Where has God called me?

Vocation "it comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-interest. 

By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work 

(a) that you need most to do and 

(b) that the world most needs to have done. 

If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). 

On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

Frederick Buechner

Purpose, not profit, brings the best out of us

This is a fascinating video clip, which needs to be shown to everyone in the bankers bonus debate who squawks about the best talent going overseas if we pay them less.

[Ok, I'll sum up, because 95% of you aren't going to click the little 'play' triangle. There's repeated research that rewarding performance with money doesn't work, once you get past paying folk enough for them to stop worrying about money. Incentives work for 'mechanical' tasks (think piecework in a clothes factory), but once a task involves any thinking or creative skill, results get worse the more you reward them. Why? Because there are motivating factors that outweigh money:
 - Autonomy (being self-directed, in charge of my own work)
 - Mastery (getting better at things)
 - Purpose (making a contribution)
Profit motive detached from purpose tends to make for bad work, workplace, products and customer service.]

For church folks out there, the great thing is that we've always had the purpose thing. It's easy to lose it though, and to settle for a lesser purpose = keeping the show on the road, paying the bills, rather than the Kingdom of God.

But what about the other two. Are we giving people the chance to get better at things, do we give folk autonomy - the freedom to fly and the freedom to fail? Autonomy isn't simply leaving people to get on with a job on their own, that's negligence, and there's too much of that in the church. And we have a big battle on our hands, there are still plenty of churches where the default setting on any decision or action is to check it out with the vicar first.

Autonomy doesn't come naturally when people are afraid of making the wrong decision, or don't get encouraged. Gordon Macdonald (I think) tells the story of a young businessman who lost his company lots of money on a deal. He reported to the company boss, expecting to be sacked on the spot. "why would I want to sack you?" said the boss "I've just spent $3m on your education."

And on this issue have a look at this reflection on the 'flashmob wedding' which went viral last year. "What Kate (the vicar) has done here is to give a couple back some ownership of their wedding from a church that has been used to telling people what they want." Our culture takes 'user generated content' for granted, and we have the demanding but inspiring task of leading the dance between ancient forms and user content so that both are energised by the other.

3 challenges for me here, related to these 3 motivators:
 - how to get better at properly delegating and encouraging, to foster autonomy without neglect (simply leaving people to their own devices) or nannying (constantly checking up)
 - asking people 'what would you like to get better at?' and asking myself the same question. If I spend a lot of time doing something (preaching, leading worship, blogging, organising stuff), then a percentage of that time should go into improving my skills in that area.
 - linking what people do to purpose: e.g. how a well hoovered carpet creates a sense of welcome and care for the visitor, that doing the Sunday morning Bible reading is not a slot on a rota but an opportunity to hear the living words of the living God etc.  Rotas are a great management tool, but if they are all we have, then don't be surprised if it gets more and more difficult to fill them. People need to know why they're doing this task in the first place.

Mental Health and Work Capability

Dick Acworth, a former vicar and Archdeacon of Bath and Wells, has a son with bipolar disorder who was wrongly found fit for work by the DWP using the controversial Work Capability Assessment.

In May, as part of an ongoing Judicial Review of the Work Capability Assessment, three judges ruled that the process is unfair for people with a mental illness and puts them at a ‘substantial disadvantage’.

Despite this, the DWP is continuing to use the process to assess roughly 6,000 people a week with mental health problems.

With backing from the national charity, Rethink Mental Illness Dick’s petition calls on Iain Duncan Smith to temporarily stop reassessing people with a mental illness who are being moved from incapacity benefit to the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), until changes are made to the test, to ensure it’s fair.

The 76-year-old said: “If my son didn’t have parents to support him and push through a benefits appeal, I don’t know what he would have done. I really fear for other people who don’t have anyone to help them through such a difficult process. I try as much as I can to shield my son from the stress, but this has taken a real toll on me and his mother.

“It is intolerable that the government is putting people through so much stress and anxiety just to get the support they need. In many cases this unfair test is making people more ill. Everyone deserves the chance to be treated fairly.”

more here, the petition is here. 

