Flamed.

I was at a church meeting the other day, and as is the norm (or should be) in church gatherings, there was a lot of praying.  As the speaker proceeded, from a couple of rows behind me, someone threw in the occasional loud "Amen" whenever he found a particular point spiritually agreeable.  I know the guy.  He was at one of the fifty churches I've visited this year and he's a pleasant chap.  Very confident in his faith. We'll call him Trevor

As is also the norm in the church, once you have been to one meeting, you are sooner or later going to find yourself at another meeting.  And normally there are one or two faces from the first meeting at the second.  So at the second meeting, two men from the first meeting came over and we had the "don't I know you from somewhere" conversation.  When the topic of the first meeting came up, one of the men mentioned Trevor and his "Amen's" That was when the second man said to the first that Trevor belonged in the Baptists, not the CofS, to which the first man agreed.  Well I wasn't standing for this.  I flamed them.  I told them in no uncertain terms that we needed more people in the CofS that are so spiritually confident and who are so certain in their faith.  We needed more people who were so outgoing about their Christianity, and that there was nothing worse than a group of dour sounding church members expressing their joy in Christ's saving grace.  We need to be more alive.

And the two men.  One is a Minister, the other I think is a Session Clerk. 

If you find yourself wishing someone would leave the church, I think it's you that has the problem, so you might not want to let the door hit you on the way out.  We should be prayerfully including all comers, and giving welcome to all who wish to join in.

Amen to that.

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.

Water Into wine

 

It's been a great season this year for hedge fruit.  Raspberries, wild strawberries and brambles have all done amazingly well, and we are right into the bramble season just now.  By bramble, I mean the wild blackberry that is found on waste ground, although international readers may refer to many hedge fruits as brambles. You may wish to have a look at the wiki entry on brambles as it all gets confusing.  I didn't know there were so many varieties.

Home winemaking has started to take off again, pioneered my small health food shops, such as my main supplier, Stirling Health Foods.  Even the larger stores such as Tesco and Lakeland are getting in on the act, but you can't beat speaking to an expert, when it comes to getting started.  Boots used to have a large part of their stores reserved for home brewing, but that went a long time ago.  If you want to get into the hobby, you can get a starter kit for £35 which will make around 6 bottles.  After that, most of the kit is reusable, so you could experiment with the free fruit that is bursting forth just now.

The best places to find brambles are railway embankments (disused preferably) or Victorian graveyards.  If you happen to have a west facing railway embankment that borders a Victorian graveyard then you can pick a couple of kilos of fruit in about 30 minutes.  Or so I am told....

Why not have a look at my recipe for bramble wine...

If You Do That Again I'll Cut Off Your Fingers!

Microphone users, I'm watching you...

This is the inside of a failed radio microphone plug.  There are actually two broken wires here, one in the plug itself, and another near the right crocodile clip that was causing an intermittent crackling sound.  An hour of careful soldering, heat-shrinking and testing later and the microphone is back in working order.

Over the past year I have seen a complete lack of respect for microphones.  I've seen them swung around by their cables, antennae used as a handle to haul them out of pockets, and when they are finished, the wire is tightly wrapped around the transmitter.  The wires used in microphones are exceptionally thin, thinner than the cheap earbud headphones that come with MP3 players.  They have to be thin, so they are unobtrusive, but this makes them fragile. It would be possible to replace the wire with the orange cable from a flymo, but that might be excessive...

So now having repaired a couple of microphones, I am warning microphone users everywhere that I will forgive you for swinging the microphone around by either of its cables, but only after I have cut off one your fingers.  I know I'm supposed to forgive you 77 times, but I'm sure you will get the hint after the tenth digit. 

Fifty Acts of Worship. A Review.

I have spent the last year trying to attend as many different acts of worship as possible.  For most churchgoers, fifty acts in a year is not that hard, after all, you will probably attend church most weeks, with additional services at Easter, Christmas, and if you are lucky a wedding, or unlucky a funeral.  The problem I have is that I'm supposed to be training for the ministry, so my attendance at worship is going to be pretty limited from now on.  Next month I start my first placement, and while I will be present during worship, I'm going to be working.  I've been lucky to have been in a position where I can devote a year to observing such a variety of worship.

