Categories: anything-and-everything
Date: 18 April 2007 16:44:22
*Yes, I clicked save by accident so the first bit arrived before the rest!*
I have been ordained for approaching three years now - one year as a deacon and nearly two as a priest and I was reflecting earlier on certain aspects of ministry and on the things you come out of theological college not having been trained or equipped for (even when it's a good one, like mine was). Of course, the curacy is also there to provide further equipping... but, there were no lectures on:
* Getting a boiler working. Not long after I arrived I spent a good long while after the Sunday morning service at the home of one of our elderly ladies trying to help her get to grips with her new digital heating system with timer and all that palavar... not equipped for that.
* Remembering security codes**. There were no lectures on memory techniques to enable adequate brain storage of all the numbers... school entrance codes, school playground gate codes, key codes for the front doors of immobile parishioners - and they all have four digits - it's no wonder I get confused when I try and get any money out of a hole in the wall!
* Small-talk. Fortunately I could talk the hind legs off a donkey and have enough random interests to make conversation with a 9 or a 90 year old manageable and even enjoyable (for me at least!) - but they could have given a bit more input, or even a list of potential topics, on how to make random conversation with people you know, people you don't know, people you feel you should know but can't quite remember where from and people who sat in the back row of great aunty Betty's funeral and who expect you to know their name and medical history (well, I can exaggerate a bit - it's my blog!). Also under this heading could come that whole delightful area of remembering names and faces - and preferably matching them up correctly. Failing this then they could have had 'effective bluffing techniques' on the timetable.
* Alongside 'Small-talk' could come that whole area of the 'impromptu sharing of just-a-few-words' or the much less challenging 'pull a handy 'grace' out of the hat'!
*School assemblies. I believe there was an assemblies short course on offer when I was at college but these only happened once a year and there were two other compulsory courses you had to do first - and I was only there for two years - so, not much input on school assemblies... and then into the parish you trot to be presented with weekly and fortnightly assemblies of infants, juniors and infants and juniors all sitting there waiting for something interesting to happen, not to mention the inspired thoughts we had to come up with for the seniors! Good job I worked with children and teens in my previous existence!
Well, I think that's all for now - I'll let you know if I come up with anything else... but just excuse me while I toddle off to drop a line to my old Principal, making a few suggestions...!
**Today I was taking communion to a church member who's just out of hospital and is drawing to the end of her life. She lives a five minute walk from my house and on the fourth or fifth floor of a block of flats (you lose count when you're plodding up all those stairs). So I headed over there with the shiny new key code number written on my hand, that she'd give me (the code that is, not the hand) so I could let myself in when I got there. Of course, once I got up the stairs and tried the number I found it didn't work, so having bellowed through the front door I headed back home again, phoned her to say what had happened and then contacted someone else who gave me the right number. And then I headed back again, back up all those stairs and had a very nice visit. God had apparently decided I needed a bit more exercise!