Body Beautiful

Another chunk from Willard & Simpson which struck me, talking about what it means to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God, and to honour God with our bodies

"...this means that we do not use our body to dominate or control others. This means different things to different people. For example, we do not present our body in ways that elicit sexual thoughts, feelings and actions from others. We do not try to be 'sexy'. We can be naturally attractive without that.

another example has to do with intimidation by means of our body. There are many aspects of this, from subtle hints to brute force. the most common forms of it are social: 'power dressing', sarcasm, and knowing looks and remarks. Having given up our body to God, we do not use it in these ways.

A final example is overwork... it is said that work is the new 'drug of choice'." (Revolution of Character p141)

The danger of taking just one section is that it doesn't say everything that the authors want to say, and can look a bit negative. However I was challenged by it: what is natural smartness and looking decent as a mark fo respect (rather than turning up looking like the contents of a skip), and what is manipulation? 'Sexy' clothing is almost the default setting for those who can get away with it - is that the idolised 'freedom of expression', or is there a wisdom in not dressing as an object of desire - after all, we are far more than that?

and you might think this is all a bit nit-picky and that some people should just chillax. But I'm guessing that when Jesus said 'seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness', he meant us to be rigorous about it. After all, if this is the most important thing, and we're only to do it half-heartedly, then what does that say about the rest of our discipleship? The atheletes training for the Olympics pay attention to every part of their lives to make sure they succeed: sleep, diet, exercise, rest, learning, equipment, practice etc. So if we want to 'succeed' as disciples....

Wanted: A Proper Debate About Consumer Capitalism

Only in Britain. We've never been very good about talking about the things that really matter, and it's bizarre that, as we've finally become more open in talking about sex, death, religion and politics (well, maybe with the exception of death), we've also lost the taste for serious conversation. It's now been the best part of a generation since we had an ideologically based political party, and Karl Marx would have his work cut out identifying one opiate of the people from the many candidates: lottery, celebrity culture, mobile phones, shopping, social media, sex. Pretty much anything except religion.

And so it is that, when a protest about how our economic system is run, a chance to debate some of the fundamental things in our society, finally hit the headlines for seven days running, we blew it. Instead of a substantial discussion about the consumer society, vast city pay packets, our crippling dependence on the banks, what do we have? The pretty trivial issue of whether a Cathedral was right to close on health and safety grounds. Only in Britain could the chance of a fundamental debate over the foundations of our society be scuppered by Health and Safety.

What have we been talking about:
 - Should St. Pauls have closed?
 - Should Giles Fraser have resigned over something that hasn't yet happened?
 - Would Jesus be in the camp, or in the cathedral? Or neither?
and there is now the unedifying spectacle of Anglicans publicly criticising each other (though I guess that's what I'm doing now!), and groups with little sympathy for the CofE pitching in to rub salt in the wound.

There has been an opportunity this week for the church to speak about Jesus message, to articulate a biblical ideology of wealth, poverty, justice, and money. St. Pauls has, apprently, a report ready to be published on the morality of City of London capitalism. Provided it is presentable and well-argued, this is precisely the time to go public with it. There will never be more attention on St. Pauls and its views than there is now, and it could take the debate in a whole new direction.

After all, what should we be talking about?
 - Developing an alternative to a Western economy based on debt, and a global economy biased against the poor.

 - Looking at the crippling economic, social and psychological consequences of consumer capitalism, and the epidemic of debt, depression and social breakdown that has come in its wake.

 - A robust public ideology of justice ('fairness' sounds a bit too weak and whiny for the phenomenal greed and inequalities we are dealing with here), that refuses to be held to ransom by people threatening to take their business or tax receipts elsewhere, one which values justice, integrity and community higher than profit.

 - Revisiting the whole structure of work and family, which has changed out of all recognition in 2 generations. The 24 hour society, twin incomes to prop up inflated mortgages, a toxic mix of overwork for the employed and no work for the unemployed, the increase pressure to offload children to state-sponsored childcare, and an ossified and overpriced housing market. How did we get here, and is it where we want to be?

