Thought for the Day

I was allowed to use my BBC Radio Bristol slot today for an unashamed plug for tomorrow's Community Festival. This is the script:

Some choose solitude and live as recluses or hermits. Most don't.

Unless we opt out, part of being human is relationships. We are social beings.

Where I live, in a modern part of Nailsea, the estate builders had a different idea. No public meetings space. No heart to the community. Houses built so neighbours don't bump into each other.

But in two years running of royal events that led to street parties folk were keen to meet. So a few people decided, back in 2013, to trial a community festival. A big party where the local talent - music, craft, classic car owners, food and drink - could get together and meet.

I am proud that members of Trendlewood Church, where I am vicar, played a huge part in this. It was repeated in 2015, this time for free due to sponsorship. The third one is tomorrow. Golden Valley School Fields. At noon. Still free.

All the stories in today's show are about people needing people - illness, therapy, benefits and protests. There will be a time in our lives when we all need help. It is good to have met people in advance of this. Someone often knows the person who can help you.

I recall a day when Jesus saw a huge crowd and had compassion on them and began to teach them. When they were hungry we are told he found a miraculous way to multiply food.

We'll have food. Lots of it tomorrow. Also advice in the form of talks on things such as debt, parenting and looking after the environment. As well as meeting some impressive people who have made a great effort at improving the world for those less fortunate.

Worth meeting them?

Talks Tent

I'm excited to have been given the opportunity to curate a talks tent at the Trendlewood Community Festival this year. There are people in our local community doing interesting stuff around the world. From 2.00 - 5.00 p.m. a selection of them have twenty minutes to present something of their passion.

Here's a flavour of the topics:

What can a local radio station do for the community? (Joe Lemer, BBC Radio Bristol)
Who can help you with your money? (Tim Moulding, CAP Money)
Who can help you with your parenting and your marriage (Ian Wills and Trevor Watts, CARE for the family)
What can a local church do for a community (me, Trendlewood Church)
From Trendlewood to Uganda to educate children (Mark and Megan Walters, Hope for Life, Katanga)
Nailsea's best kept s
ecret (Nancy Elliott, Nailsea Community Trust)
How green is your estate? (Pat Gilbert, Friends of Trendlewood Park)

Got one more surprise guest up our sleeves too. I hope. Do plan in to your visit the chance to listen to some of these excellent speakers.

I Love the C of E

I do, I do. In all its wonderful mix of stupidity and glory, I love it. Here's an example:

I have been the minister of a planted church for ten years, Although every church in the land was once planted, the idea of church planting has controversial overtones for some.

Trendlewood Church was planted by Holy Trinity, Nailsea in 1989 (Palm Sunday) to be a worshipping presence and attractional model of church in a part of town which used to be fields and became housing development.

There are only three public buildings on the estate called Trendlewood and the church has met in all of them at some time or other - two schools and a pub. There is no available land on which to build a meeting place.

Anxious to assert its own vision and direction in ministry the church spent the year 2014 seeking guidance regarding its future mission, concluding that it was called to be more independent; in fact as independent as possible.

The Diocese, through its officers, indicated that Trendlewood could not become a parish without a building and so Trendlewood has sought the maximum possible independence within this restrictive framework.

Last night the Holy Trinity and Trendlewood Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM) affirmed the proposal to pursue this by a massive majority.

There are very few examples within the National Church with which to compare this. Even the part of the C of E's web-site dealing with unusual pastoral arrangements has nothing directly comparable.

So, if you had to give a name to this new, exciting, emerging, unusual expression of church what would you choose?

Maybe a group of people who had spent too long switching their computers off using the start button had a propensity to give names that are the exact opposite of the style. So yes folks, if it all goes through without a further hitch, we will be:

A Conventional District

Can you imagine how much I want to insert the letters U and N prior to the second word? Yes, that much.

Thought for the Day

Used my BBC Radio Bristol Thought for the Day slot to give a quick plug to Trendewood's 25th birthday coming up on Palm Sunday. Script follows as delivered this morning:

Before satnav I lived in a street where lorry drivers would stop for directions. It meant they had missed a junction but couldn't, easily, turn. I thought, 'I wouldn't start from here.'

