Always a special moment. I know we are all into shared ministry – but this seems to be one of those peculiarly ‘clergy’ moments. So we sat in a circle in our lovely cathedral and revisited vocation. I always think it is the most wonderful thing. Clergy as a group are the oddest bunch – extraordinarily diverse in every way. We are at times mad, fed up, visionary, crotchety, workaholic, bone idle, tired. We pay a price for ministry and our families pay a bigger price. And yet. As I anointed the hands and was anointed myself, I pondered the extraordinary spirit-filled potential of all this.
I had prepared myself with lots of exciting biddings and stuff written into my Order of Service. So why did I find that I had arrived with only the outside cover. This was the Homily
In much the same area, I enjoyed a piece from the Alban Institute which turned up in my Inbox today. I particularly liked this sentence: ‘ In our years of ministry together, the people of St Timothy’s and I had grown from needing to understand worship in order to participate in it to needing to participate in worship in order to understand it.’ That seems to me to express some of the mystery of mission and congregation-building in our times.
Continuing the US theme, I had my first Skype coaching session today with Bishop Philip of the Gulf Coast who is going to haul me through the ‘Living our Vows’ Programme of the College for Bishops in The Episcopal Church.