 - Whether the current 'hands off' government approach really holds any water: lecturing banks, energy companies and city bosses has so far failed completely. We are rapidly reaching the point (maybe we have already) where corporations are more powerful than governments. Can this be tolerated? Is there an alternative? Can business be humanised, can we find an alternative trump card to profit and economics, and if so how?

 - The debt crunch has revealed just how weak and vulnerable the Western economies are. That the Eurozone is now actively going cap in hand to China is deeply worrying. The final act of Western democracy, as the sun set on its empire, was to max out its credit card and turn to an oppressive, rights-denying, church-suppressing, web-censoring regime for help, promising to lobotomise its conscience in payment. (Gordon Browns greatest gift to the British people was his '5 economic tests' for entering the Euro, tests which would never be passed as long as Brown was Chancellor. History may smile upon him for this.) Is there a way to keep Britain from this route? Even if there is, what will a world look like where appeasement of China is the pre-requisite for doing business? What will it mean for the oppressed Chinese themselves, for the world to go silent?

 - Plus a whole stack of issues around trade, global poverty, the conditions in which many Western consumer goods are produced (including, probably, some of the tents outside St. Pauls and the clothing worn within it), global warming etc. All of which, at root, are moral as well as economic questions.

Sorry, this is a bit of a rant, but I'm so frustrated. Perhaps I should pack my tent for London and hope to catch the eye of a camera crew. Perhaps taking my dog collar would help.

Getting Stuck In

New research from the Evangelical Alliance reveals a startling level of community engagement from Christians, compared to the general population. "Does Belief Touch Society" is part of an ongoing research project into the beliefs and practices of evangelical Christians in the UK.

The research is based on a survey of 1151 people around Easter last year, and covers social involvement as well as spiritual practices. Some of the headline figures:
25% are trustees of a charity (10 times the national figure)
9% are school governors (0.7% is the national average)
81% do some kind of voluntary work at least once a month
91% had voted or were intending to vote in local elections (the turnout was 42%)
4% are members of political parties (1.3% is the national average).

there were a cluster of questions around Easter: 41% had taken part in some kind of outreach, 57% had done something with another church (hooray!), and 65% had attended something on Good Friday - mainly older folks (which could be work pressures). We've ended up with 2 Good Friday events, a family-friendly workshop afternoon, and a churchy meditation thing, which between them seem to cover all the bases.

There's a section on social attitudes: 80% are opposed to same sex marriage, and there is a mixed picture on military action in Afghanistan and Libya. And there's also a section on beliefs, which deals mainly with the atonement: it's a shame it's quite narrow, but I guess they couldn't cover everything.

Thoughts:
1. It's great to see that, for lots of Christians, their faith inspires them to serve their communities, and to be involved in politics and social issues. I would hate us to become like US conservatives, where there's a cultural identification between evangelical Christianity and particular political viewpoints. At the same time, is there any kind of consensus or common mind on a Christian approach to politics (with committed Christians in all 3 major parties) or social issues?

2. Nick Cleggs speech yesterday focused a lot on liberal values, and the core message was that you act true to your values, rather than true to your paymasters or public opinion ('not easy, but right'). It was a reminder to the LibDems what they stood for, what motivated them, and what battles they should be prepared to fight. It was the first time I'd even got remotely stirred by the phrase 'Social Mobility', which is a massive injustice lurking underneath an insipid label.

Clegg gets it: values drive behaviour. If you don't value others, the planet, the future, your community, yourself, then that's a toxic combination. Christian faith provides a framework for all of this, and the research backs this up by showing the fruit of that, but I sense these values are being eroded in many other places. Big Society behaviour needs more than just a slogan, it needs a foundation of values and morality. 