Sunday is Palm Sunday. Christians remember Jesus' entry into Jerusalem - a journey which ended in death.

On Palm Sunday 1989 members of Holy Trinity, Nailsea started a new church. As the town grew estates appeared where once had been fields. Instead of expecting people to come to church, church went to the people.

They met in a pub. It caused a stir. Then in a school. Trendlewood Church, if you've done the maths, will be 25 on Sunday. We will celebrate in our current home, Golden Valley School, and welcome the Bishop of Taunton as guest.

I say 'current home' because not having a building enables us to meet at the heart of the community. Although church buildings are special, the church is people. Not buildings.

Every Christian church in history was planted. The early Christians were charged with taking the message of Jesus to Jerusalem, Judea and the ends of the earth.

You can't get much more ends of the earth than Nailsea. Given its low-lying position it may not even have been earth then.

Jesus was on a journey - a fateful one in his case - so are we. We try to be a good influence in our locality. We hope to carry on being helpful, and maybe even nomadic, for the next twenty-five years.

To know where we are going it is helpful to know where we've come from and, crucially, where we are. We may not want to start from here but we have no choice.

Trendlewood Community Festival - Vicar's Reflections

For those clergy who find their church building at the heart of a community around a village green this will come as no shock, but churches have a great tradition of getting people together. The church fete, the village fete, the Christmas fayre and the like all gather people.

So what do you do to develop community when you have no building?

This was the question two members of our church were playing around with as they sat at a swimming pool watching a children's lesson. And the idea of our festival was born.

It is a real privilege to be the minister of a church where ideas are generated and acted upon.

The idea was brought to the leadership (Trendlewood Committee) who embraced it but took the sensible decision to cancel something else we usually did (our church weekend) in order to concentrate on it.

It is great to work with a group of leaders who ask 'How can we make this work?' rather than saying it won't.

Then the work started. Co-led by an intern and a volunteer who dropped one day a week's paid work in order to serve, the different aspects of the festival were allocated to four or five people and eight months of planning, blogging, promoting and recruiting started. I have no idea how many people hours were involved but last weekend I reckon a key 15 people did about 600 hours.

Using the grounds of the school where we meet on a Sunday we ran a local festival for local people - not quite as Royston Vasey as it sounds. People from the estate shared their produce, their gifts, their collections and their time.

We may have lost a little money. We may have slightly over-catered. But between 400 and 600 people turned up for a day in the sun.

The police said it was one of the best-organised festivals they have ever attended and want to come back. The food hygiene inspectors were impressed with the care.

On Sunday the 55 people in church were the bitter-enders (Venture folk will know what this means) knackered, but glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done. Instead of coffee after church they took down yet another marquee. Respect. And thanks.

It is great to be the minister of a church where permission-giving ministry allows this sort of thing to happen. What's next?

Street Party

A couple of weeks ago I decided to stick a note through the doors of local houses seeing if anyone wanted a sort of bring and share lunch for the royal wedding bank holiday. We live at a junction so chose to leaflet two roads and a total of 46 houses. I gave five different ways of replying (email, text, tweet, phone or call round). With one day to go 13 households have actually replied and 7 of these have said they will join in. There are enough people coming for us to have a good time together but I wonder if this is normal or should I be disappointed to have been completely ignored by two thirds of the people?

Loitering

Spent a very enjoyable morning wandering round this Trendlewood Housing Estate with a church friend trying to see if we had missed any place that could possibly house a church presence here short of building a building. A garage that could be an office? An old barn? Pickings were slim and we are having a different sort of think.

We wandered down all the roads, including apparent dead ends. We had open minds to closed roads.

In one cul-de-sac we turned at the end, chatted briefly about getting our bearings compared to the main road and headed back.

'Can I help you gents?' A man was walking out of a house with a mobile phone to his ear. I replied in the negative and he continued 'Well you walked to my house.' I corrected him, explaining that we had remained in the road at all times (we had) and turned towards him so he could see my dog collar. 'I'm Steve the local vicar' I said. 'Oh bad luck' he replied, shaking my hand but not offering his name. He told me a neighbour had elerted him to our presence.

