ASSESS conference in the midst of a busy week

Monday was fairly quiet, went to writers group and we were mainly just pacing ourselves. I have the feeling I probably need to buy more but we shall see as by the time I had already orders for four although one was technically direct and not through me. However don’t let that stop you asking for a copy. If however you want to be sure of a copy and to cut out the middle person then please just turn up at the Bank Street Art Centre (on Bank Street which is behind the Cathedral) next Friday at 7:30 p.m. where we will be reading. There was some discussion on whether we should make it available over the internet. If people abroad want it, let me know and I will email the final pdf file to you.

Tuesday was Bible study. This was quiet, many people appeared tired even of those that had made it. The course is in my opinion taking Acts far to quickly. We will get through it in about ten sessions. The thing is that last time we had Ananias and Saphira, the appointment of deacons and the stoning of Stephen in one session. Any one of those on its own could take a full session to talk over.

Wednesday was my day off. I spent the morning at Herringthorpe as they have no less than two meetings on a Wednesday morning. They have a prayer meeting and a fellowship group and although the two overlap they are not the same and led by different people. This is a Songs of Fellowship church but the Wednesday fellowship group are Mission Praise. I have seen churches where the main hymn book has been the denominational one and the youth have had a supplementary one, but I wonder why this group chose Mission Praise.

Thursday back into work but a largely quiet day and it needed to be. As on Friday it was Assess Conference. This is an annual get together in York of people who use SPSS. So I had an early start as I needed to be at the station for 8:20. That does not sound bad until you realise taxis want to pick you up an hour beforehand so I planned to leave the house at 7:30. The free gifts were good from IBM but the support wasn’t. The fact is that until last year they actually sent people to these events. This meant that it actually was time when I could talk to someone in the company about how we were doing at Sheffield and as it is major research package there, that I felt was important. Now we just have a linkup with someone in US. This should be by computer but both times we have had to use phones. If you have ever heard a mobile phone being projected through a microphone you will have some idea how poor the reception was.

Saturday I did some writing up of things in the morning. In the afternoon I went out to find where Bank Street Arts Centre was, so I could get there easily next Friday. It is in the roads I think of as back of the Cathedral. What I will do coming home at least is get the Tram from Fitzalan Square which is really very close by. It is an interesting place, I think it exists in two floors of a couple of tall former terrace houses. I would say Victorian only what little knowledge I have of Sheffield suggests they may be older. The building is therefore on several different levels, yes there is disabled access at least to the lower floor. I am not sure where we will be performing.

On the evening I went to a social event. The judgement of many people I hear is there could have been more people there but there was a good crowd and I think what they mean is that people who are normally at socials weren’t there, but then the point was to get to know new people and had there been more of them that would have been harder for those who were there. The thing that was perhaps most surprising for me was the entertainment. They have four members who as one of their hobbies do Abba Impersonators together. So they got entertainment put on by them. It was loud. Don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to Abba music, but having to listen with my fingers in my ears isn’t normally how I prefer to listen to it. They had some sing-a-long ones as well and some of the younger people were dancing but I suspect quite a few of the older people went home because of the volume and style of the music.

So today spent the day mainly inside. I think made a slight breakthrough with my research diary keeping. I just need to keep telling myself that what I need to do is to free writing and not bother too much about putting down things correctly after all the only person who is going to read the diary is me. So why do I need things in perfect style if I am typing for myself. Also that I should not bother about getting everything down. What I need to do is just get down an impression of what I experienced and that can be done in a lot looser style than I have used up to now. The skill is actually getting me to start typing and stay at it. Often I pressure myself too much over getting something right, although I don’t know what right is, so I am tying myself into knots. I stop writing because it is so difficult to sort out what is the exact thing I need to write.

This evening went to the evening service, which could well be a favourite with me. This church has lots of small meetings that are called different things but roughly do the same thing. There is Bible Study on a Tuesday, Fellowship Group on a Wednesday and Evening Service. I wonder if the Monday Group is the same, although the one account I have had of it, it isn’t. Oh a comment from tonight which was worth noting. This mornings worship was all age and the comment was that it was almost a different congregation.

A good end to a busy week

This past week there has been no shortage of news most of it pleasant so don’t worry there is plenty for me to write about.



Monday it was my writing groups bi-annual assessment. It went very well I think. We met in the Elders room. The way we sat meant that Jenny, I and Margaret were all sitting together. The assessor is a published poet so our tutor had chance to show off the group. Jenny is quite a mature poet and indeed has had several poems published, I am not claiming the same for myself but I did a quantum leap with my ability just before Christmas so I am a good person to demonstrate improvement. Finally Margaret is in the final stages of writing a book, it is the one book we all want to read. I don’t suppose it is my normal style, welsh dark gothic in style but the twists and turns are quite incredible. So she was good to show off the standard of prose that is achieved by the group.