3. I would like to see the link between the questions the EA thought important to ask (about how the Cross works) and the involvement of people in their communities. How are churches joining the dots? And how is this reflected in the workplace? The voluntary sector is a natural place to serve and bless, but are we helping people to live differently in secular workplaces too?

Quit Marketing and Become a Vicar

According to a study in the US, clergy top the list of 10 Happiest Jobs, (ht eChurch blog), just pipping firefighters, teachers and authors. There are quite a lot of marketing and IT - related jobs in the 'most hated' top 10.

Do I agree? well, here's a few things I love about my job....
1. I'm doing what I enjoy, and getting paid for it.
2. Being involved at many key points in people's lives, beginnings, endings, new relationships, and getting to help people mark, celebrate and make sense of what's going on.
3. Seeing people discover the reality of God and the love of Jesus, sometimes over several years, but having the dog collar is often a way in to some fascinating and potentially life-changing conversations. It's amazing to get the chance to do something of such significance.
4. Flexibility: there's the chance to focus on what I do well, and (I'm blessed in being part of a very good team at a local church) to let others do the things I don't do that well.
5. We're not paid that much, and your house is chosen for you. That takes me out of a whole load of worry about housing choice and costs, and trying to find satisfaction in possessions rather than in quality of life and relationships.
6. Working from home means I get to see my kids whilst they're still awake, and don't have lots of traffic and stress to put up with.
7. Variety: an average day can take in a funeral, a new baby, a mission strategy meeting, and hooking up with people in several different setttings. It's possible to get jaded if you don't look after yourself, but it's impossible to get bored.
8. I get the chance to use most of my gifts in one way or another, and to do stuff that I'm passionate about. There are lots of jobs out there that are pretty hard to do with a passion: they pay the bills, and that's it. I honestly can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.

There are downsides: I've only a finite amount of adrenaline and most weeks it seems to get used up, there are situations every week which cause me massive stress, at times there's a big cost to family life. Happy? yes, but there's more to it than simply happiness: calling, fulfilment, purpose, identity, significance, God, the happiness is just a by-product.

Update: I did actually do a short spell in marketing before ordination, for Clarks shoes, and it was one of the better departments in the company to work in. Some of the experiences from there were quite helpful post-ordination, and some of the marketing folk were fairly decent. Just in case you think I have a total downer on it!

Clergy Bullying 'rife'?

BBC report today on bullied clergy:

Workplace bullying of the clergy has become "rife", according to the union Unite which says priests are being picked on by bishops and parishioners.

The union has set up a hotline where the clergy can report abuse, and says it deals with up to 150 cases a year.

"Bishops have got a lot nastier", says the Reverend Gerry Barlow, chair of the faith workers branch of Unite. Unite says the bullying frequently comes from superiors within the church who may be under financial pressure.

"A bullying case can go on for a long time", says Terry Young, a former minister who runs the helpline. "They're picked on for everything they do wrong, so in the end the person runs around terrified. You see these people unsupported, driven into depression and a nervous breakdown."

There are roughly 8,000 stipendiary clergy, though I guess Unite covers the non-stipendiaries too. Over the last 10 years, roughly 250 per year have left the CofE payroll - some of this is movement to other posts (e.g. chaplaincies, Diocese of Europe, work with other agencies like CPAS), but without more detail it's impossible to know how many have quit through stress, who might otherwise have stayed with a better working environment.

This is a topic Bishop Alan has regularly covered, and he has plenty of good reflections on the nature of bullying, and what to do about it. It's an issue the CofE as a whole is alive to: the report Dignity At Work, published in June 2008, is a report on bullying and the clergy, with suggested policies and procedures for Dioceses who want to take it seriously. It would be interesting to know how many Dioceses now have such a policy in place.

At present there's nothing about this on the Unite website, and nothing else on the web, so I'm not quite sure where this story has come from. Given that Unite also covers clergy from non-Anglican churches, and from other faiths, so it's not clear if that 150 is just CofE clergy (in which case it's about 2% of clergy, which is pretty high) or of everyone covered by the union.

