exciting stuff

Heading to Renfrew for 3 days for the “Leading your Church into Growth” conference today. As sole cleric of 2 small and struggling churches, I’m looking forward to it - an opportunity to learn and to share with colleagues, get some new ideas and be inspired. We dont come together often enough to support and guide each other, so events like this are often cherished.

However, as is frequently the case I suspect the greatest learning and the most valuable discussions will probably come after the official sessions are done, over coffee or in the bar.

Taking the laptop, so if I get the opportunity I’ll be blogging as we go

Diocesan Webbery

Much preparation and planning in the Run up to Diocesan Synod, so very little time for blogging.

However, at Synod we (the Information and Communication Network) for Glasgow Diocese unveiled the new diocesan website, which can be found here. The reaction was fantastic - ooh’s and ahh’s from the gathered throng.

Following the brief from the Bishop’s staff group we made the conscious decision to have it tied in with, and styled alongside the Provincial website.

Now the content is up to others - training will be provided for all who need to know how to use the content management system in place (expressionengine), and networks, regions and diocesan staff will be able to update content as required or desired. This will hopefully prevent “webmaster gridlock”, and end the torrent of concerns that content is out of date. Its all good stuff.

None of this would have been possible without the support of the Provincial Communications officer and the hard work of Justin Reynolds - the man behind the provincial site, and who has worked so hard on the design and detail for our diocesan site.

Hope you like it.

Information and Communication at Synod

A copy of the report for your perusal:

Effective communication is central to our mission.

Church communication occurs in multiple voices, languages, contexts, media, and technologies to inform – and to transform for common good – the lives of unique individuals and varied constituencies. Value is placed on every phase of communication cycles, and especially upon listening, honesty, evaluation, critique and commentary in the achievement of respectful and full dialogue and discourse

(Growing in Community – Draft Document, The Episcopal Church, USA 2005)

The church at large is most often viewed and portrayed as outdated, outmoded and irrelevant to much of modern society, although those who make comments such as these are usually grateful for the assistance of that same church in times of crises, life development and change.

Over the last year I&C have been examining current communications strategy, within and outwith the church, with a view to developing a communications methodology appropriate to our culture and context.

Everyone in the Diocese, including members of the I&C Network, needs to consider why good communication is important. I&C is taking two already-available documents as its guides. Each is underpinned by mission, belonging and involvement, and provides opportunities for reflection as well as proposing action.

Ø Church of Scotland policy paper ‘A Co-ordinated Communication Strategy’, launched by the Council of Assembly last year, published in the October edition of Life & Work, and available online here.

Its sections on ‘Context’ and ‘Communication within the Church of Scotland’ are especially relevant.

Ø The Episcopal Church (USA) has produced ‘Growing in Community: A Strategy for Episcopal Church Communication‘

This draft document provides detailed and pressing rationales for involvement in communication by every individual and body in TEC and the wider Communion, and is adaptable to our own context.

To enable our considerations, a more formal examination of Communication Strategy will be taking place over the coming year – an evaluation of patterns and practices which we hope will encourage us all in communicating clearly, concisely and effectively the message we share.

There are questions we all must consider, questions which initially seem simplistic.

Who are we attempting to communicate with?

What are we trying to communicate?

What is our purpose?

What is our agenda? – are we honest and open about our desired outcomes?

Are we willing to listen and to hear, or just to talk or present “our side”?

Does the language we use include or exclude?

Far from navel-gazing or insular time wasting, such questions are highly important. If we understand neither our message nor the ones we are communicating with, the message is lost and our attempts at communication are ineffectual. We subconsciously communicate our thoughts about a subject by what we don’t say as well as what we do say, in how we involve or exclude members of a particular grouping when we plan an event/meeting/discussion. If we fail to communicate with people in initial stages, our outcomes are limited and we lose a great deal to the death of “well-meaning but pointless.”

