Day Two of the bishop training here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Last year’s session for beginners on the management of hat ‘n stick has been followed by sessions on the Bishop in the Liturgy. I’ve been realising for myself how significant are the liturgies where the bishop is in the center – ordinations, institutions, consecrations. They are powerful dramas and in that sense accessible – as they need to be when many in the congregations at such services are there to support a person rather than because of their own faith commitment. We’ve been looking at the theology which the liturgy expresses – and which shapes how it should be done.

We’ve had a go at the BVP – Bishop’s Vocational Profile – 360 degree appraisal. That’s been fascinating – an opportunity to take a walk on one’s shadow side. I’m going to practise doing anodyne when I get home.

And finally the contacts – which are priceless. It’s not like being at a conference – we’re actually working together. So the Class of 2009 is a pretty close-knit group. It reminds me of something that I learnt in my past – one always assumes that other groups are more coherent, united, stronger, etc., than one’s own. The reality of course is somewhat different – no matter what the context in parish, diocese or province, we are all dealing with stresses and strains as we work out how to cohere in difficult times.

In my time as a Parish Priest, I worked with seven curates. Great variety and good company when times were difficult.

Friday night saw the Institution and Installation of Katharine Poulton as Dean of Ossory – which means the very fine Cathedral in Kilkenny. It’s probably the most senior appointment of a woman in ministry in the Church of Ireland to date – thinks have moved perhaps rather more slowly than some of us might have expected. Katharine was the first woman ordained in the Church of Ireland 23 years ago. This is what I said

Here’s something you ought to read if you have a moment. The Bishop of Gloucester, Michael Perham, writes to his clergy about Anglican Communion relationships in the light of the consecration of Canon Mary Glasspool as an Assistant Bishop of Los Angeles.

Just to make it easier, you can download it here

I hope to meet Bishop Mary Glasspool at the training for bishops in the US next week.

More Casting the Net …. I can’t find an acceptable way of describing ‘getting to the next stage’ without an unacceptable mixing of metaphors.

Anyway yesterday we gathered a great crowd of people – probably well over half the congregations in the diocese represented – and set up a series of workshops and other things all over the Cathedral. What did we do? Well there was drumming and Godly Play for children and workshops on mission and drama. I did three sessions in the baptistry – one on reading the bible in church, one on ‘To believe or not to believe’ and one on ‘What really happens at Communion?’ I remain completely astonished by the appetite which there is for talking/exploring sessions of that kind. I need to do more. In the Lady Chapel, our Spirituality Group was giving people some guided meditation. We ended with a Eucharist ‘in the round’ with African chant and all sorts of other excitements.

So where does all this fit in? Two things, it seems to me. One is that an event like this gives people a chance to ‘taste’ all sorts of things without needing to ask ‘Will it work?’ or ‘Is it a good idea?’ The other is that, as congregations gradually develop mission plans, they will begin looking for some of these resources – so this is a way of encouraging people to believe that we can provide what is needed when the time comes.

It was great though. Organised in quite a hurry. I found myself with people many of whom I didn’t know. Even some of the people running it were people I didn’t know. In a small church like the SEC, that is both unusual and healthy!

Sometimes the juxtpositions of things are just a bit hard to cope with.

If you’ll forgive a namedrop … I was about to process into St Paul’s on Tuesday evening when one of the Aldermen of the City of London said to me, ‘Your church seems to be growing very quickly. Everybody I know north of the border belongs to the Scottish Episcopal Church’ Which somewhat begs a question about how many people he knows north of the border. But it is highly likely that they are indeed members of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Anyway, I thought back to the previous evening and the meeting which John Ferguson-Smith and I had with the Vestries of Glenrothes, Lochgelly and Leven as we try to find the money to appoint a Rector. We all try our very best and we’ll get there – but it’s a struggle. And I thought forward to my meeting today with the Electoral Synod for the Diocese of Argyll and The Isles in Oban and the challenge of sustaining congregational life in small numbers across big geography.

Along the way, I read a cheering book about the decline of Welsh Churches – ‘Against the Tide’ by DP Davies. They’ve all declined. Chapel in the Valley most of all – and especially those which were entirely Welsh-speaking. His conclusion seemed to be that only conservative expressions of church would survive. I know that there is strong evidence for that – but I also think that conservative expressions of church risk being ever more out of tune with people in the kind of secular society which is developing around us.

