Where's the invasion?

January is coming and going with blurry speed.

Some of my colleagues in the Church of Scotland asked the above question when I said that we were installing canons on the Isle of Cumbrae in the Clyde this weekend.

The Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Cumbrae, was packed for the occasion.  Given it is the smallest cathedral in the UK (maybe even wider) this is not TOO hard, but a wonderful occasion nonetheless. Goforchris caught the moment the bishop popped me into the dean's stall from her choir stall across the chancel. (photo from her Flickr photostream)

My colleague Nicki McNelly, Provost of Oban Cathedral, was also installed as a canon.  Bishop Kevin did the deeds, Bishop Idris, lately Primus and of Glasgow and Galloway preached. Here are Nicki and I (photo thanks to Provost Kelvin Holdsworth), smiling away:

Question: do things like this matter? A cathedral chapter, robing canons in copes, processing in and out of the place.  Does it make any difference?

Of course it does.  Many of the congregations of Cowal and Bute came for the day, and spent time in fellowship with each other, members & friends of the cathedral and other visitors.  Our diocese is small, our charges are relatively few.  It would be all too easy to feel sorry for ourselves and feel that we were without a future.

But on a day like Saturday Argyll and The Isles is as much a diocese as any English, American, Nigerian or any other part of an Anglican Province.  We install canons in our cathedrals and grasp the need for mission, purpose and direction.  We have a cathedral chapter and a wider college of clergy that spends time together, that worships, prays and works together.  We look for the signs of God's work in our context and try draw others into that relationship of love and grace.

Self confidence in a church is not to do with money, or numbers, or political power or any of these things.  It is living in a tradition that feeds, with a history that roots us, and a desire to proclaim the gospel again and again, as long as we have breath.

So put those copes on, light those candles, and let's get stuck in!

Matters decanal...

It was announced this week that their is a new Dean of the diocese of Argyll and The Isles: me!

This is a great honour and a great challenge too!  In Scotland a Dean is like an English archdeacon - except you keep on working as a parish priest!

There is lots to do, much help that I hope to be able to bring to the bishop and the diocese - but always trying to be aware that ministry is HARD WORK - and it was hard work 'just' being the priest for my churches in Cowal and Bute.

So, if it's what you do, please pray for me, and the family, and the diocese (they probably need them the most!)

Technology meets wilderness...

I'm not sure a narrowboat moored in the centre of Kirkintilloch qualifies as a 'wilderness' location but there are certain parallels.  Today is my post Easter Sunday off - a month or so after Easter Day - and I'm sorting stuff out.  The deck scrubbing and red-oxiding of rust spots on NB Dalriada is waiting while I sort out my technology.

As an Episcopal priest with a massive 'canonical area' (denominational parish) I spend a lot of time out and about, often in breathtakingly beautiful locations, often miles from anywhere.  I also spend increasing times on the island where my house is not.  Mary also runs her holiday business from these places.  And a narrowboat moored in Kirkintilloch and many other points on the canals.  Selling holiday lets, keeping in touch with colleagues in Scotland and elsewhere, and also an increasing amount of pastoral work, demands connectivity and, for me, the use of Skype and now also Google+ hangout videoconferencing.  But all that needs connection and a place.

Remaining connected is important.  I am not a cutting edge technology person - I use it when it's useful and ignore it when it's not.  But this week my rather ancient Nokia's screen finally reached the point of unreadability due to scratches - it was a keypad phone, 3G but only just.  This phone has been the nerve centre for webmail, map browsing, Google etc. for the two years ministry/Spinnaker View running in Scotland.

So this morning, I am sorting some of this out.  A little bit of shouting at our 3G provider produced some improved contracts for the kids' phones, and a conciliatory Android smartphone, which I have (reluctantly) switched to.  The pain of learning a titchy touch-screen's keypad will pass, and I am far too tight to buy a tablet.

And now I have the warm glow of things coming together.  A modest 'add-on' on my 3G contract allows the new smartphone to be a wireless hotspot (and my Aberdonian roots like a mere one month rolling contract!).  The resurrected netbook (new motherboard from ebay), D2's iPod touch, all the data hungry devices, all of this is suddenly connected to broadband while we are tied up in the marina! Skype and videoconferencing (within data reason) suddenly beckon wherever 3G signal is to be found.

Which still raises issues with wilderness.  The old definition of wilderness (used in Duke of Edin award hiking planning etc.) was to do with distance from habitation.  The new definition feels like distance from suitable electromagnetic comms bandwidth.  And we still have some battles to be fought there in the hinterlands of Argyll and Bute.

But let me bask a little in the glow of satisfaction as I blog via my new portable wifi hotspot.  The frontier of my personal EM wilderness has been pushed back a little, here in wild Kirkintilloch! 

The trouble with blogging about Argyll and The Isles diocesan synod 2012

My third attempt to blog about last week - I must be tired, to be getting so much operator error!

I have just returned from three days in Oban, the centre of our diocese, at the diocesan synod and associated events. Impressions and reflections?