Future plans for the Information and Communication network include:

Ø Development of a Diocesan Communication Strategy, enabling and encouraging the use of good practice and self-assessment in the methods and language we use.

Ø Continuation of the Website development; and training in the use of the content management system for Regional Councils, Action Networks and Diocesan Officials. Simple written instructions, online tuition and live seminars will be needed to introduce the reasons for improved communication and the mechanics of the content management system.

Ø Utilisation of Word Press-based site development for churches without a current internet presence, with appropriate training

Ø Training and support for church magazine editors

Ø Re-imaging of the Diocesan Crest, in order that a high-quality, high-resolution graphic is available for both paper and electronic media

Ø Widening of membership of I&C to include those Diocesan regions currently not represented within the group

Alan

Apparently he shares his birthday with Gordon Brown, Cindy Crawford, and would have been sharing it with that fantastic voice of the 90’s Kurt Cobain had he still been with us.

The sunshine lies!

Brilliant sunshine streaming through the window, but it was below freezing and the car looked like a frozen chicken on the driveway

Don’t be fooled!

the trailer and the tune…

where we first heard WYWG:

the full song:

For Alan

WYWG - engraved on the inside of two bands of gold almost 5 years ago.

I meant it then, I mean it now.  Happy valentines babe

Funerals

In taking a funeral for a colleague this week, gadgetvicar draws attention to this article in the Scotsman.

I torn by this article - a funeral a week (or more) must be very hard to bear, and I understand the Kirk Minister in question calling for more awareness of the alternatives to Church funerals.

Occasionally I have had 2 or more funerals in a week.  Sometimes of families associated with the church in the distant past, others with no discernible connection to the church.  None of these are treated with any less courtesy, dignity, thought or preparation than if it were the funeral of someone I knew well.

Yes it is a lot of work, it is tiring, it is draining, and sometimes depressing. But it is also an immense privelege to spend time with a family at this most vulnerable time in life, to hear stories of their loved (or not so loved) deceased.  It is the one service for which days off will be resceduled, the pastoral encounter for which other appointments may be cancelled.  It is an opportunity to spend time with those I would not ordinarily meet in day-to-day work, to get to know them, to get to know in death someone I never knew in life.

The hardest ones for me are those of congregation members - the longer I know them, the more personally invested (and therefore emotional) I feel.  Thankfully I have only once had to take the funeral of a child.

It is a job of grace -  to stand alongside someone in their pain, not intruding but being present, offering a guiding hand to those who are often lost in the morass of organising and grief, to cry with them in sadness and to laugh with them at the fragments of memories, to help them make some kind of sense of all that has happened.  It is humbling, this job we have as pastors and priests.

I wonder if I would view them any differently if I were doing 60+ per year, rather than the 15 or so I currently do?  I hope and pray not!

Bag Rock

Bizzare but brilliant!

just for once

Rowan has put his foot in it again. And the church is in the headlines again.

I would love to see the church (and especially our Anglican Communion) in the headlines for something positive - not misunderstood, not condemning or clashing or fighting.  But good news, from the church or elsewhere doesnt sell newspapers or afford the man on the street the opportunity to share his (unfortunately often uneducated) opinion on the polls and the soundbites.

I think Kimberly’s comments regarding the current situation with Rowan Williams are spot on.  The Archbishop’s biggest “crime” in all of this appears to be  too big a brain and too little an understanding of how the media works.

Having read the lecture, I can find nothing wrong with what he said.  “Chaired by the Lord Chief Justice, [it] was the first in a series of six lectures and discussions which are being given by senior Muslim and other lawyers and theologians at the Temple Church on the general theme of ‘Islam in English Law’.”  Affording people an acknowledgement of their religious concsience, as long as it is not in opposition to the law, seems to be an appropriate theme for such a lecture.

Rowan’s mistake in all of this?  Being too niaive to think that his words would not be taken out of context, and used against him.

At least its not sex this time.