Not made it to housegroup as we now have a doctor's appointment instead.
Our housegroups were set up earlier this year after they had gradually folded over the years before I arrived. We have 4 groups, 2 meet Monday evening and 2 Thursday morning. So far they've worked well. 1/4 Each group meets fortnightly and I aim to attend one group each time and we share the lord's supper together on those occasions. We wanted to model Acts 2 and so each group involves: fellowship, prayer, teaching and breaking bread. 2/4

(1/15) Yesterday @Ruth_Smart asked what community organising is. This long thread suggests four answers to her question, and I have in mind “Christian community organising” (CCO) which is a subset. 1.(2/15) The first answer is superficial: CCO is the use of specific tools, in the church and in social action, such as 121s, house meetings, power analysis, the drama triangle, and so on.

A thread on seeing ourselves as others see us. Julia kindly sent the following translation of ten commandments/observations for Ukrainians on British culture, for those arriving in the UK.
1.You are not being ignored, you are just being given privacy. 2. Be quiet and smile. In Ukraine, we think silent, smiling people have a lack of intelligence; in UK it is people who talk too much who are seen this way. Until you know someone well, you must smile at them, otherwise they will become anxious.

I think joining in would make a contribution to interfaith dialogue

https://twitter.com/gabrielquotes/status/1531641810078113798

Watching the big storm approaching from the sea, Abel said to his brother, "Hurry Cain! You don’t want to get caught in that".

New St: a geographical thread.
1.Come and walk with me along New St in Chelmsford. At one end, the street is being made a pedestrian zone, there are diggers everywhere. Then you find beautiful Chelmsford cathedral. I’m a Canon, but I’m afraid I almost never get to worship there. 2.Opposite the cathedral are the diocesan offices. Mission and Ministry (the Training Team + the DDO team) are on the second floor; my boss @RobMerchant has an office on the other side of the corridor. Next door is the DAC office (planning) – there everything is at right angles

(1/4) The state has power-over you and a bureaucratic culture. Business has power-over you and a market culture. But churches are supposed to be different - they're supposed to have a relational culture. So everything starts with one-to-one conversations.
(2/4) In @chelmsdio the very first thing we do for new curates, before we even introduce the team, is teach people to have good 121 conversations; curates have a 121 a week for three years, and at the end of those three years they're the best connected people in their community

(1/9) On Monday afternoons people in the Diocese of Chelmsford receive an emailed newsletter called “The View”. There’s a sermon (Bishop Roger on the motto “Ich Dien”), appointments (I’m personally really pleased that Mike Power has been appointed Archdeacon of Southend)... (2/9) ... there are upcoming events including the training session on leading collective worship I mentioned earlier, and there are news items like this one:...

I’m also done posting from this account - it’s been great to share my week with you. Just a few thoughts from me before we drop our youngest at school and she heads off to New York . . . Read on : Childrens and youth ministry is a vocational calling - it’s been gently affirmed as such at Synod in the past - but I’d love to see greater value, profile and attention paid to this vital ministry - more action is required!

A few things I don't know if I've said yet.

It's been a tough few years. Many children are struggling. So are many parents. And many church leaders.

And a lot of church leaders feel pressure to come back BIG and SHINY and EXCITING. Read Ezra 3. The exiles return to Jerusalem and read the story of God's journey with them in the ruins of the temple. To a group of many generations. Some have never been in Jerusalem before. Some are remembering the last time they were there before the exile.

This is Mitzi. She's how I get to church when I can (sometimes I am knackered and take the bus). It's up a BIG hill to church, but that means the journey home is just "point it in the right direction and let gravity do the rest." She is parked next to the eternal resting place of James and Frances Francis (I know, poor woman) and I always thank them for looking after her.

Here's how I ended up at @Hampstead_PC as a parishioner. @RevJFletcher

This is nothing but my own story. No greater commentary on the state of the church or anything. When I first moved to the UK in 2005 I went to my local parish church for a few Sundays. Nobody spoke to me. The building was beautiful but very cold. The atmosphere felt like a closed shop of people without much belief that they had a future.

Tonight is date night! Going for a cycle and getting Turkish food. When I was working Sundays and some Saturdays, and my partner worked 2 Saturdays a month, we could often go a fortnight or more without there being a single evening that wasn't a work night for at least one of us. I stopped doing Sunday mornings in 2020, which was hard, but the right call. Working full time for the Diocese, plus doing Sundays (plus planning and leading volunteer team in spare time during the week) at the church where I had been children's worker for years, was too much.

Hot take, on a Friday night: babies should receive communion.

I said what I said. If we insist on an intellectual "understanding," that raises bad questions when it comes to dementia patients, some people with learning disabilities, etc. It also assumes that WE understand it, and can judge others' understanding.

I haven't said much about my own faith and spirituality. The last five years have been a very challenging time, and doing ministry while your own faith is changing is difficult. But in general, I tend to find my connection to God in two places - in art (all kinds - visual art, theatre, music) or in communal liturgy. I'm not good at solitary communion with God, keeping up a personal prayer life, etc.

Addendum to previous thread: there was also a space outside the main sanctuary where there were sofas and calm lighting, and where the service was relayed on an audio link. So if you needed someplace to chill out, you could go here. Later, that space ended up used for our 0-5 Junior Church group, with the audio link turned off when they came in and on again when they left.

In the church where I was children's worker, we found that toddlers were needing to move and play. Parents would try to shush them, and this would escalate to the toddler having a tantrum out of frustration. Everyone got upset. So we tried a pray and play corner. It was important that this was sacred space, not a "graveyard for dead teddies," as @Sandierah9 says.

So. I've been flippant about toddler group biscuits a lot today, and we all think it's sweet when children say the best thing about church on Sunday is the biscuits afterwards, but hear me out.

The biscuits matter. Tagging @TheWomanfredi for her official snack role. 1/5 We first learn about the world through our senses and experiences, and that is how we first experience faith. Fowler and Westerhoff talk about this. 2/5

CW baby loss. Today my personal life and my ministry overlap.

7 years ago today, 2 embryos were placed in my womb, the end of my 3rd cycle of IVF. One of those grew into a baby.

That baby died at birth, at 27 weeks of pregnancy.

"And a sword shall pierce your heart also." On Candlemas, the cradle and the cross meet. Birth and death.

Orthodox icons show a clear connection between Mary laying Jesus in the manger, in his swaddling bands, and Mary laying him in the tomb, in his grave clothes. In both, she kisses his forehead.

There were two really wonderful ministry moments today, which I can't talk about in too much detail.

One was knowing something I did really helped someone.

The other was feeling validated in perceiving a situation accurately and working to figure out how to make it better. These moments matter. I might start writing them down somewhere, for when it all feels frustrating and like nothing makes a difference.

Going into a meeting. Part of being on Diocesan staff is a good number of meetings about systems and structures and procedures. (True at parish level too, but somehow I found it easier then.) We merged our mission and ministry teams right before lockdown, and that turned out to be an accidental blessing, because it meant we could work together more easily and respond more quickly to changing circumstances.

I'm doing a bit of work on planning a residential conference for June. The idea is for it to be experiential - we DO rather than hear about. We'll be focusing on how worship (in all contexts) can help children in difficult times. I try to include children where possible. We once had a panel of children from a local church school, who were on the school's worship planning team, talk to us about what they liked about worship and what connected them to God.