I'm in a fortunate position to be in the central belt, about an hour from Glasgow and half an hour from Edinburgh.  The time I have spent up north recently has shown that some people take having an abundance of churches for granted. In the central belt, often if you think your local church is too liberal or conservative for your tastes, you can go over the road to another.  Go outwith the central belt, and you may already have to travel some miles to get to a church.  While it is sad to see empty churches in rural areas, I visited a couple of clearance villages over the summer, and these would have had many hundreds in their population, and all attending the local church.  Once the land was cleared for sheep farming, the houses were demolished, the people relocated to the coastal fringes or beyond, and all that is left to show there was once a thriving population is a disused church. 

If the church, and not just the Church of Scotland, wishes to continue to serve the most vulnerable in our society, then it should be ensuring that there are flexible and dynamic forms of ministry that will serve those who are in need of the help of the church.  I'm not entirely sure if I'm being called to a rural area, and in some ways I hope not, but I'd at least like to be able to work with other denominations to bring God's church to our communities.  This year has demonstrated that there are congregations from all backgrounds who wish to work together, not just in rural areas, but in our towns as well.  Street pastors and food banks are operated by churches for the welfare of our entire communities.  It's a joy to see people working as a team, regardless of their faith background.

When it comes to worship, we are not that different.  We may think that the Catholic and Episcopal churches are very structured, and that the reformed churches have done away with all that.  In actual fact, we have our own structures, and there will be complaints if the running order changes from one week to the next..   If you want to keep a congregation on its toes, thrown in an extra hymn.  What about the independent churches?  Well they are roughly the same, and while the music may be more modern, and the songs tend to come in groups of three, you are still prayerfully lead towards a sermon, and remember in prayer those in the world around us.  And somewhere, the offering will be received.

Throughout the year, I've been made exceptionally welcome. In a year where the Church of Scotland has continued its debates on sexuality, the fact that I am a part of the CofS has not caused me to be shunned by those I have met.  I have had the question "Are you saved???" asked of me a few times, and while I have often been tempted to answer with "Well I'll be fracked if I know.  How about you?" I'm pretty confident that I'm not the worst person that will ever approach the  pearly gates.  Perhaps a couple of people may have seemed a little convinced that their attendance at a particular congregation gets them some extra heavenly brownie points, but other members of these congregations as a whole are not so hard-line in their attitudes.

I have seen some great examples of community action.  In a small independent congregation I heard about the mission work they support, but also from within the congregation how they would pull together to give practical help to those in need, in particular with organising a flitting for a young mother who had been granted a housing association flat.  I'd like to take the community spirit that often exists amongst smaller congregations and try to ensure this till takes place in larger ones.  That people can feel a part of a community, without feeling they are in too big a group to be helped.

Church tea is a bit hit or miss, wherever you go.  Honestly, I'm not going to spill it, so please fill my small cup more than half full.  And you will need more than one teabag for that gallon teabag.  Tea leaves are hand picked by hard working women, so their careful effort should not be vain. 

Church pews are often a pain in the proverbials, regardless where you go.  I may invest in a comfy cushion. 

In general though, it's ben a year of hope.  Church attendance may be down, but what is left is a strong core that is a good guide to the local demographics.  I was pleased to attend a church the other week that was full of young families, and the church was at the centre of a new and growing community.  And that's where churches are and should continue to be God's church should be grounded in fait, at the heart of our communities, while reaching out to those on the fringes of society and giving care.  We shouldn't be doing this with an aim to get bums on seats, but instead sharing the love because God first loved us.  Fifty acts of worship later has shown that the worship isn't actually the important thing, but instead it's how we take that message out into the communities, and work together as one church for the benefit of all those around us.

The new project starts in September. Watch this space...

Fifty Acts 50. At Last, The Methodists.

I've been trying to fit the Methodists into my schedule for a long time, but other congregations got in the way.  The Methodists have the honour of being the fiftieth act.

The reason I wanted to go to this congregation came from an event a few years ago.  I was delivering church flyers round a new housing estate,, and was getting a good response.  Lots of young families interested in the playgroup, toddlers groups and Scouts that were running in the church.  But when we got to one door, the owner was pretty grumpy.  He said...

"I tried Lane End church, and you weren't friendly.  Then I tried the Methodists, but they were too friendly.  Now we don't go at all!"

