Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 October 2011 20:13:54
How to make a complete twit out of yourself 387: open your mouth and speak - that's if you're me.
How to make a wonderful example of yourself and illustrate whatever "it" is you have "it" no 387: open your mouth and speak - that's if you are Bishop Alan Wilson - the blogging bishop.
So no suprise this post is going to be on what Bishop Alan said at the CODEC seminar on Friday, rather than what I might have said to him afterwards.
The theme of Bishop Alan's talk was Digital Bishops. During the talk he went through why -whether they want to or not - the CofE need to move out of their 1950's mode and into the digital age. He then explained some of the mindsets which might be preventing this before moving on to what values were important to him as somebody who was a bishop operating in the networked digital society.
This was, therefore, a talk with two strands: 1) what's being a bishop all about and 2) why do we all need to be engaging appropriately with the digital age.
The most interesting bits for me included what he was saying about privacy and public space. He was advocating integrity, love and accountability. There was also another aspect to his talk which impacted me personally. It related to what clergy should be and what selection panels are looking for. He illustrated why the two may not always match. As somebody currently candidating, who is scared that there is indeed some kind of game she's already being taught to play - and being judged on - I found this aspect of his talk disconcerting. The "game" seems related to the pursuit of harmony and the cost - he highlighted in his talk - is sometimes "passions, values and beliefs".
There may sometimes, it seemed from his talk, be a tightrope walk to be negotiated, but never a fence to be sat upon. This was scary for a dyspraxic fence sitter to hear. He used the women bishops debate to illustrate this fact using language that I think may have made the average WATCH member - like TOH - seem gently understated in their opinions.
At the end of the talk having discovered Milton Keynes is his patch I felt very happy. Lemmings follow leaders and knowing that you have good ones is important. (Note here I'm not calling anybody a lemming, apart from myself - it all ties in with the talk).