It wasn't even the Archdeacon who came to do the Archdeacon's Visitation at the church this week; it was the Deputy Archdeacon, the affable newly-retired Vicar of Crowfield who is clearly in need of some activity to ease himself into retirement (I'm pretty sure he doesn't get paid anything more than petrol money). In fact the last Visitation was the only time when an Archdeacon did do it, and as the Archdeacon then very soon became our Suffragan Bishop I had forgotten he wasn't when he came, if you're following me. On this occasion, Deputy Archdeacon Ray's first task was to swear Colin in as our new churchwarden, taking on the remaining months of the term of office until the Annual Meeting after Easter, and then to examine various register books and policies. This time we were mildly upbraided for not having our Certificate of Public Liability Insurance on display in both the church entrance and the hall, and for the Safeguarding Officer's details on show in the former but not the latter. Nobody has ever mentioned those, but ratcheting-up is the point of these things, so far do's. 'Your Safeguarding Dashboard is a bit of a dog's dinner', Ray stated, rather to my surprise, showing us a screen capture on his phone of a range of amber and red boxes, 'though you're not the worst in the diocese'. I suppose that's a comfort to everyone except the worst parish in the diocese, to whom the rest of us should be grateful. Curiously when I went onto the Dashboard the following day I saw much more green, and was able to turn another box green just by confirming the PCC had discussed something, so I don't know where Ray had got his image from, but again, I'm not disagreeing that more needs to be done.
Then we discussed our draft Church Development Plan. I was a bit conscious that a lot of it involves taking decisions about where to go with various ideas, such as whether to instal AV equipment or employ a Musical Director, rather than actually doing any of these things, but Ray was less fazed by that rather than the fact that much rests on me finding people to run with these ideas and build small groups of congregation members to do the thinking. 'Your initials are next to a lot of this', he pointed out, though I think at this stage it's inescapable that they would be. Poor Colin and Robert, the existing churchwarden, who didn't have a great deal to contribute to the discussion.
'What did you make of the previous iteration of this?' asked Ray. 'Well', I said, 'The fact that it was called the Parish Needs Process and the way it was marketed led us to think that we were identifying what our parishes wanted to do and then the diocese would provide what we needed to achieve our dreams, and it became clear that it wasn't really like that'. 'Yes', mused Ray, 'That's right. I think they've probably learned from that'. Which tells you everything you need to know.
Here's the glorious photo of Archdeacon Colley of Stockton I used for the last Visitation post.
