www.gatheringgrace.org

Worship in a time of mourning

I have been learning a lot in the last six months as I have served some of the local churches. In full-time ministry there was always a strong sense of connection between the responsibility of leading at the front on a Sunday, and being part of the life of the church family for the rest of the week. In my current role I lead services in a number of churches but play no part in their on-going life for the other six days. This has certainly made me realise the sense of absolute privilege of leading, particularly in a place where up until that moment I was an unknown quantity, and also for me the degree to which there is a deep and rich joy to be had in leading and preaching.

Tomorrow, I will be leading and preaching for the first time in a new place (for me) and also for the first time in this period of mourning for the Queen. For the last 24 hours I have been wrestling with how to set the right tone and catch the mood so as to lead appropriately. I do not feel that by tomorrow I will be anywhere near able to adequately reflect on the multiple elements in the emotional eddy and flow I, for one, am experiencing; the loss of someone whose dignity was a source of reassurance in troubled moments, the historic significance on the end of the longest serving British monarch and the steadying hand on the tiller of Government that she brought, and her regular witness to her Christian faith in her Christmas broadcasts. There is too much here for me to make sense of and encapsulate in meaningful words as we still try to process events and emotions. 

Six months ago I took my father's funeral. If you have ever had to speak in public on such an occasion then you will probably recognise the sense of turbulence of emotion and you will understand my relief at being able to say what needed to be said with the right amount of emotion (hopefully, enough for people to know that I meant what I said, but not so much that it became awkward or distracting for those in the congregation). I had been given sufficient time then to process and write (and edit and re-write) - a month, as I recall - and so the words I spoke publicly I can look back on and still regard them as saying what needed to be said. It is worth remembering that it is better to honestly acknowledge the incompleteness of the time for processing (and in doing so giving people the permission also to not have finished processing events for themselves) than it is to use words that are not yet sufficiently formed as to serve their intended purpose.

We will certainly incorporate some of the suggested prayers of thanksgiving and allow some silent space for reflection, and leading a church family in worship during a time of sadness is at least as important as at any other time. We will also pray for our new King, Charles III.

Immediacy vs the long view

It is now nine months since I left full time Parish ministry. I had to complete an official document recently and one of the questions caused me to stop and think - full time employed? no, part-time? no, unemployed? not really, student? hardly, so I ticked home-maker. 

For twenty years my life was marked by the need for immediacy; multiple deadlines and balancing several different diaries (home, church, schools and so forth). There is a lot to be said for that productive busy-ness brought on by competing demands. Eugene Peterson is right to warn us to the danger of being "the busy pastor". We should regard this, he says, like we might think of "the embezzling bank manager" - it is simply not right. I don't think he is saying we shouldn't have lots to do - the problem comes about when our busy-ness defines us and we find our egos being boosted by the lack of empty space in our calendars and how many people have come to depend on us in some way.

For nine months my life has not had such pressures. I have been ministering a couple of Sundays per month in local churches (and it has been a joy getting to know some of the smaller villages around and about). However, one senses one can easily be the cause of "a disturbance in the force", as it were, so there is much to be said for holding back a little. A few weeks ago I was in a Church getting ready to lead and so I checked with those setting up what "the norm" was. There was a helpful list of things, one of which was the they say the Gloria. I announced at the start that I was going to lead the service as closely as I possibly could to how I understood they did it most weeks, no boat rocking from me, but when we got to that point and I announced that we stand to say the Gloria, an older lady on the front row in a wonderful stage whisper asked, "Why aren't we singing it?". I smiled some days later when I came across a paragraph in the Rule of St Benedict concerning allowing members of the clergy in to join the monastery. 'If an ordained priest asks to be received into the monastery, do not agree too quickly'. Wise words indeed.

I have just handed in my second MA assignment. I picked up the first book to prepare for this in the middle of April, and so I have spent four and a half months concentrating on one or two questions concerning the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have been excited and then baffled, been exhilarated by new insights and left despondent by realising how little I knew (more than once) and then wrestled with getting all that into the word limit. This feels a very different learning experience than the couple of times per annum CMD days offered by the Diocese. Certainly, this concentrated learning is having a far greater impact on my preaching output and reflection than the innumerable training days I have had, but which now have all blurred into one.

I have a week to pause and let my brain run free before the pre-reading on my next module, and so I am reading about tides and rock pools and enjoying the long view.