Year 2 Conference

I don't do mornings.  Speaking to me before the second mug of tea is a bad idea.  I don't do conversation before 9am, so conference breakfast can be awkward.  There should be a separate area reserved for grumpy old bastards like myself where we can sit, ignore each other and eat our Weetabix in silence.  So despite getting to the canteen as it opened, and sitting at the far side of the hall from everyone else, and with my back to them, someone will always come over and tell me that I can't have breakfast on my own.  A statement that they then prove by sitting down with me.  I'm happy to talk at lunch, dinner, over coffee, or even in the pub, but please, can I just start the day my way?


This conference was the last time I will be at conference with the third years.  I've known these people since Mrs Gerbil started training, so it will be odd next year not having them around.  But we did get to meet the new trainees, and unlike last year, they were around for the whole weekend, having had their own conference a fortnight or so before.  Next year, I am in the third year.  How did that happen?

There are now four more trainee ministers that have been on the back of the bike.  That's six in a year!  Should my next project be Fifty Pillion Reverends?

The theme of conference for my year group was on worship.  For many of us, we have been leading parts of worship throughout our enquiry process and placements for a number of years, not to mention any worship we have delivered in or former lives.  It could seem a little late in the day to be receiving this training, but I believe that the training in pastoral care I was given in last years conference should be the subject of the first year.  I have had more pastoral encounters over the past 12 months than I have delivered worship, so the order of conference training seems fine.  The content of the worship training was ideal.  We have all had different experience of worship, and it was good to bounce ideas around and really consider why we do things in worship, and in what order they occur. 

When discussing the creation of a worship space, in amongst my notes, scribbled in a hand that never actually writes anything down in pen and ink was a line that said "(interaction of time space and thought? Creates thin spaces?)"  I shared this with a colleague over a pint and they asked if I had came up with that myself.  I had to confess it was partly a Star Trek plot, and partly a sermon that Beachblesser delivered last year.  I'm not sure if I have an original thought in my head, just lots of recycled ideas.  And they are more Sci-fi than theological.  Live long and prosper.

Former moderator Albert Bogle delivered our opening session.  He's a man of great ideas, and had plenty to say about using technology for mission.  While in many ways I agree that the church should not lag too far behind in using modern technology to deliver its message, we may differ in the way we see change being accepted in our congregations.  I have been surprised this year to discover that many younger people prefer more traditional styles of worship, preferring the stability that can be taken from a more structured liturgy. 

In other news, the regular worship was pleasant.  While a band did form by the end of the second day, the first acts of worship saw us singing unaccompanied.  We are a surprisingly tuneful bunch, and the collective human voice is actually a great sound.  Despite having some exceptionally skilled musicians amongst us, including an outstanding harpist with her portable harp (specially commissioned to be lightweight) I think I preferred the unaccompanied singing.

It was one of the final sessions that I got the most out of.  Due to a small communication error, I wasn't even supposed to be around at the preaching workshop which took place after the OLM's were supposed to leave.  But I had a spare sermon in my folder, so I was given the chance to receive feedback on one of my sermons.  It was the one at the end of my post from 18th November 2012 on silence.  I had others on my tablet, but this was the one that seemed to suit a small, reflective audience.  But it was one of my fellow candidates that delivered the most memorable lesson of the weekend.  She was actually at my first enquirers conference back in 2008, but the process of her getting to this stage has taken a long time.  I'm not going to give away more about her, as ministry is a small world.  What I can say is that she read out a letter she had written.  The reading of this letter really took me back to the early churches, where correspondence was the way the churches grew.  On the table before her, there was a few items from her parish, including a small scrap of wood with a bent nail in it.  There are a couple of bent nails in my shed, and a lot of them in my parents garage.  Bent nails are useful things.  They might not be useful for joining things together any more, but they are great for hanging things up.  Or the bent nail that kept the gearbox in my Dad's Mini working.

Lesson for the weekend.  God has a use for bent nails like us.