The pre-synod day (which hopefully will have some photos arriving shortly) was a gathering to share the year's worth of 'Building the Vision' - a grass-roots focused initiative to get congregations focused on their vision and mission. People brought models and symbols and presentations of what they had been up to. The excitement of a way forward was there, as well as a creditable degree of the pain and anxiety that being small communities widely dispersed over a massive wilderness can bring. The energy and buzz of this meeting was energising and exciting! The next year, tagged 'Equipping for the Vision,' was opened out in an early form - with some challenges ahead on remaining with the grass roots - watch this space!

The synod eucharist (with a Chrism mass in Lent, an artefact of the difficulty of getting everybody together at the same time) followed. Not a bad occasion, in St John's cathedral, Oban. The bishop cracked his staff ferrule on the stone floor to declare proceedings open. I found a few drips to sit under for some of the time, but the singing was lusty and enthusiastic and we seemed to have lots of folk. I remembered to remove my sporran before I donned my cassock-alb - that would NOT look seemly otherwise!

Drinks, dinner, fiddling and to bed!

Synod itself: one day, from 9.30 to 3.30 or so. The usual mix of dry business and areas of lively discussion. Finances looking up, a new constitution, some gentle elections and trying to focus on canons. All the usual stuff. Then the 'indaba' discussion on the Anglican Covenant, as we had been charged to do by General Synod. No outcomes, just the range of views. At my table of six, four didn't much like the covenant, one thought it was a good idea to bring order and a process and one was about to leave the SEC because of the extremes of imbalanced liberalism. Quite an interesting microcosm of Anglicanism. The synod then ended gently - no more ferrule cracks, just the grace. As a stranger in a strange land with nowhere to go, I went and read a book!

The following day (imaginatively titled the 'post synod day') was for clergy. There were about 16 of us, I guess, including the facilitators. The agenda was back to 'Equipping for the Vision' - this time from the ordained leaders' perspective. We had an interesting debate about the role of education in church growth - and it was noticeable that the vast majority of the clerical collars about the room had been on for about thirty years. Things have changed a lot in those years, in society and in the church. And we were sent away to identify one 'training need' for ourselves. My personal take: this is such a subtle and involved process and competency frameworks and personal development plans such an alien concept to the church - it will take a long time to evolve to the point where this is the norm.

Then back on the road and home - spaced out with the whirl of concepts, socialising and business. A good day - but a year's worth of interactions and business in 52 hours!

...and the bishop's staff ferrule crashed on the stone floor of the cathedral!

I have just returned from three days in Oban, the centre of our diocese, at the diocesan synod and associated events. Impressions and reflections?

Lively discussion, prayerful reflection.

A major change in the flavour and environment.

A sense of purpose and direction in where we are going.

Everybody having a chance to share their points of view!

And there is another!

Back safely from my trip to Stornoway, a trip to see the new priest in charge licensed to St Peter's and St Moluag's (Eoropaidh). It was my first time on Lewis (in fact my first time on any of the Western Isles) and a very special occasion. I now have another full-time colleague in the diocese!

Shona Boardman is the fourth of the active stipendiary clergy (the provost is still in post, but remains rather ill - and there's a bishop too!) for the Scottish Episcopalian Diocese of Argyll and The Isles. This diocese, which goes from Stornoway to Arran and from Glencoe to Barra (and includes this little corner of Cowal & Bute) is a massive geographical area.

The small numbers of paid clergy in the diocese are both a symptom of the challenges that are faced, and also, I believe, an important part of facing these challenges. Ministry in Argyll and The Isles cannot depend on a small number of 'professional' church-people. Each of the small communities that makes up the diocese (and I think there are 32 churches/places listed on the diocesan website) requires a local leader to draw the community together, to give them direction, to help them worship and to draw others in. This local leader may be lay or ordained, it may be one person or several. But in a dispersed, massively separated place like this, us stipendiary mortals cannot and should not try to be in all these places, keeping some sort of show on the road.

The SEC has done much work on this type of ministry, and I love the echoes of the early church, sowing new communities as the gospel spread. It also has resonance with Donovan's 'Christianity Rediscovered' - where communities grow and have integrity in their local context.

All very exciting: lots of hard work - but it's great to have welcomed Shona into the middle of it all!

What do clergy do on their day off?

Hang gliding? Reading non-orthodox theology books? Lying in a sensory deprivation tank whilst whale-song is played through a set of noise cancelling earphones?

All sorts I suppose.

Today I took the guts out of eldest daughter's netbook, tried my best to solder the cracked power connection (I give a few days before it needs doing again - my soldering iron is getting on a bit, as am I) and checked the run of the screen feed cable for snags and cracks. It now seems to be working.

So what do clergy do on their day off? The same sorts of things that ordinary people do on their days off. Because we are just as ordinary as everyone.

Panorama

The view from a 20 minute walk up the hill - the Clyde Approaches past Cloch Point, looking up to Kilcreggan, Gourock and the Clyde itself.

A little minehunter is pootling down the river, dodging between the ferries and sailing boats.

...and the midges have started to go back to sleep for the autumn!