I have some questions. Can you imagine living in a cul-de-sac so dull that someone walking up your road is suspicious? Granted my colleague had a black woolly hat, but it was not a balaclava, he was, as far as I know, unarmed and it was cold. The second question only dawned on me hours later. If this guy had been alerted that we were walking towards his house, whose house was that he was in? Was he burgling it? I think we should be told.

And what was that 'bad luck' all about?

Sermon and Pastoral Letter

If you are not a member of Trendlewood church step back from the blog. This really don't concern you. (Although how could I ever stop you being nosey?)

I have posted a pastoral letter and a copy of today's sermon to Trendleblog.

A Record?

Trendlewood is a relatively small church. There were just over sixty of us this morning including many visitors, although some regulars were away.

It was an act of worship led by our young people, the first in a series of six all-age services for the summer. They did brilliantly but it meant that I was simply a member of the congregation apart from popping up to do some notices at the end.

Our curate, on maternity leave, joined us with her son. A newly ordained deacon from another church joined us to 'put his face round the door' and say hello. The vicar from the parish next door, between posts, joined us with his family. There were two ordinands in training in the congregation and a third almost on the road to that.

Seven people, at various stages of ministry leadership, all there doing nothing but joining in while young people led us. How cool is that?

Seeing the Good

Things have changed. Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

So I've been doing this job for twenty-five years. For those who care I started at St Jude's Mapperley, Nottingham and was curate there from 1984 - 1988. Three other couples, not regular church-goers, who we met at the school door the day our kids started, are still friends and, get this, are all still married to the same person. We've done about 130 years between us. I did an 8.00 a.m. Book of Common Prayer communion every Sunday for four years. Several members of the youth group are now in full-time Christian ministry despite the youth group meeting twelve hours after the 8.00 a.m. communion every Sunday. Ian, now a retired archdeacon, taught me the basics and did it well. Mrs Mustard began a career in retail by earning a small amount in a shop, part-time, when she wasn't being a nice Mummy.

Then I moved to Chester-le-Street in County Durham and was one of the ones who refused to sign the petition against the new cricket ground. I was hated for that. The first clergy colleague who ever understood me deeply got more hours out of me in the next five years than anyone ever had before or has since. When things get a bit busy these days I remember Chester-le-Street and turn the energy dial up to eleven. Thanks Geoff. He asked me if there was anything I hadn't done in ministry that I'd like to have a go at. When I said 'writing' he gave me time to do it. It's his fault, this. Several members of the youth group are now in full-time Christian ministry. We ran a restaurant in an old butchers for three weeks as part of the Christmas Cracker project.

In 1992 I was invited to apply for a youth ministry job at the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS) which I was eventually appointed to after the worst interview of my life. Thanks Phil. 'I wanted to see how you'd react to aggressive questioning.' I spent two years as a trainer-editor for the Church Youth Fellowships Association (CYFA) which at the time was the sponsor of the largest number of church youth groups in the Church of England. Then I was appointed Head of that organisation when Phil left. I remember early starts, great training colleagues with brilliant ideas, lively editorial meetings and immense creativity. A series of books to teach the Bible to teenagers grew to 20 titles and I had a lot to do with writing, editing or commissioning the last 18. I made a point of working with young, unpublished authors if I could, including the guy who has now become the Archbishop of York's communications officer.

Then it all went wrong. Several re-organisations and refocuses, mergings of departments, lowerings of budgets and I looked around and I was alone, training youth leaders and writing resources without a team around me. I resolved to leave but was persuaded to stay and be a bit of history in an organisation that was losing its identity rapidly. I did three more years. I suffered a debilitating back injury playing football, which wouldn't get better and seemed stress-related. I had a couple of adrenalin-rush attacks and a doctor told me to 'sort my life out.' I look back with sadness at that time. CYFA has all but vanished but no-one has ever offered to hold a thanksgiving service for its work and put it to sleep properly. Around the country churches still have CYFA groups (my own does) but it doesn't mean anything apart from a name. I hope, one day, to remedy that using the Godstuff brand.

