging people and circumstances. Even Mad Trevor just occasionally comes up with something that makes me think. So I keep an open mind: perhaps too open.

This was the exchange that made me give up:

Terry: That time you refused to hug me after the service, I was really offended. But it's all right, brother, I've forgiven you. But you were wrong. Didn't Jesus hug Peter? That was the first time a man had ever hugged another man.
Me: Where does it say Jesus hugged Peter?
Terry: Well, he forgave him.
Me: Yes he did, but where does it say he hugged him?
Terry: (after a silence) There's more to it than the words.

And a few minutes later:

Terry: That time you asked who in the church had read the Bible, and I was the only one who put my hand up. I probably know more about it than you do.

And then, after he handed me a note to decipher:

Me: This just says 'Colin Brown' and has a phone number.
Terry: Ah yes, can you sign that, I need your signature.
Me: Why?
Terry: So when we go on tour in Europe we can send you money to give to the church.
Me: How will having my signature let you send me money?
Terry: Well, it's so that the people we deal with will trust you and you can sign for the money when we send it.
Me: You aren't allowed just to send bundles of money between countries. I'm not signing that. If you're abroad and anyone official needs my signature they can get in touch with me.
Terry (after a moment): Good, you passed the test. Sorry I had to test you like that.

I have proceeded on the basis that, in amidst the garbage of mental illness, God might have something to say to me.

He doesn't.

Drink Drink Drink

Here's an issue. Swanvale Halt church has for some years hosted a Music Club which organises concerts (usually in the folk-rock genre, not my sort of thing but others like it) in the church. They commonly draw audiences of a couple of hundred and are increasingly successful. Now when I came to the parish this was what it said in the Parish Profile, under the 'Community' heading:

Swanvale Halt Music Club: Organised by members of the Roman Catholic congregation, this is a monthly music club that hosts live concerts at the church featuring national and international artists.  Performances take place in the church with a Fair Trade cafe bar run in the Church Room.  The profits from the concerts are donated to the church.  

You'd have thought from that that the Music Club is a volunteer-organised, not-for-profit venture. It isn't. It's actually part of the business of a local music promoter who happens to be a member of the Roman Catholic congregation, and doesn't donate all its profits to the church at all - it's just that in its first couple of years the events weren't really making a profit. Now they are, as the events and the venue have become better known. It took me quite a while to work out what the real situation was, and I remember one member of the church in my first year here getting very angry when I referred to the Music Club as 'a community organisation'. I'd forgotten what the Profile had said until I looked it up again this morning. 

Almost every time we have a PCC meeting, or any other discussion that touches on the matter, there's a real feeling of resentment at our interactions with the Music Club. We don't get enough money from it, we're being exploited, we're bending over backwards to accommodate them, people say. I suspect that some of this is down to the confusion that you can see reflected in the Parish Profile; is the Music Club just a commercial booking like any other, or is it a commercial booking which happens to form an element in the life of the community that brings us benefits as a church and which we want to support by treating it differently?

Last night we had a lengthy PCC meeting which discussed the new draft hiring policy, drawn up by me as an attempt to use theological principles to guide our thinking over what sort of organisations or events we'll allow to use our facilities. Part of this is the question of the use of alcohol, and that touches on all the raw nerves relating to the Music Club. Drink is sold at the concerts, but originally the church stipulated that it was not to be taken into the church itself. The Music Club promoter argued very strongly that his customers couldn't understand this and strongly resented it, and said that he would arrange for plastic tumblers to be used for drinks and pay us extra per concert for cleaning, as this seemed to be what people were most concerned about. He pointed out that many other churches which host music events don't make this distinction. We eventually, but certainly not unanimously, agreed to allow his customers to take alcohol into the church space for a trial 3-month period. There weren't any obvious problems at the end of that, so the new arrangements carried on. 