Priestly rest...

After a busy day of peripatetic priestliness...

Spring!

It has been quite a distraction over the past few weeks, all the busyness, tweeting, buying a flat - all rather a lot. And while it was happening - spring arrived! The rhododendron in front of the rectory in Dunoon has burst into magenta bloom (briefly confused by some snow and ice) but now a spectacular display of vibrant colour (even matching the Lenten violet of the vestments). The little bunches of daffodils have emerged from the turf and and started to show their heads. The birdsong is so rich that you can almost feel it as you step outside the house. A few yards away, the church is even starting to dry out a little after the winter - the long weeks and months of chasing leaks and pushing contractors and trying to get things stable seem easier as it gets lighter and brighter. The late spring project? To start and sort the peeling paintwork inside the chancel - in a way that will last and make fabric sense. We have a plan, we have funding, we will (hopefully) soon have the necessary permissions. Over the Kyles, there is a similar sense of spring. The visitors have started to appear, and there is a shiny new board to greet them and tell them that we are here. Quotes are flowing in to solve the various problems around the buildings, people are in good spirits! I suppose the only thing to be done is to change the picture on this blog from a snowy one to a spring-like one!

Synod 2011 for Argyll & The Isles

Just returned from my first diocesan synod in Argyll and The Isles. My impressions?

As a new arrival in the diocese, I tried to approach with no strong expectations one way or another. The new bishop, only a few weeks into his episcopate, was always going to bring a fascinating twist to the sense of the synod, but as for the rest of us?

A pre-Synod day on building a vision was hard work, but creatively done. Did we hear any new hopes or fears? Probably not too many - the challenges we face as a widely distributed church in the 21st century are well known. The opportunities that ministry offers in a breath-takingly beautiful place, a thin place, a rooted place are wide and varied.

+Kevin managed to remember to constitute synod at the eucharist that evening, and the dining and dancing flowed on smoothly from there.

The business of synod was brisk - finance, the progression of canonical change, diocesan review of provincial initiatives. The financial story was improving very greatly (although, as at the local level, still a way to go!). Canonical change seemed largely uneventful and largely not relevant to this diocese: no licenced posts held by over seventy-year olds. The provincial gender audit was of interest: more women than men worship, a universal truth it seems. More men than women lead - a statistic that I believe time will even for the clerical side of the balance: less than 20 years of female priests, several hundred (in the modern era) of male!

A good debate on the rural report: there is tangible and relevant hope for ministry in the rural swathes of Scotland. But how to embrace this opportunity? We had plenty of tales of successful initiatives and positive encounters.

Elections, reports, all the usual business of a synod. But all done in good spirits and with a positive, optimistic sense.

The post-synod day - a clergy day - was very interesting too. The clergy do not have the answers on where the diocese will go, but are the ordained 'specialists' in some areas (oh, the debates one can have on that title!). The conclusions from this morning? There are opportunities for mission and growth, and we all need trained and formed to seize these opportunities. And we all need trained and formed to grow a vision that will lead us there.

Tired but feeling positive, we departed for our far flung yet beautiful corners of the world!

Bishop Kevin, Argyll and The Isles

Captions?

Today Dean Kevin Pearson was consecrated as the 10th modern (since 1847) Bishop of Argyll and The Isles. It was a day filled with much laughter, greeting of old friends, making of new friends (important for me, in only the beginning of the 9th month since my arrival as priest in this diocese) and the pomp and ceremony of a liturgical consecration and installation.

People dressed as abbots waved sticks about, bishops from here, there and everywhere waved their hands about. Incense wafted liberally. Elspeth (see above) smiled a lot. Processions processed and receptions received.

Was the Holy Spirit wrapped into it all? I believe so, very much so.

Exciting times ahead - in the short term another trip up to Oban tomorrow for Mary, kids and I for a diocesan eucharist-cum-'+Kevin's'-celebration-in-one-of-his-cathedrals. We can play 'spot-the-pot-hole' - first to one thousand wins the prize: to choose the make of the new tyres!

I may even wear my kilt - it is the Argyll and The Isles after all!

A new bishop for Argyll and The Isles

A very exciting day. I was celebrating the eucharist at St Paul's Rothesay as the college of bishops met at Cumbrae to elect a new bishop for our diocese. Once the eucharist was over, I checked my silenced mobile phone for new - several missed calls and texts were listed. The news:

The Very Rev'd Kevin Pearson, rector of St Michael and All Saints, Edinburgh, Dean od Edinburgh, Provincial Director of Ordinands - was named as the new bishop-elect.

I have never met Kevin, being relatively new to the SEC, but I have heard of him.

We will be praying for him and Elspeth in the weeks and months to come, along with the members of his church in Edinburgh. Change is always painful.

But we will be looking forward to a new chapter in our beautiful diocese on the western fringes of this land. It has been a strange time for me, arriving in a very small diocese without even a bishop. But you can easily get used to operating in isolation, which is not how churches work best and flourish. I wonder which way he will wish to take us...?

But I remain excited!

The news today