Back in the dim and distant past, when I worked for Clarks shoes, one or two people I was 'managing' ended up off with stress and physical ailments, mainly because I was so rubbish at my job. At the same time there were others who I found very intimidating, and was glad to get moved to a different placement after 6 months. The nature of power and authority is so muddled in the CofE that pretty much anyone could end up bullied by anyone else, if the personalities and situation conspire in that direction.

I can tick off in my mind several cases which might end up on this hotline, so it's good that it's there, but it would be even better if the support and love was there from the local and Diocesan community. Unfortunately, parishes are such sealed units that it's very difficult to pop 'over the fence' to offer support, and when you're down and being kicked, it's very difficult to ask for support in the first place.

For interest: Church Times online question about whether people were aware of bullying in their church. 80% of respondents (296 at time of writing) voted 'yes'.

And two questions:
1. how does anyone know that Bishops have 'got a lot nastier'? That's quite a brush to tar the men in purple with. Is the number of reported cases going up, or down? And if so, is that because the helpline is now better known, and the CofE itself is giving this issue a higher profile?

2. Financial pressure may mean that there are redundancies in the pipeline. This is probably a new situation for many dioceses. Redundancy is never great (unless you hated the job anyway), but Dioceses need to do some thinking about how they go about this. Voting through a job cut in Diocesan Synod with the post holder present and debating the point doesn't sound ideal. What's the alternative?

Update: interesting piece by Ruth Gledhill, links roundup at Sam Norton.

The Volunteer Dilemma

Beyond Relevance picks up on a scenario which may be familiar to anyone working with volunteers, whether in church or not:

Standards are the greatest tool for training your team and they are, for the most part, missing in the church today.

Why? I think we feel so grateful for Bob (the guy who volunteers to do the PowerPoint), that on his first day, we do our best to make sure we do not upset him. After all, what if he stops coming? Then what are we going to do? No, what we will do is give him the least amount of information about his duty we can (as we do not have time to really train him) and then we will put up with him not doing it perfectly since he is so faithful (of course he has no real idea what perfection to us is), until one day we get fed up and fire him from his post and crush his spirit by telling how he "never" does it right, when we never trained him what right is.

Helpful piece, on how you raise the standard of what happens with your volunteers without imposing lots of rules, or everyone getting really frustrated.

Off the Rails

A rail franchise faces mass cancellations of trains because drivers are excercising their right not to work on Sunday. I'm glad to see that the legislation to protect that particular day of the week is still being respected, though some of the rail pressure groups want to chip away at it. They're calling drivers 'irresponsible' for wanting to take Sunday with their families, or with their God, or just resting.

Interesting isn't it: as consumers we want to exercise our 'choice' to travel/shop etc. any day we want, even though that cashes out as other people not having a choice on whether to work on those days, or at anti-social hours. There's no such thing as a free choice if it involves someone else having to service it.

From the BBC:
Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) said the move was not organised action by workers but a case of the contractual right not to work being exercised.

He said: "Their contracts of employment say they haven't got to work on a Sunday. It's their choice. London Midland need to pay their staff a fair wage to work anti-social hours - and get the trains moving again

"If someone wanted to work a Sunday because they're short of money and said to the employer 'I'm coming in this Sunday because I want some extra overtime', then the employer hasn't got to give it to him. Quite rightly so. "

I don't often find myself agreeing with Mr Crow, but in this case I'll make an exception.

Christianity in the Workplace

One of the many stands at Spring Harvest was run by Transform Work UK: "our vision is to inspire Christians to transform the workplace and the nation". Their website has, among other things, a directory of Christian groups in a range of different work sectors, including the Christian Dental Fellowship (you shall know the tooth and the tooth shall set you free?), Christian Firefighters, etc.

Some of the leaflets on the stand included
the Christian Engineers Association
Christian Initiatives in Early Years Education (Ci2eye, tagline 'every child's spirituality matters')
Christians in Science 'Exalting God, Exploring Creation'
BT Christian Network
Christians in Education
Social Work Christian Fellowship
Christian Nurses and Midwives
Association of Christian Financial Advisors who have produced an excellent short leaflet on 'Biblical Principles of Financial Planning'.