However trying to work through the hiring policy last night threw up deeper ideological issues. Several PCC members feel very strongly that allowing alcohol which has been purchased to be brought into the church space is 'turning the church into a pub'. The trouble is that they can't really work out why they think this. In the hiring policy I tried to work through the matter and suggested that the sacramental space of the church should be considered separate from the hall adjoining, and that because of the problematic role alcohol plays in society and the idea of the church as a place of peace and serenity we shouldn't allow alcohol to be sold in the church space though we would allow it to be consumed. This doesn't seem to be enough for the PCC. However a couple of weeks ago a baptism family offered to bring some champagne for refreshments after the service: because the hall was out-of-action due to decorating we had the refreshments in the church itself. Everyone seemed OK with that. Furthermore, only one of the PCC is a teetotaler, and to make a big point out of alcohol as a church when you drink in your private life makes it pretty hard, it seems to me, to make the case to outsiders. 

This is the thing that worries me more than anything else. The concerts are arguably the most high-profile point at which the church interacts with non-churchy people, and what we decide has to make sense to those secular concertgoers in terms they can understand, or we risk simply being seen as bigots. I am not sure what I think: instinctively I don't have a problem with alcohol in the church space, although I can see how you could put together an argument against it, and that's what I seem to be doing. I find myself acting almost as a kind of ecclesiastical therapist, trying to help the church work out what they feel and why. 

A Different Way of Doing Things

In the midst of thinking about leadership and what it means in the Church, I've been lent Andrew Goddard's Rowan Williams: His Legacy by a member of the congregation. This same gentleman has also lent me one part of Pope Benedict's grand work on Jesus so he clearly feels I could do with some reading. Now revere Rowan Williams as I have a tendency to do, there are nevertheless some telling criticisms of his time as ABC in this generally supportive volume, the most insightful one being from an episcopal colleague, that Abp Rowan articulated so consistently the sense of pain and angst that arose from the divisions of the Anglican Communion that everyone else started to feel it as well, to a perhaps unnecessary degree. 

One of the good things you get with this book is a meaty selection of quotations from Rowan's writings and speeches themselves, and criticisms aside they reveal the measure of the man. His absolute genius is a diplomatic one: the interpretation of differing points of view to one another, and the investigation of points of intersection in those views, as well as thinking about the deep patterns and movements which affect cultures - the uncovering of the true nature of things which is what the prophetic mission of the Church involves. Rowan's humility in dealing with a secular world, his refusal to engage with it via a metaphorical megaphone, and his consistent lack of concern about his own status and selfhood, speaks of the deepest kind of faith and, dare I say, the only sort of Church leadership the modern non-churched world can be expected to accord any respect. If only I could manage half as much.

An Offer

This sickening little graphic is exactly why I've never thought of myself as a 'leader' and don't trust those who do. I regularly get bumf through the post from various Christian organisations which want to tell me how to be a leader, grow leaders, learn about leadership, and so on. Anyone who thinks of themselves as a leader should on no account actually be allowed to lead anyone else, in a properly ordered world. 

So it was with ambiguous feelings that I had an email the other day from the diocesan training department 'offering me the chance' to attend a leadership course next year, run by Keith Lambdin, the principal of Salisbury Theological College, and a couple of local clergy. 'The bishop is fully in support of this initiative', said the note, 'and of your participation in particular'. Which makes me wonder whether this is the kind of 'invitation' one can refuse, or not. The course will be lengthy - about a fortnight spread over the year, including two residential sessions of a couple of days each; expensive (costing about £1000 in all, of which the diocese will stump up half, with the residue coming from my annual training allowance and, in theory, the parish); and of as-yet unclear content. My long experience is that professional training courses both within the Church and outside it never deliver what they promise, and the lessons you learn are almost never those which the course intends to teach you. What they invariably do deliver is traumatic episodes of role-playing and opportunities for public humiliation. I have to have a lot of persuading that this will do me or anyone else any good.

