Category: Church

  • Confusing the issue

    Today I had another cross-country jaunt to check out another possible vacant charge. My primary purpose was to ‘compare and contrast’ with the one that it currently bubbling away as a distinct possibility. I had various reasons for not being too interested, but its ‘c&c’ role made it a potentially useful visit. Aaaargghhh!!! Now it’s…

  • Joining in rather than joining up

    Stewart’s recent running training (and fundraising success) has led him to think about running with others from time to time. It got me thinking about how we might use the ‘Park Life’ concept within the mission of the church. We are often quick to create events where we expect people to turn up. Whether that…

  • Sensing the spark (or not)

    As of the 1st of September I have been allowed to begin applying to vacant charges. Of course I had being doing some preparatory work and had a not so short list of likely places. I confess it was a somewhat arbitrary collection, based primarily on my ability to access their parish profile from a…

  • Milestone? Hurdle? Whatever!

    The last one has been passed/jumped/got through. (Apart from the minor matter of actually finding a charge that is.) I’ve never taken the view that the path to ministry is a series of hoops to jump through or boxes to be ticked. It is, rightly, a formation process. But it is, nevertheless, marked with critical…

  • Israel Diary – Day 6, Mount of Olives

    One thing I hadn’t really anticipated about Jerusalem was just how ‘compact’ it is. I just hadn’t really thought about how close together many of the known sites actually are. Maybe it’s the result of living in a medium-sized town or having lived in a city for a number of years, but I’m used to…

  • Israel Diary – Day 6, Haram Esh-Sharif

    We were especially privileged on our trip to have with us some excellent guides and thanks to the scholarly contacts of one of them we had an invitation to visit the mosques which now sit atop the Temple mount in the old town in Jerusalem. The most famous is perhaps the Dome on the Rock…

  • Israel Diary – Day 5 Around Galilee

    Our long roundabout route to get to Tiberias did have the bonus of a lovely dinner and a comfortable night in the Scots Hotel. The hotel is not without its own controversy within the Church of Scotland. It is, unashamedly, up-market and represents a very significant investment on the part of the CofS. There are…

  • Israel Diary – Day 1, Part 2

    After an afternoon catching up on some rest, a smaller, ‘intrepid’ group set out to walk down to the City of David and, from there, walk back up to the Old Town, through the Dung Gate, meet the rest of the group and then find a vantage point to view the gathering at the Western…

  • Israel Diary – First (proper) Day

    We arrived in Jerusalem at around 4.30 this morning and, after an all too brief catnap, were up and breakfasted at 8.oo am. I think it’s fair to say the the group looked tired, but all weariness was soon forgotten as we set off for a morning exploring the Old Town of Jerusalem within the…

  • Israel Diary – T minus One

    The title should, arguably, be T-2 given that we won’t actually be arriving in Israel until very early on Friday morning, but we do set off tomorrow and that’s what counts. So T-1 it is. I was looking up the places we’ll be staying and they have guest wi-fi, so the laptop will be coming…