After hearing on the news recently that Tescos employs 280,000 people, I wonder if they have a employees Christian fellowship for the company.

For groups based at particular businesses, rather than across a profession, Christians at Work maintain a Directory of workplace groups, which has our own Westlands Christian Fellowship listed, along with Christian groups everywhere from Rolls Royce to the National Society for Epilepsy.

I hope that Christians at Work and Transform Work UK can work together, and not duplicate things for each other. However it's just good to see workplace discipleship taken seriously. One of my small pile of books from Spring Harvest is the God at Work course, a brand new course from the Alpha stable, and SHOCK HORROR you don't need to spend £99 on a DVD, just £5 for a leaders manual and then guest manuals for everyone who comes. The 6 sessions cover:

1. Work Matters
2. Ambition and Life Choices
3. Tough Decisions
4. Stress and Work-Life Balance
5. Failure, Disappointment and Hope
6. Money and Giving

Looks good on first glance. Anyone out there using it already?

Welfare Reform: Injustice Alert

I've posted a critique of the Governments welfare reform proposals, announced during the week, at the Wardman Wire. You can read the full article there, but here's some of it.


Lone Parents and Families.
The proposals for lone parents are that they will be on conditional benefits by the time their children are 7+, and whilst their children are 3-7 they’ll be taking steps back to work. The legislation “will enable advisers to require lone parents with a youngest child aged 3 or over to undertake work-related activity, a skills health check and training…” (para 6.68, my emphasis). If they don't comply, benefits can be stopped.

Why is this? Because the paper has “an emphasis on tackling the underlying causes of poverty rather than just treating the symptoms” (para 7.9), and if lone parents are working, their children are less likely to be in poverty.

But that’s not the only cause of child poverty. The governments own figures (see tables in chapter 4) show that children are twice as likely to be in either absolute or relative poverty if they are in lone parent households, compared to households with 2 parents. One underlying cause of poverty is family structure, yet this is an issue the government consistently refuses to address. The best thing you can do for your kids is wait until you’ve got a faithful partner to have them with. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a start.

There are two other injustices here:

1. Parenthood is work. Even with a 7 year old, you are on call 24/7, and if you put together the work involved in looking after them, creating a good home environment, and doing all the mundane things which need going when you’ve got kids, then that is a full time job. Yet the implicit message here is that it’s not, we would rather you stick your kids in ‘wraparound childcare’ (which may well be substandard in the first place) so that you can do paid work.

Good, attentive parenting can do more for your kids than a few hours on the checkout at ASDA, or whatever other McJob you’re forced to accept by your personal job trainer. What stuns me is that parents of 3-6 year olds will get coaching and training offered in work skills, but nothing whatsoever in parenting skills. Once again, there is no value or support given to their primary occupation. An investment in the parenting and relational skills of parents of under-7’s will do a lot more for their children’s wellbeing than forcing them to return to work once their child hits 7.

2. It singles out the poor. There may be a small army of lone parents desperate to get back to work, and they’ll get more support to do that through these proposals. But there is also a small army of non-working parents who will escape government coercion. These are the partners of working people who don’t qualify for benefit, so the government can’t wave a big stick at them to get them back into the labour market. Actually it can, it’s called Child Tax Credit, but there is nothing here about stopping CTC (or Child Benefit) for middle class mums. Why pick on lone parents? Because they are easier to coerce through the benefits system, and, if you’re cynical, it might just be about the votes too.

Let me be clear: I don’t think that any full-time parent of children under 16 should be coerced into the labour market, and it is unjust and unfair that only the poorest and most vulnerable parents are going to be coerced in this way.

Work and Mental Health
The White Paper notes, almost in passing, that “Mental health conditions are now the single biggest cause of absence from work and of claims for incapacity benefits” (para 5.83). Yet in a 210 page document there are only 6 paragraphs on mental health, which basically say “we’re not sure we know enough about this.”

