New Kid on the Blog

Daft really, offer to do something and people take it up! Now I have to think of some questions for Eric and Sank ..... I doubt the quality will be quite that which Quilly offered me! Nothing else to say for now, it must be all this micro-blogging at twitter which does it!

Eric, from eric has issues reminded me of the fact that I had done the five question meme , as set by him, some time ago - about two and a half years in fact. Apologies Eric for not remembering - but having trawled back through my blog I have been rather amazed by some of the things I have written over the past few years, though I shall leave them there for posterity, tempting as it may be to weed out some of the nonsense and overly honest posts of my recent past! Am enjoying blogging! And twittering! Still have a few sermons to put up, but at present am about to take my son and the two dogs out for a wander over the road.... toodles

I'm sitting in a cafe in the town I grew up in and having recently become a Twitterer(?) (twitificationalist? Twit?) I thought I would continue the theme and try to blog on my iPhone...I suspect that the relatively long winded nature of typing this in, despite being much quicker than other mobile devices, will make this an infrequent event. For any following the saga of my poorly car on Twitted or Facebook, I have taken it to a Garage where they have run a diagnostic and may well have found a problem which has been around for a while! So honest are this garage that though I had said I expected them to change the air sensor (previous garages have done this in response to the issue) they said they wanted to try a much much cheaper fix first - hopefully bringing the cost down from about £220 to £30 - now that is service! We'll see if that works, now it's time to finish my coffee and try and get a haircut.

Quilly , following the example and inspiration of Dr John , recently answered five questions set by Dr John as part of a sort of ongoing free form meme! To carry this on she offered, very kindly, to formulate five questions for those who were interested in being interviewed and carry this on, a few folk took her up on the offer, including me and Bill over at the Old Fart's Blog - though he said he would post them sometime when he was able. Melli, the super-commenter, also has had a go at them over two posts here and here ! Here's Quilly's well thought out questions, and my response 1.) Had you not become a pastor, what career field do you think you would be in? Teaching, of some sort. Either academic/higher ed (I nearly went off to New York to do a Doctorate but fell in love and the rest is history, or our story as we still seem to bump along together twenty years later!) or Secondary education. A few years down the road I now know I would have quite liked Primary sc...

First of all - my letter to the parishes this month: The only thing that seems to stay the same these days is change! Everything changes! Even in these past few years so much as changed, from the Internet and Digital TV to Computer games, cars, shopping, even pubs! And change is often threatening, or disturbing, or challenging, so we seem to live in very challenging times. And there’s a concern about change in our Churches too, a certain expectation that (for better or worse) a new Vicar means changes, and that as we learn to work together as these five parishes that make up the ‘Five Alive Mission Community’ this will lead to certain developments, different services and different events. Well, some of that is true – the reality is that some things need to change. But I am not someone who believes in change for the sake of change – in fact I take to heart St Paul’s words from the letter to the Romans 12v9 ...”hold fast to that which is good”. As we seek together...

With so many friends twittering, I thought it about time I got in on the act, perhaps I will update it more often than my blog! Find me at http://twitter.com/ fracme

Yep, once again it has been a while, nearly a month since I blogged. And, as you might suspect, its been busy-ness that has mainly kept me from writing here. Not that I am complaining, though, it has been overwhelmingly a good busyness - that long list in my last posting has very much occupied my time, and I still feel I am trying to keep up with myself admin wise, but in terms of contact with people, of offering the pastoral care that is at the centre of what I feel my calling to be in ministry, of preparing and leading services, in preparing and preaching sermons these past few weeks, indeed these past few months, have been extremely rewarding. But now, in many ways, its time to get down to business. We in our five parishes are asking 'what next?' and wondering both how we can grow together as a 'Mission Community' and what that means for the individual life of our parishes. This might mean some difficult decisions, actually it will mean some difficult decisions, p...

Yes, I recognise it's been a while since I posted, but following Christmas I went off for a few days for a break with the family and then since coming back have been gradually working on a lovely streaming cold, which has finally hit and left me particularly muzzy headed and somewhat tired. I am pleased, though, that my traditional (do something once in the Church of England and it is an innovation, twice is a tradition) 'sometime-around-Christmas' Cold held off both through the Christmas season and my post-Christmas break. It's only been the past three or four days when it has really affected me. This, of course, puts me out of visiting people, as I don't want to make their lives worse by my advent, and has rather left me marooned in the study trying to plough through the mountains of paper that really should have been dealt with before. I have mentioned before that Church life contains much more admin than most people realise. Being the 'established Church...