I left on the tenth anniversary of my appointment on 30/9/02 and went to work at my local church, St Paul's Leamington, part-time. I got rid of my car and walked everywhere. I wrote part-time for a living and surprised myself by earning £8,000 a year at this, for four years, on two days a week. My first book was published to little acclaim but I'm still proud of writing it. Being part of a local community and doing a few ministry jobs was great and I learned to use Alpha as a ministry tool, co-set-up Cafe Create and sponsored an ordinand for the first time. Thanks Jonathan. Your theological conservatism does my head in (you're too smart not to be liberal) but your support fixed my life and I appreciate that.

Mrs M, freed from the task of being Mummy, gradually started to shoot up (shouldn't stop the sentence there) the retail career ladder and became full-time sales, senior sales, deputy manager, manager and regional manager in about eight years. The boys left home, several times, eventually for ever.

Four years on I felt ready to dip my toe back in the water and this triple (three part-jobs) Nailsea challenge was thrown me, a place where the previous post-holder at Trendlewood Church had died tragically after nine months in the job and the guy before that had left after an inappropriate relationship. Three years on and things first stabilised, then a colleague left and the vacancy was sixteen months, a bit longer than we expected and just this last week a new normal has emerged of a full team and some space to do what I came here to do. I am already talking to three ordinands about future ministries. There are plenty of things that looked good enough for the first three years but in the light of a slight increase in temperature and a small growth in numbers now look inadequate and need fixing. We can do better with our worship life, our discipleship, our outreach and we may need to find another building (we meet in a school, but got close to feeling full last Sunday). Our management committee is dysfunctional and I am not sure why. I blame the Chair who, sadly, is me.

But whilst own-trumpet-blowing is not one of my priorities someone said this to me yesterday in an email that they didn't have to send:

'During your 3 years with us, I believe that you have brought a fresh look to the Trendlewood services. I think that Trendlewood now provides a distinctive set of services that are not matched by other churches in Nailsea. I like the informal, educational nature - particularly the attempts to put the Bible into the context of events at the time. I find this helpful when trying to understand the text.

'I find Trendlewood to be a friendly and encouraging environment to learn about God.'

And a small tear crept out. That is probably the nicest thing anyone has said to me in twenty five years. Why? Because it was out of the blue, heart-felt and not from someone who puts pen to paper to say nice things every week. Encouragers are good but if it is something they do all the time you can't judge its meaning or value.

The other bit of my work here is a bit of blank canvas to do with the future of Fresh Expressions in Nailsea. Things have been tried but haven't gone that well. My work in other churches has been less straightforward. I am tired and about to take a break.

Mrs M's 'region' became half her company and I last spoke to her on Monday night although we still live together. She knows what she means to me. As a new set of Alpha course members met her recently I could hear them thinking, 'How did he do so well for himself?' I agree with them. It is a puzzling question.

Thanks to Bob for being a friend, spiritual mentor and guide and the daftest genius I have ever met. Thanks to Richard for managerial advice, support and great lunches in the Forest of Dean whilst telling me straight how I had got it wrong. Thanks to everyone who has asked difficult questions, said something when they disagreed and pointed out how things could improve round here.

What's the big theme? There are two. One is developing other people. Maybe born out of laziness but that can work. 'How can I get someone else to do this?' It's a great ministry question? The other is Jesus, the likeness of the invisible God. If you want to know what God is like look at Jesus, point people to Jesus show them Jesus and be Jesus to them if you can. Thirdly (I lied about there being two) improve the church coffee. Always improve the coffee. How difficult it proves to be to improve the coffee will be a marker for how difficult it will be to change the church.

Sorry this was a bit self-indulgent but I needed to take stock and you helped me.

Things have changed. Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

Sod's Law

Just when you think things can't get any worse. OK nobody died. But yesterday we managed the sort of morning meeting where we crammed all our possible errors into one day.