Tuesday was just bible study,  They got onto the validity of infant baptism. Now a days I don’t particularly go into the rights and wrongs of it, but I grew up with the arguments.  One guy decided to be adamant of that adult baptism was the only answer, so I said that there was other opinion and that it could be argued as well. I got him to admit that the New Testament did not state categorically either way.


Wednesday was NAG meeting and I presenting what work had been done so far. It went well with people wanting to talk about things. I sensed a real enthusiasm in the group for the route we have mapped out. I presented a shortened version of the form today. What was interesting was that most people queried area even though we had not done a precise area decision. The area was sort of “around the church”, rather than “in your local urban priority area” which is about a mile away. Talking today I sense that we are only starting from scratch because previous projects have not really considered fundraising as part of the project. They seem to have had a contact centre which firstly the church lost control of because the funding came through the probation service and secondly when the funding ran out the probation service just shut it. This seems to be a repeated pattern for their community work. With some the grants needed to make it successful would have been minimal e.g. a regular sum towards the provision of taxi services for elderly people so they could get.


Thursday  was quieter than expected because the youth group found that most of its members were away in Oxford. However I spent the afternoon helping to run a stall for the department on a university Open Day. Even though I was on the grave yard shift, we still had a number of inquiries including one from a mother whose son had lost the stuff he had collected and wanted fresh but did not dare come and ask. He will have to get out of relying on mum to pick up the pieces pretty quickly if he gets to University. Actually for awhile I have noticed that students tend to come in two forms to University. There are those whose behaviour and dress suggests that they are still children while others seem to be full adults. I am not sure what the underlying cause is of this marked discrepancy.


Friday was a full day in work, or would have been if time of the month had not intervened. That said I was up and functional by the afternoon. I needed to sort out the stuff for a course I am doing on Monday and to do that I needed to talk to a couple of people in the building where my office used to be. This was fortunate as there was yet another burst pipe on Glossop Road, they seem to happen every summer just when the weather is at its warmest. This one meant that there was no functional toilets. So the trip over to the other building was chance to go to the loo. Oh in the hot weather I have been making strong mint and green tea and cooling it. By strong I mean very strong. When cold it can either be drunk 50/50 with lemonade or in a mix with wine and tonic water. Both are delicious and cool tasting.


Saturday, hmm was quite a day. I started the fairly early, probably because my body registered that it had a lot on that day. Before 9:00 a.m. my doorbell went and a postman announced that he had a parcel for me. This surprised me, as normally I have some clue when I am due to get a parcel, but there was no hint of anything. However I let him in to the block and he brought a parcel up to my flat. It was addressed to me. What is more it contained a mju tough 8010 camera.. I certainly was not expecting that! I hunted for documentation and found a letter from   Merrell; only then did I remember that when I had bought a pair of shoes a couple of months back I had filled in details and agreed to go into a draw. It appears I was runner up! I thought that was always something that happened to other people.


However I did not have time to set it up because I was off to “Fun at the Fair” at Herringthorpe. It was an attempt to do something different with a summer fair. Basically combining it with a fun day for families. The weather was superb, perhaps slightly too much breeze towards the end. They had also managed to persuade a Mums and Tots group that use the premises to have a stall. The Brownies and Guides both had stalls and I think the scouts did but that was very token. There was a good mix of church and non-church families just sitting around. Improvements would be things like, making the fund raising fifty-fifty for groups, also developing a range of cheap have a go games, with small prizes such as ping-pong balls into jam jars, or the old fishing game or drop a 5p on a £1 at the bottom of a bucket of water. Rotherham has an odd feel. I am trying to place why the fact that its urban deprivation feels worse than that of Sheffield or Chesterfield. Some of it is easy, the railway station is a dive, for starters; just beside it is a river with a chantry chapel and a historic pub. The sort of place most towns would spend money on developing as fashionable pub. Admittedly Tescos did it no favours with their warehouse of a supermarket being built alongside it but in other places that simply would not have been allowed. The town centre is dominated by the Minister but if you are outside Rotherham you would hardly know it. But these are symptoms rather than causes.


Today it was off to church at Herringthorpe and then church meeting. Pauline put in a reference to “We limit not the Truth of God” by George Rawson. I commented to her that that seemed rather appropriate as today is the 4th July! For those who don’t get the reference the hymn she is quoting is a paraphrase of Pastor John Robinsons address to the Pilgrim fathers when they left Plymouth. At coffee I bough a bar of Traidcraft Organic Dark Chocolate which is seriously yummy. Actually one of the things with being involved in the Needs Assessment Groupis that in giving the report I got response from people I would not otherwise have got, including stories of previous community outreach. After that I came home and slept!


