This has been a full week, or at least it feels like that at this point.
Monday was supervision, which feels a long time ago now. My supervisor had warned me he might be late, so when I wandered up five minutes early expecting to make myself comfortable in front of his office, I was rather surprised to see him walking down the corridor. Admittedly in the opposite direction, but that is also the way to the local departmental office and his secretaries office. However by that stage it was also obvious that a mild migraine was happening. Although there was a headache,the main effect was that my thought was disjointed. I think I got the main points but am not sure I got the nuances. Fortunately the other symptom was my eyes feeling as if I had been looking at a computer screen too long, which as all the students in Birmingham were desperately trying to finish work before the Easter break, I did not stand a chance of doing. I was also supposed to go to writers group but given the migraine and such I just did not want to press myself and went for an early night instead.
Tuesday I was in work if a slight bit post migraine but otherwise a fairly good day, same Wednesday, Thursday and Friday work wise. I have spent most of the week revising course notes for SPSS as we are splitting the course in two. I also sent a note out to see if there was anyone else interested in Prayer Group along with who to contact. We are down to four members and with the turn out is quite haphazard. Some of that is because of my migraines but it is not only that. Oh my middle boss, has decided to get all his team together next Monday morning. He has made two mistakes which have not chuffed people. Firstly he did this a short notice, I presume because he had not finalised things but that is also problematic as at least two of the sub teams have to organise cover and they normally cover for each other. Lets call them team A and Team B. If team A are needed in a meeting then people in team B cover and visa versa. Secondly timing, I object because it is Holy Week and he as a good Catholic should know better than to schedule major meetings in Holy Week. Others are of the view that a two and a half hour meeting would have made things much more workable than a three hour one.
Friday evening I went around to the Dicksons for a meal. They were good company and the meal was delicious. Them having me around for a meal is a real sanity stop in my life, even as this time, we do not have much to talk about other than small talk about church business.
Saturday I was involved in the URC Webinars about identity, it was an interesting experience. All the training sessions had been during the working week and as I was in work and my computer at work has no microphone attached and I was not going to organise to take one in, I could not do any of the trainings. Were they expecting everyone to either be ministers or retired. So it was very much a suck it and see situation. Actually I would not have got to a training anyway as my email asking for an invite went to a spam folder so I did not get an invite until Friday. I looked at the list and by chance chose the one with least attenders, I think twelve in total apart from staff. The two morning seminars had about thirty in each, I was the noon and the afternoon one was supposed to have around thirty as well. The technology worked okay even on my relatively old pc (it is coming up for five years old) although I did find that I undid the link to the earphone and relied on my computers speakers for comfort. Not something I could have done for comfort. The major problem was that we could hear all the background noise from the interviewing session including the typing on the keypad. They ran a survey and asked us to talk about it. Quite often the feedback was criticism of the design of the survey. Probably the survey would have worked better if there had been a preliminary attempt, that was unless this was a preliminary attempt. I also think they would have got better more indepth responses if they had run some questions in front of us before hand so we knew the themes of the discussion.
They said the last one was a reporting back session so I signed up for that as well but it was far more a discussion generally on the theme of "God is still speaking". I am quite sure that the key to success of that is whether it is sold as heading in an attractive direction. If it is sold as the latest management idea for growing our churches it will be seen to be just another layer of paperwork. Major challenges are to get a sign up rate so that local URC is likely to be signed up and to get a training rate so that everyone, not just those who come to trainings is in on the act. To do that it is not persuading the people doing the webinars it is going further. I think people need to think a lot more about what we mean by welcoming. Seriously we have welcoming sussed. If people walk through the doors the reports are that they are welcomed. The problems are prior to that, which is giving people the confidence to walk through the doors and after that, which is supporting people over the first two years with a congregation. It is very easy for a person to be welcomed the first week but ignored the third week they attend. Shall we say the problems are inviting and integrating.
Another problem is that we talked about URC as a diverse denomination, we are as a rule theologically diverse but culturally similar. There is not the same range of worship there is in the Church of England in the URC, we draw our membership from a specific cultural groups, largely middle class, often very wordy, in fact you could almost say we have a bit of a love affair with words. We are good administrators. In England we attract people of Scottish or Irish descent, this is true in former Congregationalist Churches. In fact English non-conformist culture shows strong Scottish cultural norms. It is often easier to make sense of the over arching culture if you take a Scottish rather than an English perspective. We like to be close to the bible.
Oh having finished that I was on an adrenaline high. Decided that maybe not working on anything was a good idea so got a bottle of Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer and having tried it, I am still unsure whether to class it as a ginger beer with alcohol added or what I suspect is more likely a fairly flavourless lager with lots of ginger added. It is clear golden in colour, has a head, maybe too much of a head, there is a mild taste I associate with hops but it predominantly tastes of ginger although not as sweet as most ginger beers. Acceptable but nothing to rave about. Now I am debating on whether to have a go at making ginger schnapps.
Today I went to Herringthorpe, Pauline was at a family wedding so they had a speaker from Wycliffe Bible Translators, actually one of their workers in Bangladesh who works with the literacy teams there. This meant that the already overloaded sunday technically was more overloaded. The result was that Palm Sunday and Good Friday got little mention. The church does have mid week services this week but I will be surprised if lots of people attend. They also are at liturgical odd times. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have short meditations and Friday EVENING is the major mid week service. There seems to be an ecumenical event on Thursday evening but that is at Broom Methodist. They did give out palm crosses but that and a couple of hymns were all the references to this weeks liturgical events.
No comments:
Post a Comment