I arrived my usual 30 minutes before the start to join a queue of cars waiting to get into the locked car-park. Of all the people to miss the clock's going forward - the school caretakers.

This meant we didn't have time to set up a PA for the band who were one singer down already and so the keyboard was replaced by the school's out-of-tune piano.

Between home and the school I was told the new songs' lyrics and some new verses and responses had been lost from the laptop.

The coffee urn decided that its tap was going to refuse to co-operate.

The leader of one of the children's groups was unwell.

But hey. We had no newcomers. Fantastic. It's all about the next game not the last one.

SWOT

I had a guest for breakfast yesterday and then went out for lunch and supper. Eating with people is excellent pastorally but also a good use of time because everyone gotta eat. Many of the families I work with have busy weekday schedules so I can't visit until they have got back from work, taken the kids to whatever club or class it is this week and then they want to sit down and eat so I just crash the meal. It is amazing how my use of time has altered since my own children turned into blokes.

So yesterday I had breakfast with someone I meet monthly for a bit of non-managerial supervision and mentoring. I had lunch with a couple of retired couples from the church. I had supper with a couple after they had finished their busy day and put the children to bed.

It was a nice day and a chance to have a lot of proactive rather than reactive conversations so felt like progress. I ended it with two new deputy wardens (the posh name we give to sidespeople round here, don't know why) and some timetabled help with all-age services over the coming year.

As I was about to leave I was asked this question, 'What is your SWOT analysis of the church?' The person I was speaking to does SWOT analyses of things such as farming, the city of Bristol (under-achieving apparently) and flood defences so is used to fairly high-power responses.

I won't trouble you with my answer. It would probably be different this morning anyway and you can do the exercise yourself as long as you know that SWOT stands for:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

Interesting thing is that I couldn't think of any particular threats. We have strengths, weaknesses and many opportunities but no things or people who are our enemies. Isn't that a good position to be in?

Counting

Yeah we know, we know, size isn't anything let alone everything but including all the family hangers on who'd come back to Trendlewood to sponge meals off parents our record-breaking congregation of the year of 93 last Sunday was exceeded again today and we broke the ton barrier. Thanks to the 102 people for their participation, heckling and fine company and here's to many more tons in the future.

Happy Christmas to all of our patrons from the staff here at Mustard Seed Shavings. Have a great rest of the day. Please continue to patronise us in 2008.

Trust

Wonderful occasional joy and mirth is caused by misprints or misalignment of projector and screen. Today a sudden alteration to the aspect ratio meant we lost the left hand letter of every word in our liturgy. There was much to enjoy but above all else there was this, a new Yorkshire prayer of humble access:

e do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord
rusting in our own righteousness

Indeed we don't. As my old school song used to say, 'Die of service not of rust.'

Still Seeking a Normal Sunday

I look after a small church that meets in a school. It used to be called Trendlewood Church Plant as it was planted by Holy Trinity, Nailsea to be a Christian presence in a part of town one and a half miles from the Holy Trinity building. We've dropped the word 'plant.' I'm not going there today. I'm not going there even though I am involved in four church services today. It will be my third Sunday 'missing' in a row.

Two weeks ago I was involved in a pulpit swap with the minister of Tickenham, something which happens in our Local Ministry group once a year. Last week I was on holiday at the end of our pearl wedding anniversary week away and we spent Sunday Morning having brunch at Bordeaux Quay in Bristol (highly commended).

Today, here's the plan:

9.00 Preside at Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion at Holy Trinity
10.30 Preach at Southfield Road Evangelical Church (a long-standing invitation)
3.08 Rehearsal of the service for the new planted congregation which will meet at Kingshill School for the first time on October 14th
6.30 Preach at Christ Church (oh, and late news, lead intercessions too)

Not Really Like Church At All

Just imagine. You arrive at church. It is not a conventional church building but a school. You are shown into a classroom while your children are shown into the hall (older ones) or a crèche.

In the classroom you are welcomed and led through a short visual liturgy using PowerPoint slides and music from an MP3 player. There is a chance to praise, confess and meditate.

After half an hour you are welcomed into the hall by the children who are, under supervision, serving you coffee and cakes in a café style whilst engaging you in conversation.