Well this got me interested and I had to do something.  Not about the unfriendliness of my own church, but instead, I wanted to find out how a church could be branded as too friendly.  So with that gauntlet laid down, I deided to visit the Methodists, albeit with about four years of procrastination. You shouldn't rush these things.

So the welcome was friendly.  Not over friendly, just friendly.  Perhaps they have mellowed...    We were certainly made to feel part of the congregation.  Typically, like so many of the preceding acts, the real minister was elsewhere, so it was a URC minister that lead worship.  Communion was celebrated, and we all gathered round the table, a nice gathering, but may draw attention to those who don't feel they can join in.  Everything seemed to be going well.

Except, it almost went wrong.  The minister had lost her car keys and she arrived very close to the start of the service, apologising to us for the delay. She was sharp, but not late.  And then someone came over to talk to the person behind me to ask if they could remember to pick up a bottle of Communion wine as they had run out.  Someone had been sent out to get a bottle of Ribena which was a blessing, as alcohol free Communion wine is howfing.Grape juice does not need sugar added to it, and yet the last time I had alcohol free wine, this is what it tasted like.

While the minister read from her Ipad, one of the readers used the bible on her phone.  I think I would advise against this, as it meant her reading was a little disjointed and didn't flow.  Although to her credit, at least she was taking an active part in the service, something many people do not feel confident in doing.

So in all, it was a nice congregation, a pleasant service, and a reasonably good cup of tea afterwards.

For the Birds

So Mrs G's summer placement is over and she's back home.  I'm sure she will tell you all about it pretty soon.  But what about the important story of the summer.  What about the birds?

Well there was this one...

A red kite.  A long way north of where anyone expects them to be.  And there was a pair of them.  

But no, you are more interested in the three gulls, Augustine, Luther and Foxy-Knoxy.  Well of the first two,  as I've mentioned before, they didn't survive abandonment by the parents and the heatwave.  Foxy-Knoxy seemed to keep alive by rooting for bugs in the manse garden (and probably the odd maggot from his fallen brethren - yeuch!) and was drinking from an overflowing drain.  Occasionally he would fly off in the direction of the beach, returning to the garden at night.

As we packed the car on the last day, he was nowhere to be seen.  However as I made a final sweep of the house, from the bedroom I saw him...

That's Foxy-Knoxy.  He has managed to land in such a position as to interfere with play on the 18th green.  Had I been quicker with the camera you would have seen a golfer chip her shot over him as he was in between her ball and the flag.  So having been a hazard in our garden all summer, he has gone over the road to be a hazard on the golf course.  Not the biggest hazard on that course, as there are cows grazing and electric fences surround the greens.

And he owes his continuing existence to the fact that there are no cats in the village.  Next year he, or his family may be the problem of a new minister.  Until I see him again, I wish him well.

Go Home or Face Arrest

The Home Office called me today, and the lady on the phone seemed a little surprised to have encountered a Scottish accent on the other end of the phone. 

It all started in the pub on Friday night. The TV in the corner played a story about the complaints relating to a Home Office advert, so now I'm probably the only person living in the UK that has actually texted the home office for assistance in my deportation as a result of the offensive billboard campaign they ran in London.  I've not been abroad for a while, so I was hoping the Home Office would give me a hand in traveling somewhere interesting.  A few minites, and another pint later, this text arrived.

Then today, the lady from the Home Office phoned up and asked if I would like assistance to go home.  It's very nice of organisations that you would like to raise an objection with to phone you directly.  It saves you getting passed from pillar to post and being kept on hold for ages.  So I've raised my objection to the advert campaign with the Home Office directly.  It's diet racism, one calorie, not quite the whole racism, but it's still racism.  It is telling communities that whether or not you are here legally, we aren't that happy about having you.  When the economy is in the doldrums, it's very easy to demonise immigrants, with the "coming over here, taking our jobs" bull that the far right will regularly drag up.I wonder if there are to be more campaigns based on a far right protest manual from the 1970's?

Unless ordinary UK citizens start raising their objections to this campaign, then things will get worse. Do you want to live in a country where state sponsored racism is the norm?  Campaigns like this are the thin end of the wedge.  Have a word with the Home Office, I'm sure they would love to hear from you.

Racism sucks.

Vintage Photography

You may have seen one of these in an antique shop...

