Guildford Diocese are currently undertaking a review of what Church House should do.  This post isn’t a comment on that, but was sparked by another thing that I saw Gloucester Diocese had done.

As I understand it Gloucester Diocese was the involved at the beginning of Open the Book, the Parish Giving Scheme, and I have recently found Treasurer resources they make available and Vacancy advice (other dioceses do this too).

The National Church have also just made available free online resources for Occasional Offices.

In an age of online systems, and greater and greater administrative demands on parishes I think that development of such systems to help manage that increased administrative burden is one thing that the centre can do, which would help parishes.

As you can see, this isn’t a plea for Dioceses to create something, as there is no point each diocese creating their own, but if they would “encourage” the national church to do this it would help significantly!

If you have been following me during Lent you will know that I have not blogged for a few days – breaking my intention to do so.  So I have failed – the question is, what am I going to do about it?

In Joan Chittister’s commentary on the Rule of Benedict (or here online) she writes:

A contemporary collection of monastic tales includes the story of the visitor who asks of the monk: “What do you do in the monastery?” And the monastic replies: “Well, we fall and we get up and we fall and we get up and we fall and we get up.” Where continual falling and getting up is not honoured, where the senpectae–the wise ones who have gone before us–are not present to help us through, life runs the terrible risk of drying up and blowing away before it is half lived.

Rowan Williams has also written that if we do not fail at our Lenten discipline we may come to believe that we achieved it, and can achieve others things, through our own abilities, rather than relying on God.

So today, I get back on the horse and start again.

The question I am left with, is falling failure, or is failure not starting afresh following a fall?

This is the blog post that I set out to write yesterday – but I ended up following a different path!

Brian McLaren has written a book, Naked Spirituality, which summarises/simplifies a lot of the work on Stages of Faith.  Summaries of McLaren’s work can be found here and here (be patient – the first few slides are pictures, but the words come).

Richard Rohr has written and blogged about the two halves of life.

I would roughly map these to Simplicity/Complexity and Harmony in the McLaren model.  Rohr thinks that there needs to be some kind of crisis to move between the two, and I would map that to Perplexity.

So, which stage do we wish our clergy to be in?  The first of the McLaren links above suggests that if we wish to grow in our faith we require leaders who are further along the path, but also that we can find that threatening.

Both models suggest that people are at their most “productive” in Complexity/First half of life.

There appears to be a dilemma here.  If we wish our clergy to “make things happen”, which seems to be the current vogue, then we need them to be in the first half of life.  If we wish them to lead us through the stages of faith then we need them to be in Harmony (it is really difficult leading a church if you are in Perplexity!).

So, what kind of clergy do we want?

It is a truism that the only thing you can control is yourself, and yet how often are our prayers for God to control someone else?  Reading this again today, it points out that it is through the pains and disappointments of life that we grow, rather than the joys.  At those times we see (if we allow ourselves to) the impact of our character on us, and have the opportunity to change it.

This is not self control in the sense of not eating the extra piece of chocolate, but instead in the sense of recognising our hang ups and finding ways to deal with them.

Far more difficult than not eating a piece of chocolate, but more in keeping with the spirit of Lent.  However, far harder to do as it requires us to experience pain or disappointment, something that most of us try to steer clear of, and something that we can’t always find to order.  However for many of us there may be past pains/disappointments that we haven’t yet processed, and which would form a good topic for Lenten reflection.

Yesterday I posted my thoughts on makeovers.  Whilst I still stand by what I wrote then, today I want to add to it, because I think there is something about motivation that is worth exploring.

The Bishop of Gloucester started a campaign in 2016 called Liedentity which was looking at the impact pressures on body image were having on young people.

As a society we seem to becoming more concerned with image.  Not helped by the use of Photoshop.  If the purpose of a makeover is to “compete” with this then at one level I would want to say that it is unhealthy.  If we recognise that our identity comes from God, like Justin Welby, then striving to make ourselves something else isn’t helpful.  However, it is a tough ask to require people not to do things which will make it easier to find employment, or get paid more, or make them feel more confident.

The danger, perhaps, is if after all the effort it fails to have the desired impact.

Strange things happen to vicars!  Today I got a call from a TV production company asking whether I would publicise their search for people to take part in a makeover TV programme (flyer above).  There have also been other times I have had similar requests from TV companies. I agreed to do so, and don’t regret it, but it did set me wondering about the current desire for makeovers.

With most questions of ethics there is a line somewhere that should not be crossed, but where does this lie when it comes to self presentation?  Or is there no line?

Might it be a question of taste, or might it be about intent?

When I started writing this blog I thought that there was a line, but as I write it I am finding it very difficult to draw it.

Take plastic surgery; my initial reaction was that there is a difference between someone who needs it because they have been badly burnt, and someone who wants to look prettier.  But now that seems like prejudice; why shouldn’t someone choose to look prettier?  I am finding it difficult to find a rule which differentiates one case from the other.  This is possibly because the only difference I can see between them is one of degree.

There are perhaps other arguments concerning the use of resources, but I suspect that most people would agree that there are some people who should receive this – so where is that line?

As part of my Lent discipline I am reading The Way to Love, and the passage I read today challenged me to see people, because only if I see the real person can I love them; if I do not see the real person then what I am loving is what I get from them, and when I stop getting whatever it is I will stop loving them.

Perhaps our attitude to makeovers is also about how well we see the person.