I am not averse to the idea of training. A former parish priest who now works as a management consultant and treats Lamford as his parish church has written a book on the management of change within the Church which everyone regards very highly: were the diocese to invite him to run a course which actually looked at what change might really mean or how the Church might be better organised to facilitate it, now, that would be interesting. Unfortunately, as I've said before, while the Church pays lip-service to the concept of 'change', it appears to have no idea what such change might actually look like. 

However this gentleman says good things about Fr Keith Lambdin, and our curate has lent me his book which isn't bad, rather firmly and clearly written and with a minimum of nonsense (at least a couple of chapters in). He suggests most clergy - almost willy-nilly - fall into the leadership styles he calls the Monarch or the Warrior, which are in fact the least helpful in the context of the modern Church, and posits a set of different ways of thinking about what you do as a minister (I like putting it that way, rather than 'leadership styles') which are a bit more healthy. I can't see 'the Coward' or 'the Evader' as an option, unfortunately, but I'm hoping reading the book will justify me in not doing the course.

Mixing Signals

At the end of March, the legislation allowing people of the same sex to marry under the State comes into force. A month ago the House of Bishops sent out their Pastoral Letter and attached Advice relating to same-sex marriage.

Now, the bishops are struggling to come up with some way of proceeding which preserves their sense of themselves, and the Anglican Church as a whole, as nice, liberal, tolerant people, and their equally compelling self-image as people attempting to follow conscientiously Scripture and the tradition of the Christian Church. They don’t want to be horrible to anyone, and that isn’t actually a bad thing to aim at. The trouble, of course, is that where there are irreconcilable opinions you can’t help doing or saying something that one side or another will interpret as being horrible. There is a lot in the statement which is positive, and even humble: in fact, the bishops seem to fall over themselves in their insistence on ‘acknowledging that as yet our knowledge and understanding are partial’. The whole document gives the sense of groping towards understanding rather than trumpeting a settled opinion of the magisterium, and that, too, is not a bad thing. The negative aspects of the statement – that clergy, subject to ordination vows and canon law which demand a certain representative mode of life which is not that of laypeople, should not marry members of their own sex themselves and that people in a same-sex marriage will not be recommended for ordination – are convoluted, handwringing efforts to bring about some sort of consistency of behaviour where no consensus exists; or, viewed more cynically, efforts to make it look as though the bishops want such consistency for the benefit of hostile observers. But I can see where they’re coming from.

I saw a letter from a bishop to his own local clergy, passing on the link to the document to ensure they all knew it was there. He went on, again, in what I think is a tremendous effort to be positive:

You will notice, that a pastoral response of prayers is encouraged, where appropriate, to gay couples who may enquire about the possibility of some form of service. This would not be any formal rite or liturgy but, as paragraph 22 of the Appendix states, a 'more informal kind of prayer, at the request of the couple, might be appropriate in the light of circumstances'.

It was the last sentence which made my heart sink:

My own view is that this might be best done in the couple's home.

Why might that be? I’m writing as somebody who doesn’t think two people of the same sex can celebrate the sacrament of matrimony, and when I said that some time ago was regarded with incredulity by some of my more liberal Christian friends who couldn’t believe I could express such wicked and objectionable opinions. And even I gib at this. Surely, if we’re trying to be consistent, a person, thing or activity which can be prayed for in private can be prayed for in public? To say otherwise in this case implies either that you think the relationship you’re praying for is sinful; or that you think others will, and so publicity should be avoided. The former idea would be bizarre: to ‘pray with’ a homosexual couple surely assumes that there is nothing inherently sinful about their relationship; you wouldn’t go to someone’s house to pray, say, for God’s purposes and will to be revealed as they were about to engage in adultery – would you? If it’s the latter thought behind the bishop’s words, well, the best you can say is that it’s understandable. What it really represents is the desire to make the Church appear welcoming and pastorally sensitive while not actually being willing to follow through and face the trouble that would result even from the comparatively moderate position of praying for gay couples in a church.