This week is quieter, yes I know that is not going to be exactly difficul., I am teaching tomorrow and am running a brainstorming session for the youth group on Thursday. I hope I can be back to my normal car by then. Then at the weekend I am attending Fleur and Walters Ruby Wedding and then spending the weekend with my parents. I must look up trains for that soon.

My fathers celebration of fifty years in the ministry and other things that happened this week

Well Monday was a day and a half. I started off forgetting I had a dentists appointment until ten minutes before it was due. The dentist is only five minutes walk from my flat so not dire but I had not had breakfast. So I went to the dentist and then came back and had breakfast. I think the postman also delivered one of my guarantees on my dish washer (I have two, two-year ones, one from John Lewis and one from the manufacturer). I then got into work and I think was quite busy although no appointment. At 5:10 p.m. I checked my googlemail box and realised I had an email from Pauline Calderwell (Loosemoor or Parkin) as she was taking my placement for next year with Herringthorpe to church meeting tuesday (the next day) evening, would I mind putting together some information about it. I went home, got myself something to eat and sat down and typed. By 7:00 p.m. I had a document to send to her, there was no time to get it to proof readers so it had to go out as was. Then it was onto writing group for the evening.

By Tuesday morning my migraine had returned. However I am suspicious that I had a low level tummy upset. My reason for this are two fold. The migraine was preceded by a couple of days when I lost interest in food, followed by the fact the dominant symptom was nausea, which is exceptional for me although it is sometimes a secondary. So am hoping that now I am clear for a good long time

I was better by Wednesday so went into work. I had two appointments on the afternoon. The first involved an intense lot of programming which was very involved the second was some thinking outside the box. Two very different queries and my brain was not really functioning A1. Then on the evening I went to Chesterfield for a celebratory meal to mark the end of House groups for the year. I counted about 15 people around the table and at least two or three were away. So out of a membership of seventy the house-group has a following of about twenty. Interesting that the first person plural pronouns were seen as far more threatening than the second person plural. Are people conditioned to "you" meaning somebody else?

Thursday I was in work in the morning. In about ten minutes I sussed the programming problem that had had me baffled the day before with a simple statement rather than a lot of complex calculations (ten lines instead of twenty, so far more elegant, yes even computer programming has its own aesthetic value system although it is closely related to those of mathematics). Then it was home to await my new dish washer. They turned up promptly just after two having had difficulty finding the flat. I directed them in and watched as they unloaded my order. The only thing was they unloaded a huge washing machine (instead of a small dish washer) so I went down stairs and told them that that was not my order. I think they were hugely relieved when they found out how much smaller and lighter my order actually was. They did not install it, I think this was a good thing as they seemed barely competent as delivery men.

Friday I took the morning off and got some transcription done and then went into work. I sort of had an appointment on the afternoon but guessed it was a mistake, however it through out the concentration part of my brain. Otherwise an ordinary afternoon although at 4pm it started to rain (well actually do the Sheffield impression of a tropical rainstorm) and it did not start to slow until about 9:00 a.m. the following morning!

Saturday was the main celebration for my fathers fiftieth years in the ministry. He decided in the end that what he wanted to do was to go out for a meal with Doug Thacker. The choice of restaurants being what it was on a Saturday midday (limited) we ended up at Antibos. As it was Italian I think dad was expecting cheese things. However this is a good Italian restaurant and so Dad had Barrimundi, Mum had lamb shank, Doug had sea food risotto and I had the same main-course as Doug but with pasta instead of rice. I think Dad enjoyed the time with Doug. I sent another picture of them walking together back to my flat obviously deep in discussion, to Reform with a spiel.

Today it was over to Chesterfield where there was a service to mark the second anniversary of the joining of the Scout troop. It was a good service if only because it demonstrated quite palpably that the church cared about the Scout troop. The service was based around the three stages: Beavers, Cubs and Scouts; with each linked to a bible passage and there was a presentation to the recently retired troop leader from the church. Tea and coffee was served in the hall afterwards, and many of the Scouts brought their parents in for coffee. That is correct it is the children who say "Can we have a drink please?" The more cocky ones actually come for a drink without asking their parents which means that we find parents coming in and saying "have you seen ...?"

Next week all I have is writers group on Monday and the church meal on Saturday. So somewhat quieter and I will split my day in two again so that I can get some more transcription done. Hopefully ted will come and install my new dishwasher.

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)