I’ve just spent the weekend at a Conference of our Lay Readers and a remarkable event it was. I think it was a first for them. They succeeded in gathering 60-70 people and persuaded Dr Christina Baxter of St John’s, Nottingham, to come and speak.

What was most interesting was that many of them didn’t know one another. Even more refreshing was the fact that some of them had successfully avoided contact with the church at provincial level – and they seemed none the worse for that!

I found them greatly encouraging to be with. Not at all wedded to the structures and patterns and very happy to talk about new approaches and new challenges. I gave them my usual ‘Our Time will Come’ speech.

I spent the afternoon with a group of retired clergy in Perth and a nice group of people they were. I know that they are probably all very busy – because retired people often say that they don’t know how they managed to fit in time for working life, etc.,etc – but it was great not to have to do any persuading or encouraging, etc. Meanwhile I gave myself to some pondering about retirement and how it might be managed. The key question seems to be what happens in the space between thinking how nice it would be not to have a full diary and not being sure who I would be if I had an empty one.

And then I visited another Vestry on my tour of congregations which have signed up to be part of the next phase of Casting the Net – eight at present. It’s looking good – indeed, it’s about all that our resources can cope with. We decided that a visit to each Vestry from the bishop would be a useful part of the ‘sign-up’ process so I’m working my way round. I always enjoy visiting Vestries – mainly because they don’t understand the rule which says that whatever the bishop says they must answer ‘Yes’.

By the way our Casting the Net Gathering in the Cathedral on May 15 is also looking good. We’ve deliberately kept the mesh pretty big for this one so we’ll see what happens.

I’m moving on from reading the Ministry ‘n’ Management material to the 360 degree appraisal – all part of the preparation for next month’s training course at the boot camp for bishops. So I’ve had to find 10 people to complete an on-line appraisal of me – obviously I’ve had to find ten people to whom I have been particularly nice or where our shared endeavour has turned out well. So that’s been a bit of a struggle, as you can imagine. Then I’ve had to fill in a self-appraisal – 93 questions asking how I rate my performance .. and how important is this. And I’m not allowed to argue with it or say I don’t like the questions or maybe they could be better phrased or that I don’t know what they mean or that they are ambiguous …..

All in all it was a relief to join with the neighbours in shifting the eight tons of gravel which were delivered on Friday – because of course they sent a tractor which wouldn’t go through the arch so we had to wheelbarrow all of it.

And I’ve also been struggling with Vodafone’s Sure Signal – a handy device which is supposed to produce a sparkling 3G mobile phone signal so I won’t have to hang out of the upstairs windows or pace the garden any more. Except it won’t work. Tim the Geek and I have been delving into its innards and the firewall protocols in the router and all sorts of stuff which I don’t know about.

It’s all change here. Poppy is wearing her safety helmet because the house martins are back. They swoop on her in the middle of the back lawn and thoroughly frighten her. No 1 has suggested that what we need is eight tons of gravel next Saturday so that we can recapture that satisfying crunching sound as we drive through the arch. Perhaps we might have a party when it is over.

I’m still trying to stir myself to some interest in the Election Campaign – most unlike me because I am at heart something of a political junkie. For the moment, I am contenting myself with saying ‘balanced’ every time somebody says ‘hung’. I think it may be some time before we achieve the sophistication of PR elections in the Irish Republic where political parties sometimes seek to maximise the vote by listing different candidates from the same list as No 1 at different ends of the same town.

Maybe it would be safer for me to ponder Stephen Hawking’s warning that we should not attempt to engage with aliens if we happen to meet them. But how will I recognise them?

I’ve been reading Hans Kung’s letter. It remarkable to see him still plugging away after all these years … Consistency and stamina are remarkable things.

Those who have travelled with me through Holy Week will know that I get particularly upset about Pontius Pilate. I see in him the person who could have acted but chose not to – who had leadership authority invested in him but failed to exercise it. Why chose that issue? Because I lived most of my life in a society whose leaders lacked the moral courage to address deep-seated issues. And people died.

So that’s why my eye is caught by Kung’s repeated charge, ‘Missed .. the opportunity … for rapprochement .. for reconciliation .. for help’

There is a side to leadership which is about recognising the signs of the times, seeing the opportunity or the unavoidable necessity of taking action. I believe that the toughest leadership of all – but that which is most worthwhile – comes when the leader challenges his or her own people. Strangely, leaders who miss opportunities are seldom criticised because people don’t see what isn’t there. So life moves on in a spurious calm. Yet it is the role of a leader to see, to call, to challenge.

The time will come.