Note, also, the conditional, personal tone of the sentence: ‘my own view’, ‘might best be done’. The bishop knows that we clergy are canonically bound to do what we are told when given direct instructions, and quite rightly. But this stops short of issuing an instruction and instead disguises it as a personal opinion. I wonder which it’s actually intended to be. I suppose it may also be the case that this bishop suspects there are some clergy who would actively disobey any instruction not to pray for gay couples in church, so he doesn’t issue one, to avoid the confrontation.

It’s really trying to have one’s cake and eat it in two entirely different matters, sex and authority, within a mere 14 words, and tells you a great deal about how the Church of England works – or doesn’t. 

Readers and Their Doings

Our Reader is brilliant. She is an academic person but when she preaches manages to wear her learning very lightly at the same time as giving people plenty of good content. It’s a great gift.

But what are Readers for? Not long after I arrived I had a consultation with Lillian about what her role in the parish might be. It wasn’t going to be taking funerals, and most of our services are Eucharistic so the scope for her to lead worship was limited. We worked out a preaching schedule and she leads Taize services every other month, and has started a Bible study group.

The trouble with Readers – who you are not supposed to call Readers, they have been Licensed Lay Ministers in this area since 2001 – is that their distinctive role has been eroded over the years from both ends. What I mean is this. In its late-Victorian origin, the Anglican office of Reader, inspired by the ancient Minor Order of Lector, was intended to enable laypeople literally to read the Scriptures in a liturgical setting where previously that job had been the reserve of clergy and parish clerks. Readers got a badge and that was it. Gradually in the 20^th century they became ‘clericalised’, still laypeople but allowed to dress up like clergy – first in a cassock and surplice, then with their distinctive blue preaching scarf. However, over recent decades the fact that laypeople are allowed to deliver the readings in services, and that a new category of non-stipendiary local clergy has been established, has meant that the Reader no longer looks quite so special. He or she is a sort of sub-vicar who can’t do anything that no one else can. One incumbent in this diocese was reported as having decided to put two parishioners who expressed a sense of vocation forward as Ordained Local Ministers rather than Readers on the grounds that OLMs would be more useful and training Readers was a waste of time; in Lamford an OLM had been ‘tried out’ by one of the previous incumbents as a Reader to ‘see how she did’ while another gentleman who had been rejected for the priesthood was advised by the same Rector to train as a Reader instead (sensibly he refused). The response to this unclarity has been to up the educational qualifications, and Readers now undergo a rather rigorous four-year theological training (probably a bit more involved than mine was!).

 At college we discussed Readers and wondered whether it might not be sensible, given that we were all being constantly told how special and wonderful the Diaconate was, to ordain all the existing ones as Deacons and have done with it. The trouble was that Deacons obviously have sacramental and pastoral roles as well as preaching and teaching ones. So that didn’t quite add up either.

 

On Tuesday I was out at a meeting for local vocations advisors, of whom I have the inestimable honour of being one, and we were addressed by the Warden of Readers for the diocese. She described Readers as ‘lay theologians’ whose ministry was specifically to make links between the lay world beyond the Church and the tradition they are charged with interpreting and reflection on. That would not result in a role which could be easily constrained, but which might lead to all sorts of involvement with groups and structures in and beyond the Church. That was the first time I’d heard it described in such terms and I’m grateful for it. Look for people who ask questions and want to make connections, we were advised: they may be your Readers.

Heartless

The former incumbent of our next-door parish once made the more sensitive members of Chapter gulp with a statement that 'a parish priest needs to know when to be a bastard'. I suppose the corollary of that is that they need to know when not to be, too.

