Low Saturday Study Days

Wondered how far I got, having realised that the pace I was going up to Easter day probably meant migraine I took Tuesday as my day off last week hoping I'd get it over with. It struck on Tuesday night and went Thursday evening. Actually it needed something to trigger it and got that with water spilt on the train. So that wiped wednesday and Thursday out. Although on thursday I got my papers off for this months supervision.

What has this last few days been like. Well weather wise it has been cold mornings but sunny afternoons with a spring chill to them. Friday I was in work and going pretty well. Finally got all last years forms in for the Churches' Work with Elderly People about a thousand (over 950 but I cannot recall the exact number. Unfortunately I have lost some of the code from last year so am having to recreate it. I think there are definite types of task the Church's worker does that can be picked out. There is the one to one visit which may just be befriending but may require her special skills, there is the routine visiting either to residential homes, sheltered accommodation or for a few in their own home, there is hospital visiting, there is community activity and there are public meetings. It all builds up into quite a complex picture. Hopefully on Monday I will get an annual report out. This year hopefully Janet can put them straight onto computer and it will just be a matter of sending them across to me by email which should mean that the report can be done in a couple of days.

Went shopping at Waitrose in the evening basically as I had not done any household shopping since I think the 7th April and everything was getting low. I was rather relieved when my shopping only came to just over £50. Admittedly I did have to top up with things yesterday at the Station Marks and Spencer.

Yesterday I went with St Andrews Chesterfield on a BENDA. That stands for Bible Exploration North East Derbyshire Area (I think). It shouldn't be "area" it should be "cluster" as that is what they are officially called in East Midlands synod. The day was being led by John Proctor who I knew would be good so it was pleasant to go. In actual fact it was better from my thesis point of view than the East Midlands day last summer. I think because we did not have separate sessions but were altogether and also I think people were more relaxed. When the church is going somewhere and they hire a coach (actually shared with Rosehill and Holymoorside) then I get an early train across and walk up to the church. Yes I know it is more sensible to walk to Rosehill but not that much and certainly not enough to avoid any chatter while the coach comes. I always panic over train connections, the result of which mean that I was sitting outside the church for twenty minutes or more when there was quite definitely a chill in the air. The church at Matlock is a combined Methodist-URC with a distinctly Methodist flavour although they meet in the former URC building or I assume they do as there is a building slightly higher up the road with "The Old Methodist Church" above the door. I am not sure how they managed to get that above the door, or is their a segement of Methodists called "Old Methodists" . John was on form, we looked first at approaches to Bible Study, then a view of Marks gospel and finally onto two Corinthians. Two things of note happened. One was that John asked people to pick out sensory and emotional information from 2 Corinthians 4 and people gave him the ideas in the passage. Yes I kept silent for quite a while, my job is to listen really. Now I am an ideas person but I could easily find six or eigth of them in the passage. The second came when John asked was there anything that people wanted to cover and it was clear that most of the questions were about the organisation side of study groups. This is despite the fact that I think I could count a maximum of five ministers there (including retired ones) so no where near a full attendance from clergy but what do you expect if you choose Low Sunday. This was a group of lay people who were seriously asking how do we do this in practice. I got back to Chesterfield about 5:00 p.m. and was given a lift back to the station.

Today has been a lazy day as mid way through last week my interviewees postponed their interview until next week. The man had got talked into driving a train which I don't suppose was very difficult. I have slept in, had an afternoon nap, written up two Sundays in my research diary and photographed some Bluebells which are at present out in Wilkinson Street. This always feels somewhat serendipitous as the reasons they seem to thrive is basically they are in the grounds of businesses that don't fuss too much about gardening. They are basically wild. As they are so far from any native population of bluebells I really could not care whether they are native, Spanish or hybrid. My own guess would be hybrid as in the two close ups one looks Spanish and one looks native. I would guess that without interference in about five to ten years time we will have bluebells in Gell Street Park as it is a nearby suitable site. I stumbled across them a couple of years back but this is the first time I have taken a camera to photograph them. Unfortunately I just picked up Dad's which I am borrowing and the battery was really low so I did not spend as long as I would like.

Mainly Easter Weekend

Last week was pretty okay as a Holy week. I got to the Maundy Thursday evening service. I am deciding that David Legge is a straight Zwinglian. Possibly even on factual side of that. It shows itself in the form of the communion services which is not always the case with those of Zwinglian persuasion. Interesting question: is the congregation Zwinglian in their eucharistic theology. There are signs that that might be the case although that is not what I would expect with an ex-Presbyterian (I am more used to them tending towards Lutheranism).