After fifteen minutes the children, leaving a skeleton staff to serve refills, leave to play games and you enter into a Bible study activity around the tables discussing the next passage in the series on Acts you are studying. You have the option, at any time, of returning to one of the classrooms to pray, either alone or in groups.

This 'service' ends with notices and thanks after 75 minutes.

Well if you've finished imagining let me tell you that this was reality for the 63 of us at Trendlewood today and it was a delight. And the biggest joy of all is that this was not the imposition of some maverick leader trying to change the behaviour of a community. This service arose out of desire and practicality. This was what the community wanted to do today. Even those who prefer worship to be different, engaged fully, as far as I could tell.

Getting there.

Pay it Forward

If any of you haven't seen the film with this title, starring Haley Joel Osment shortly after his Sixth Sense success, then the premise is that if someone does something good to you then you should do something good for someone else. Pay it forward. The movie begins with a guy giving another guy a car for no reason. It's a bit of a turkey otherwise, murdered by the Hollywood inability to avoid one of the two obvious endings.

Five years ago our friends the Jees let us use their house and garden for our Silver wedding anniversary party. They had a big enough house and we didn't. They are also the sort of people you can ask to borrow a house off.

So it was nice, yesterday, to lend our house and garden to some new friends from church to host a family party following a baptism. It was a lovely happy day upon which the sun (and the Son) shone.

On Saturday we left the house for a short while and when we came back it was beautifully reorganised and fridges were full of nice food and drinks. We went out again in the evening and on our return the garden contained a gazebo.

We almost wanted to try leaving again to see if the driveway got weeded.

Now, who else do we owe who doesn't need paying back?

Trendleblog

Trendlewood Church now has a blog. Hopefully it will enable us all at this end of the Nailsea God-worshipping commuity to have a good, continuing and open discussion about, well, everything. No idea how this will work out, who it will upset or what the fruit will be but the only way to find out is to do it so it's done.

Why not pop in and say hi?

Laziness

There was a gale yesterday. You knew that. On a brief walk round the block I was actually lifted off the ground by a gust for the first time in my life. Not catastrophically but enough for me to register that it was a bit windy. A fence panel laid down its life in the draught.

Thursday is bin day here in Trendlewood. We take our bin-liners and place them on the edge of our land. It is also green waste day and the Council have agreed to take Christmas trees in January.

You're way ahead aren't you? Most of Trendlewood goes to work at 8.30 a.m. so leaves the rubbish out all day (it's collected about 2pm usually). Some put their waste out the night before so that the cats can check it out and rip the bags before dawn. Popping out to weigh down my rubbish first thing I was greeted by a trasher-tape welcome. The air was stiff with juice cartons, newspapers, pine needles and worse.

Yesterday's Trendlewood waste was last seen heading for the coast. Weston-super-mare, we apologise. We are too stupid round here to imagine the consequences of placing cardboard on the lawn in a wind that is strong enough to kill people.

Taste and See

This post caused a very minor flurry of quite appropriate correspondence a couple of weeks back. Last night I mentioned the fact that although 'Taste and See' appeared on the church notice sheet as happening every Monday night at 9.30 p.m. in the Old Farmhouse (a pub) nobody would have the first idea what it was. The name will be changing, we agreed.

I offered Trendlewood Men's Night as an Aunt Sally but it was rightly pointed out that some of the men (well one last night) weren't really Trendlewood men (sound like a sort of missing link like Piltdown Man).

Trendlewood men and some others meet in the pub for a drink all welcome hasn't really got that snap a pithy title needs (can pith snap?) so we decided that 'Men in Pub' sort of worked and the venue would give a big clue as to the locale it was serving. So, from January 8th (after Trendlewood Committee) we will be Men in Pub.

Topics for discussion need suggesting soon or we will have to listen to Ed's repertoire of 30 year old jokes again. It's a mighty repertoire and one day he may tell one I haven't heard. Morning Ed.

By the way it's not all beer. Wine drinkers and abstainers welcome. The Sussex bitter is very good though.