Despite that, those with mental health problems will also come under the regime of ‘job consultants’ to help them back into work. How on earth the government plans to train up thousands of Job Centre employees to do this isn’t explored. There is a bewildering range of mental illnesses, and understanding everything from anxiety disorders to seasonal depression, OCD and anorexia will require a big input of training.

My worry is that the training just won’t happen, so decisions about benefits will be taken by people who simply don’t know what they’re talking about. The very process of seeing your benefits at risk will heighten stress and anxiety for some, and what safeguards are there? “We would not put in place sanctions against anyone without first contacting them, their carer or their health professional” (para 5.85). Well that's reassuring. Not. It's a commitment to inform, nothing more. How is placing the mentally ill under more pressure going to help them?

Again, this is symptoms and not cause. There are a nest of cultural, economic and social reasons for the epidemic of mental illness, but there is nothing here that proposes to tackle any of them.

The Work Experiencer Speaks!

Today is a historic day. St. Aidan to Abbey Manor has its first guest blogger.............


Well good morning all it is a pleasure to be David's First guest blogger.

I'll introduce my self first I am another David and i am on my work experience with David it the first day of my second week and I'm feeling rather good about it as i have a rather interesting week ahead and last week never went to timetable so who know what could happen!!!

I chose to go round with David for my two weeks as everybody else was going off to school and major business and i thought to myself:
'David you need to go and do something that you will never get the chance to experience'
So i look on the work experience list and there was nothing that interested me that would give this once in a lifetime opportunity then i decide to think out side the box and i came up with following around a vicar then all i had to do was decide which one to ask. I came up with a list of vicars who i know worked the walking distant then chose the closest!
'JOKE'
I choice the vicar that i thought i get on best with and the one that i felt would be the most varied in day to day life so i chose David!

So far the job has been very interesting and i am enjoying it i have had a range of task to do which is quite enjoyable and have meet numerous people all equal interesting. But i found it hard to wake up early on the Saturday for an 8am leader breakfast but the food was good and i enjoyed the opportunity to pray with older members of my church so so the breakfast was good but tiring.

Also i had the opportunity to help David do some assembles in schools which was interesting as it gave me an opportunity to witness how the younger generation accepts faith. Also later in the week we did a Q & A session with the year 6's and the question they where coming out with quite amazing these kids had spent a long time considering these question and after the session 3 or 4 of them stayed behind for another half hour asking more question about faith and Christianity and how to find God. I was stunned and i just felt Gods presence around these kids.

Well they where the highlights so far an i hope to have a just as exciting second week!

What Was That All About?

I'm having a student on work placement with me in July, and got a visit today about the placement. I was expecting it to be someone from the school, as it's the first time anyone from there has done a placement with me, intrigued about what working with a vicar would be like.

But no.

It was the Health and Safety Man. Seatbelts in cars, mopping up spillages, risk assesments (I forgot to tell him about the risk of being buried alive by mistake at the cemetary - drat) etc. I vaguely remember the days when this was called Common Sense and didn't require the school to contract someone in to drive round each placement. I'm sure it's all about insurance and butt-covering, but it just leaves me feeling slightly depressed. That's the sum total of the school's interaction with me prior to the placement, apart from a form I filled in.

My own memory of work experience includes a day in Sheffield Polytechnic (later rebranded Sheffield Hallam University) print shop working on a binding machine. By lunchtime I was slightly high on glue, with a splitting headache, and most of Friday was spent in the working mens club surrounded by fag-smoking van drivers, drinking pints of McEwans and wondering what their bosses would do if they knew how little work these blokes actually did. Oh yes, and the pornographic calendars in my 'supervisor's little office. And the crippling boredom of most of it. 'Prepare students for the world of work', you bet.

It reminds me of the old story about a Pope who, when asked how many people worked at the Vatican, replied 'about half of them.'

Update: if you're Health and Safety needs sharpening up, have a look at this. Very funny. Ht Matt Wardman.