Oh I have also found the "quick" method to get my writing juices flowing at least slowly. The answer seems to be to hand write my ideas for the first day. I will write very little but by the second day my word speed is about up to passable on the computer. Don't know why it works but it beats trying to write on a computer for two days before the ideas start coming. I know I should try and write 500 words a day even if it is sociological nonsense but I never do. I always write up until my deadline and then break, read, observe and interview, realise it is almost the deadline time again and start the intense writing. Mind you by the end of this academic year I will have written 90,000 words approximately with another 60,000 to be written before I start "writing" up.

Sunday was hectic. With being on placement with a congregation I really should be at their worship on Easter Sunday. This is after all the high day in the Churches calendar and there is no sign at my placement congregation that it thinks we should not keep the basic Christian calendar despite being ex-Presbyterian. Query: Both the ex-Presbyterians I have known have communion on Easter Sunday, however I have known Congregational churches choose to have a celebration service instead, which would be a method of lowering the fuss on that day. Why are ex-Presbyterians into communion on Easter Sunday. I would say amongst ex-Congregational churches of my experience it was more common to have communion on Maundy Thursday than Easter Sunday. The Chaplaincy at St Andrews did not have communion at its main service on Easter Sunday the one year I was up for Easter. So where does the tradition come from?

Anyway I got home after the service, having left slightly earlier than I usually do but people were leaving pretty quickly, dropped the car off at the parking space about 1:00 p.m. having come back via the Ecclesall Road due to road works on my usual stretch and the fast route likely to be blocked with traffic, was tempted to go via Nether Padley (about the same distance but on slower roads). Went to the toilet, grabbed a glass of water and emergency food supply and changed my shoes before setting off to the station. Fortunately when I got to the station Marks and Spencers was open so I got a sandwich and a packet of crisps. I then went to the till but with normal Sheffield politeness the man sent me to get a drink as the food cost £2:38 without the drink or £2:00 with the drink. I picked up my pre-booked ticket and caught the train half an hour earlier (around 14:10) than I planned so had to phone my parents to say this. I also learnt there was no 13:40 train. I had booked the later train as just too many things could have gone wrong, a service over run, getting lost on the way home as I was on an unfamilliar routte, having to fill the car with petrol and so on. They conveyed it onto my sister. For those catching trains to and from Sheffield, from the Manchester end catch the one about twenty minutes past the hour at Manchester (25 minutes at Stockport) and from Sheffield the 10 minutes past the hour train. The reason being these are run by transpeninne who genuinely seem to want to make a go of the route. The trains are normally three carriages or more long, so not as crowded as the other ones, run on time, more of them and actually give the cheaper advance tickets. What is there not to like.

I therefore got to Stockport at around 3:00 p.m. and Mum and Dad had just pulled up at the Station, I simply dumped my bag in the back and we set off for my sisters for Dad's 80th Birthday celebrations. The meal was great. Unlike Christmas when there is always enought to feed most of the neighbour hood as well as ourselves this time things worked out almost exactly right. It was helped by the fact that Cathy knew which of the two desserts most people were going to choose. I got Sam and Hannah Easter presents. The irony being that the biggest hit was the t-shirt I got for £4 from a closing down sale (albeit one that has been going on for at least three years, somehow I don't quite believe it).

The last couple of days I have been spending with my parents. At least the time I have been awake I have been spending with my parents but I seemed to want to go to sleep at the drop of the hat. Dad got 14 birthday cards and a basket of house plants from the church for his birthday. The house plants have been passed onto my Mum who will no doubt tend them when she has the time. Still I'd like to find someone who could do some redesigning of the garden. The idea of my Mum balancing on narrow beds in order to tend the top of their garden is not good even if she is the most agile eighty year old I know, often beating me at getting down to something on the floor.

Oh anyone want to read about Chaos then James Gleick's book "Chaos: Making a New Science" ) is an easy read. Its left me itching to get at the mathematics of it to see if I can actually get my head around it. Hope you have a good Easter week

Reflecting on Presbyterian heritage amongst a busy week

Lets see about this week. Monday was a busy but un spectacular day. It went like this: went into work, did work came home, ate tea went to writing group came home went to bed.

Tuesday awoke with the end of time of the month causing hassle, nothing major just uncomfortable, actually the main problem was that it had disturbed my sleep and that meant I was exhausted so I took the morning off sick but was in on the afternoon. For some reason I thought I had better prepare for the housegroup the next day. They are doing Romans and I was getting increasingly unhappy with some of the presentation of the teaching on Romans. Enough for me to want to at least have some idea of what the up to date commentaries say. The problem was two fold, a tendency to use a charicature of Judaism in Biblical times as a teaching tool which I think lets people off the hook and feeling superior, secondly a tendency to view Barclay as the last word in commentary. I heard "if Barclay said it, it must be right".

