Author: wonderfulexchange
Kimberly Bohan is a priest in the Diocese of Lincoln, less surprised by angels than by being so far south.
lessons in redemption
Today was not the best of days. A worrying pastoral situation or three… Awareness of things done and left undone. A sense of exhaustion when I was trying to prepare tonight’s bible study and a quite legitimate worry that this time I would not get away with it and could not fake my way through.
But then, God caught me off guard. Amos, unexpectedly, came as grace.
There is nothing like a bit of righteous anger, underlined by God’s deep constancy and love to unravel the knots of a bad day.
During the bible study, someone drove to the heart of it: the faith of remnant Israel is remarkable. To go through all that, to be scattered to the wind, broken and torn, and to come out proclaiming the constancy and compassion of God is a remarkable thing.
So there is grace in working through the text: getting carried away on a wave of righteous indignation, purging the need to blame, being pushed into the place where God turns the tables, and says ‘and you? are you really any different?’. And then being offered the space to grow, the invitation to seek God, the promise that God will not utterly destroy but will raise up life.
A more cowardly people would have burnt Amos’ prophesies and denied them. But somehow they realised: there is grace here. If we face our failure, our people’s failure, and learn to tell a new story: there is grace.
But to find it we need to cling together in exile; to face anger and disappointment till we can name God again.
home
I’m home now, with purring cat beside me and lots of unexpected messages awaiting my attention.
For the first time in my life, I must resist the temptation to bore you with a slide show. But this is where I’ve been for the past few days:
and here was my early morning view:
No doubt a few choice churchy photos will emerge over the next week, as well as further reflections. But for now, I must try to sleep.
seeking adoption
Today, I have wondered if it would be possible to get the Church in Sweden to adopt the diocese of Argyll and the Isles.
We need nothing more than the crumbs from the table, you see.
A priest came today to tell us about his church. He is the vicar in community of about 20,000 people. On his staff he has:
- 8 priests
- 5 permanent deacons
- 10 full time youth & childrens´workers
- 2 caretakers
- 2 accountants
- 1 secretary
- 2 administrative assistants
- 4 full time musicians
- 1 caretaker
- several grounds workers
- a number of others whose roles I forget
The annual budget is roughly equivalent to four million pounds.
Now, once I stopped laughing hysterically, I could see that it was not all rosey. The effect of so many trained and paid staff is that it can be very hard for lay people in the congregation to offer their gifts or feel that they can contribute meaningfully. It may also be much harder to encourage people to believe that they have a role in the church, or to grow in adult discipleship.
There are questions too to be raised about what this means for the vicar and how he remains priest rather than business manager.
But still, a few crumbs would be nice. Let´s say, one priest, one deacon, an administrative assistant, a groundsworker and a one-off gift of half a million pounds? But I suppose that is just for Cowal and Bute…
wonderful exchange 