It's a Kodak Autographic Brownie camera, dating from around 1924.  This was a very good model for its day, having two shutter speeds plus a bulb and timed setting, plus an aperture that was variable down to f64 and it even had an early form of data back - you could write on the negative using a stylus and its special pressure sensitive film would transfer the text to the printed image.  The negative is 56x84mm compared with 24x36 for 35mm film.  That's also bigger than IMAX at 70x48.5mm This gives you a very high quality, negative where the grain is hardly noticeable, even in the largest of enlargements.  This particular example was given to me by my uncle many years ago.  He rescued it before it was thrown out.

You can still get film for these cameras, but in this digital age, buying a roll of film that will only give you 8 exposures may seem like a waste of time, money and effort.  But nowadays, people are coming back to film photography for a variety of reasons.  It's an art form that has a completely different feel to digital photography.  Black and White photos seem to have deeper blacks, and smoother tones than images that have been shot digitally, converted to monochrome and printed on a colour printer.

I studied monochrome photography at college, and while I was never a great photographer, I really enjoyed the process of creating an image out of light and chemistry.   It was a conversation with Carolyn Lefley,  an artist that has been in residence in a nearby heritage centre that got me thinking about getting back into film photography.  Amongst other things, she had been working with a special type of photographic emulsion that can be painted on to objects and the results look amazing.  I've not got the space to get back into doing the full wet process, but I thought about putting a couple of rolls of film through my oldest camera to see what would happen.

The thing about film photography is that it stops you rushing.  There is a tendency with digital photography to charge ahead, check the preview image on the camera and if it's not OK, just snap another one.  Using a camera that has a fixed film speed (Ilford FP4 shot at 64 ISO and HP5 at 200 ISO), a choice of two shutter speeds (1/25 and 1/50 plus B and T) and a viewfinder that only gives a suggestion of what the image will look like makes you really think about composing your subject.  A tripod is also a necessity.  And as for onboard light metering, forget it.  You need a hand held meter and also a willing assistant to lug all your kit around.

The film was processed in a lab in Edinburgh then scanned.  Prints were also made, although these were printed on a colour mini-lab, and this does not give the same rich blacks that you get from a genuine monochrome print.

I have a bulk roll of 35mm monochrome film sitting.  I think it's time I got the old cameras back into use once more, and this time I'll do the processing myself.  And I feel like rescuing some more vintage cameras and bringing them back into use.  I really fancy a Mamiya C330.  Please join my campaign to save the silver halide.

The images are below.  Unfortunately the light seals or the bellows seem to be leaking light, and the lens itself seems to be squint, giving a tilt/shift effect. Of all the images, the first three seem to have fared the best, as the light was failing towards the end of the day.  Still, it's not too bad for a 90 year old camera that was destined for the bin.

We'll let the digital Nikon have the last word...

Fifty Acts 49. When Spot went to Dover.

I remember when all this was fields.  In fact, I remember when my driving instructor was telling me to get the car up towards 60 on a the fun bit of country road.  Now the road has been tamed, and it's a 30 limit and there's shops where there once was fields.  They really have paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

So the church is a brand new building situated in the middle of a new(ish) town.  The church reflects the demographics of the area, so there's a lot of young families, and even though this was a family service following the holiday club, its attendance was pretty typical.  Someone told me of the problems they have on Sunday mornings actually fitting all the children into the Sunday School space, so much so that they use a community centre down the road.

And another thing.  The summer holiday club was run in association with another denomination up the road.  I've heard tales of holicday clubs that will not invite other congregations for fear that the children end up going to the other church.  Isn't there only one church?

This was a fun place to be.People stopped and talked.  People had a brew afterwards.  The praise band was off to one side and not intrusive, and they even had a drummer.  The noticeboards and information table showed a church that had a world view yet were firmly part of their community.

My only concern for a church like this is the evolution of the community.  Right now it is a vibrant young place, but the same was once said about two nearby towns.  The were settled on mass by young families, and pretty soon the schools were full to overflowing, and the church had a massive youth group.  But as the community ages, it is unlikely there will be another mass influx of young families to the area.  At least one of the schools in the area is under threat of closure, while the other has removed all the additional temporary classrooms.  Can a church continue to reach out to new arrivals to the community as the original group of young families gets older?

So in all, a nice place, and perhaps a place I might find myself returning to.

One more to go...