What's your calling?

A soup kitchen needs someone to make the soup.

The Street Pastors I went out with are supported by someone who makes them sandwiches to take them through the night.

You don't have to stand at the front of the church, wearing odd clothes to demonstrate God's call.

Just do what you can.

Sometimes all you need to do is make soup and sandwiches.

Flowing

Today just seemed to go right.

This was the last of my four slots helping with my regular minister at Lane End and Fieldside.  The initial idea was to have some sort of interview type sermon, with us bouncing questions off each other and working that into Jeremiah saying he wasn't up for the task, and with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost reading from Acts.

Now the minister sent me his first draft of the sermon, and it became clear that there was going to be a lot of probing of my calling.  I'm usually OK with that, but I didn't want the sermon to appear to be all about me.  So on Saturday evening we discussed a plan which saw us using most of the content of his original sermon, and when questioned I gave an account of three people I had met on the enquiry process, all of whom had entertained the idea of ministry, but had then went on to follow God's call in some other way.  I went on to give examples of opportunities to follow God's call in the local area.  So in the end, the sermon was about 25% my content, 75% his, but with the delivery of the sermon split 50/50.

Yes I know this sounds muddled and complicated, but when we actually got up there and delivered it, it worked.  The 9.30 service at Lane End felt great for a change.  I have occasionally felt that, despite my best efforts, I have used their service as a dress rehearsal for the 11.00 at Fieldside.  Today it just flowed.

When I got to Fieldside, the projectionist had used a few images to illustrate callings within that local parish, and I was confident enough to divert slightly from the script and use them as examples of the varied ways people are called to serve God.  This was unexpected but it personalised the sermon to that congregation.

This was just the confidence boost I was needing.  This was the last involvement in a sermon that I will have until after my selection on the 5th.

Heart and soul 2012

Hats off to everyone involved in Heart and Soul.  You've excelled yourselves.

And hello to all the bloggers that were floating around.  I think I counted six, possibly even a seventh, however as the first rule of blog club is that you never talk about blog club, you can never tell if there's one of us out there.  To those that I talked to, it was good to see you all again. 

Not good

It just wasn't good.

My minister has let me shaddow him for the four weeks or so I have between placement ending and selection conference.  Last week it was a short prayer.  Simple enough.

This week I had a more involved prayer booked.  Fine.  Then this evolved into doing the introduction to the service, plus the prayers, then a bit on Christian Aid.

And that was when things started to unravel.  The intro had responses, printed in the order of service.  So I asked the congregation to join in, and I started, but the responses weren't coming back at me.  The minister gave the lines back at me, as the congregation should have.  Them Mrs Gerbil caught my eye and pointed at the order of service.  No responses. 

Merde.  That's for the 11.00 service at Fieldside, not at the 09:30 at Lane End.  That explains why the person that does the order of service looks panicked, as she told me later she was worried she had missed something.  Then my mic seemed to stop working while talking about CA week, totally mucking up my train of thought.

It all goes together to look sloppy, and I feel like I'm letting down Lane End.  There's often something goes wrong when I'm let loose at the front of the church, and even though things recovered at Fieldside at 11.00, I just left feeling pretty flat.

I have two more Sundays before conference.

Motorbike assembly

One of the gifts I can bring to ministry is a passable knowledge of motorbike maintenance.  It's an exceptionally useful skill, and one that more ministers should learn.  The only problem is, like cars, motorbikes are becoming more and more complicated to maintain.  Having seen how Triumph builds their bikes, I'm not sure I would be confident in letting my spanners loose on one of these...

Street Pastors

Saturday night I went out as an observer with a group of Street Pastors in a local town.

You might think you know your town.  There's probably an M&S, a Boots, a selection of banks, in fact, there's not a lot of difference in the shops on your high street compared with any other town. But once you get past 6pm, the high street changes, and the scenes you are familiar with from the daytime, are completely transformed.

It's into this environment that the Street Pastors go out.  We met up in a local church hall which was to be our base for the night.  The support team had left soup and sandwiches, for the break later on.  After introductions I was given my  attractive hi-viz vest.

We went out around 10pm and did a tour round some of the pubs in the area, collecting empty bottles as we went.  It's a public safety thing, as a smashed bottle can be dangerous, even if it's not a weapon.  The pastors even have brush and shovel for the smashed glass.  I was to realise later that the pastors rucksack came from the same factory that made Mary Poppins' carpet bag - there was an unending supply of tissues, plasters, foil blankets, and the famous slippers, all appearing from these bags.

There was no heavy handed preaching, just a caring presence on the street.  Neutral and totally separate from the Police or the door staff, the pastors had built up relationships and were trusted and respected as a calming influence.

There's so much I just cannot blog about, but I have seen genuine pastoral care and examples of the sharing of God's love.  This is where the church needs to be.  Helping, supporting our communities, and keeping people safe. 

So, please support your local Street Pastor.  

Augustine and his Hippo

I've just finished a 2000 word essay on whether or not Augustine of Hippo was good or bad for the church.  My conclusion was that he was OK.  The essay was a slog, with every word dragged out of me kicking and screaming.  This has not been my experience in this course so far.

Eternal thanks to Nik for some reformation insight.  And for giving me an excuse to revisit the Reformation Polka.


And also the 95 Theses rap...