Wednesday I was off to house group at Chesterfield. Arrived and got the nod from the leader that he might need some help. Look I am the youngest there and there are three lay preachers at the meeting. This group is not biblically illiterate. I missed the queue at one point. It was "fun" leading a study suddenly with no actual thought given to what questions were to be around but I could waffle. He seemed to think I had a point, I am not sure I did but usually there is a point in my waffling just I am unaware of it until it hits me between the eyes. The best point I managed to make was made through looking how if you tell a child not to touch something, then there is a high probability that immediately they will go and do so and comparing that to Paul's statements about the law but I think that was later.


Thursday was odd. What ever it was it came on Wednesday night and left me shattered on Thursday with a sore arm. That does not really make it a migraine so I am leaving it at that.

Friday was a good day. I got to the Broomhall Breakfast and it was busy. Not quite sure who made it busy (the street drinkers weren't there nor any obvious group of drug addicts) but busy it was. The one blot on the day was that at around 11:00 James Dickson rang to say that Jean Dickson was poorly and had been to the doctors would I mind cancelling the meal that evening. This was fine by me, oddly enough spent a quiet evening reading and thoroughly enjoying it. Am now confirmed in my suspicion that the one essential that was not done during the union talks pre-1972 was the exchange of stories about where the traditions came from. If Arthur MacArthur can think that English Congregationalism came solely out of the Brownites, then I am afraid it cannot have been done.

Let me summarise the story the Presbyterians tell is that Presbyterianism in England owes it existence to the expulsions of 1662 and that the Congregationalists had left the CofE before then. This is awkward. Congregationalism did not have a coherent story. Some indeed were Brownites but they were decided minority. A big group actually were either from 1662 or were from Presbyterian 1662 churches that went Unitarian in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century (I seem to recall the Presbyterian Board becoming defunct in the 1820s), others arose at the time of the Evangelical Revival and others are later still. A few a very few, mainly in Northumberland survived the fifty years to 1870s when the Presbyterian Church of England came into being. My father's first Congregational Church was at Oundle which was founded Presbyterian but with the collapse of Presbyterianism chose to become Congregational in the late nineteenth Century. The congregation I was in my teen years was one that had come out of a Presbyterian Church when it went Unitarian. This confluencing of many streams is what gave English Congregationalism a decidedly different character from Scottish or Irish Congregationalism. There is not one source that can be ultimately said to be the source of Congregationalism within England. Probably more of the spiritual descendants of 1662 Presbyterians divines ended up within Congregationalism than within the Presbyterian Church of England. That is what I feel few former Presbyterians have ever got their heads around. Does it matter? Well in Sheffield I always wonder if it does not lie behind the problems between St Andrews and Central even though everyone has forgotten the origin. Imagine that in the early 19th Century a group of members had walked out from Upper Chapel Presbyterian Church when it decided to become Unitarian and set up the Church on the site of Central URC building (one of the congregations that join to become Central). How do they respond when another group sets themselves up as being the Presbyterian Church in Sheffield just over fifty years later? Is perhaps some of the recruitment actually from Central's members who are longing for the old days of Presbyterianism? What of those who still remember the coming out from Upper Chapel, do they wonder about this new congregations orthodoxy and ability to maintain orthodoxy?

Today went to St Andrew's Chesterfield. The route over was trying Yorkshire Water had asked for one of the roads to be closed from 6th April only they shut the road on 5th April. This meant quite a detour, which was not good and as this goes on for a fortnight it means I am going to have to work the back route up through Ecclesall rather than the one through . It was an all age worship for Palm Sunday. David had one of the church members grandsons doing his work placement with him. I think the lad was somewhat thrown in at the deep end in that he was helping David lead all the way through worship. Actually David I think might just excel as a minister in a Churches of Christ style setting, where there is an acknowledged group to plan the service each week along with him. He has too many good ideas to carry them all out sucessfully and does not seem to be able to limit them in any way. We got the whole week run through in the service which as it was parade was allowed to over run somewhat. There was tea and coffee afterwards and a good crowd stayed. One of the Scouts I think has decided that this is his church and always comes back for a tea after the service.

Got to go and get myself some tea, Tescos failed to deliver my main meal today so I am eating rather late, probably poached eggs, spinach and rice with some baby veg followed by fruit salad (courtesy of Marks and Spencers)