I found myself in the bastard's position last week over Micky. Micky had taken up residence a couple of weeks before in the churchyard, initially with a bicycle, although that had mysteriously disappeared. He had a habit of grasping my hand in a vice-like grip which belied his appalling aroma, clouds of accompanying flies, and incomprehensible speech (which, however, I discovered could be effectively deciphered by various local residents). He lived in the big rhododendron bush and had been observed by the denizens of the old people's flats on the other side of the churchyard taking a dump there, which I'd already upbraided him for. I had swabbed down the benches in the churchyard after he'd wee-ed over them, and been very grateful for the fact that he never tried to sleep in the church itself. I was not sure quite where responsibility for the piles of lager cans lay between Micky or the other drinkers who were magnetically drawn to the Garden of Remembrance to accompany him. I was rather more sure of the complaints I had from people whose relatives' ashes were buried there.

On Sunday morning a week ago I came to church to take the 8am mass on a hot, bright day. Micky was rather harmlessly sat on a bench minding his own business. However on going home for breakfast I spotted him enthusiastically urinating up the wall of Boots the Chemist as families went by on their way to the Roman Catholic mass at 8.45. People live in the flats above that, I thought.
Coming down again for the 10am I found him lying in the church porch, his lager cans on the ground. I said it was time for him to move on. 'You look on me as a lower form of life' he said.

Now let us not be falsely sentimental, for Christ is the enemy of false sentiment. Micky's life - a life he doesn't want to leave as there is a very pleasant and well-resourced hostel four miles away he could go to if he wanted -  is just incompatible with the life my parishioners lead, and I can be of no good to him. But being bounced into being the representative of communal self-righteousness is not at all congenial.

In the Midst of Prayer

Yesterday was the annual service at which all the new churchwardens around the area are sworn in, and it happened to take place in Hornington parish church so I decided I could cycle. Churchwardens are elected by the congregation: although the service states that they are 'appointed by the incumbent and the people', in theory the incumbent of the parish needn't have any role at all, even though once upon a time the rector or vicar would appoint one warden and only the other was elected. Anyway, it is to the Bishop that the wardens swear their oath of office. Except that the Bishop doesn't come to the service, and it's his legal officer the Registrar who administers the oath. Except that our Registrar has retired so it was his Deputy who came, wigged and wing-collared, to do the necessary legal business.

Normally, as I told our wardens, while I'm parading about up the front of the church I never really hear anyone else praying unless they're leading the formal intercessions; there is just a general hubbub or sussuration of prayerful words. But last night I was sat there, in a pew, with them (and a husband of one) around me, actually hearing their prayers spoken. It was a quietly impressive moment.

Terminological Inexactitude

'Matilda', wrote Hilaire Belloc, 'told such dreadful lies/It made one gasp and stretch one's eyes'. I shouldn't be surprised by anything in the lives of Mad Trevor and his occasional chum Mad Terry, the demon-smeller and Charismatic Christian, but they still catch me out. They have resumed their musical ambitions and I was asked to go round to Terry's house, an old cottage in the village, or part of one, to re-bless them for their plans. I arrived, as I had on a previous occasion, to find Terry's landlord and landlady there to sign his new lease. 'You were here last time we visited', said the lady. 'What a coincidence!' 'Isn't it,' I agreed. 'Oh, we always have a blessing when we sign a new contract', put in Terry. Do we? News to me. That wasn't what I'd been asked for. He then pointed to me and told his landlady, 'This man's one of the ones who've been praying for you, that's why you're better, thanks to Jesus!' I wasn't, I had not the faintest idea that anything was wrong with her having only met her once and never given her a second thought since then. It was very clear the owners wanted Terry out of their house and were reluctantly signing another six-month lease and taking the property back into their possession after that; the lady began talking about that, then indicated me and said, 'But you won't want to talk about that with your friend here'. 'James knows all about the situation', Terry assured her. No I didn't, I didn't know a single thing.

Three blatant lies in five minutes implicating me was impressive going. Later on Terry ascribed the failure of his and Trevor's earlier efforts, and a similar blessing ceremony, due to the presence at the time of a couple who turned out to be 'living in sin'. Isn't Christianity wonderful. The falsehoods seem to trip off this particular Christian's tongue with such facility I doubt he's even aware of them.