An interesting question I suppose given it has been a while since I posted anything, and I am not sure I can give a reason why other than a period blogging wise with Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones.
There have been lots of things going on and like most of my readers the usual busyness with working full time and being active in church matters does sometimes eat into the majority of any day.
I suppose it would also be true to say there has not been anything that has really made me feel like sitting down and writing something on here - nothing that has really mad me mad or sad.
The nearest I came to putting something was about the report that came to Synod about the future of the Presidency of the Methodist Conference but having had a fairly lengthy debate at our Synod I think even that didn't excite me enough to say something.
My Methodist readers will know that next week is the date for our on trial preachers to submit their work for marking so in the next two weeks I am expecting a fairly large parcel from Church House with a number of people's work to mark.
One interesting thing on marking was we had a visiting speaker at our Synod who told us she had just become a fully accredited Local Preacher and I had marked her section B work so was quite pleased to hear she had been successful.
Thanks to David and Gerry for prompting me to post something - I will try to do better in future.
Showing posts with label Methodist Conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Methodist Conference. Show all posts
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Monday, 15 February 2010
How connected are we? 4
How connected are we as a Connexion?
I suppose it would be reasonable to say that with this post we have reached the pinnacle of Methodism – The Connexion and by default the Conference.
I suspect that if I were to look further afield than my own circle of contacts I might find a very different picture but again my thoughts on this are based on what I see and hear in the local churches and chapels that I go into week by week, and what I know of my own fellowship.
It may be that if you went into any of our chapels with a survey giving a range of questions such as, What is the Connexion? Who is the current President of Conference? What does the Connexion do? What does the President do? You would get some interesting answers, you might even get no answers because I believe there would be people in our congregation who would not have a clue and don’t really want to have a clue. Of course it has to be said that there will be some (probably readers of the Methodist Recorder) who know all the answers or would certainly have a good go at them.
I am tempted to suggest that more of our members could identify the Archbishops of Canterbury or York with greater accuracy than they could the President and Vice President of Conference.
In some senses this is understandable because of the democratic way in which the system works – to become a member of conference for most of our grass roots members involves some degree of commitment – you have to be on Church Council, Circuit Meeting and District Synod and you have to attend lots of meetings each year (at least that is one view). In reality then out of a Synod of around 200 members we then elect a small number to go off to conference each year and it seems to me that you have to have been there a while for people to know who you are and therefore feel confident in voting for you. I know I was most unusual when I was elected as it was my first ever attendance at Synod, but I was fairly young and was unemployed at the time so I think that helped.
In a fairly sizeable district I would think it would be very unusual if many of our members knew those elected to go to conference on their behalf and equally unusual if the local members actually got any real feedback from conference except perhaps in the local church and circuit that the person belongs to.
In respect of conference and what is does I suspect for many of our members they see it as the source of much that is a nuisance to the ongoing work in our local fellowships – health and safety, safeguarding, fire policies, a new hymnbook, statements about this that and the other. I can sympathise with this view because it would seem that much of what we get from conference is this sort of stuff but very little concerned with the mission of the church and of course part of the reason is that much of the stuff is government inspired and we have to do it because of one piece of legislation or another.
It may even be that many of our members view conference and head office with the same sort of disdain and apathy that they view government and politicians.
I am writing this just after the President of Conference has made a speech to the Church of England Synod in which it appears he is saying Methodism may need to die to enable our collective mission to continue – I do not intend to comment on that as many more people have done elsewhere – however what I will say is that at the end of the service I led yesterday someone asked me what I thought of David Gamble’s speech and two people standing nearby said ‘who is he?’ I do think this is quite sad really!
So how connected are we? If I am honest I would have to say we do not seem to be connected very well at any level with the exception of those who are really committed to our cause and will be found on committees, church councils, circuit meetings, district synod and maybe even conference – but of course they are few and often the same faces will pop up at every level.
Unfortunately I cannot offer any answers to how we might connect better but hope that we might start to do so.
I suppose it would be reasonable to say that with this post we have reached the pinnacle of Methodism – The Connexion and by default the Conference.
I suspect that if I were to look further afield than my own circle of contacts I might find a very different picture but again my thoughts on this are based on what I see and hear in the local churches and chapels that I go into week by week, and what I know of my own fellowship.
It may be that if you went into any of our chapels with a survey giving a range of questions such as, What is the Connexion? Who is the current President of Conference? What does the Connexion do? What does the President do? You would get some interesting answers, you might even get no answers because I believe there would be people in our congregation who would not have a clue and don’t really want to have a clue. Of course it has to be said that there will be some (probably readers of the Methodist Recorder) who know all the answers or would certainly have a good go at them.
I am tempted to suggest that more of our members could identify the Archbishops of Canterbury or York with greater accuracy than they could the President and Vice President of Conference.
In some senses this is understandable because of the democratic way in which the system works – to become a member of conference for most of our grass roots members involves some degree of commitment – you have to be on Church Council, Circuit Meeting and District Synod and you have to attend lots of meetings each year (at least that is one view). In reality then out of a Synod of around 200 members we then elect a small number to go off to conference each year and it seems to me that you have to have been there a while for people to know who you are and therefore feel confident in voting for you. I know I was most unusual when I was elected as it was my first ever attendance at Synod, but I was fairly young and was unemployed at the time so I think that helped.
In a fairly sizeable district I would think it would be very unusual if many of our members knew those elected to go to conference on their behalf and equally unusual if the local members actually got any real feedback from conference except perhaps in the local church and circuit that the person belongs to.
In respect of conference and what is does I suspect for many of our members they see it as the source of much that is a nuisance to the ongoing work in our local fellowships – health and safety, safeguarding, fire policies, a new hymnbook, statements about this that and the other. I can sympathise with this view because it would seem that much of what we get from conference is this sort of stuff but very little concerned with the mission of the church and of course part of the reason is that much of the stuff is government inspired and we have to do it because of one piece of legislation or another.
It may even be that many of our members view conference and head office with the same sort of disdain and apathy that they view government and politicians.
I am writing this just after the President of Conference has made a speech to the Church of England Synod in which it appears he is saying Methodism may need to die to enable our collective mission to continue – I do not intend to comment on that as many more people have done elsewhere – however what I will say is that at the end of the service I led yesterday someone asked me what I thought of David Gamble’s speech and two people standing nearby said ‘who is he?’ I do think this is quite sad really!
So how connected are we? If I am honest I would have to say we do not seem to be connected very well at any level with the exception of those who are really committed to our cause and will be found on committees, church councils, circuit meetings, district synod and maybe even conference – but of course they are few and often the same faces will pop up at every level.
Unfortunately I cannot offer any answers to how we might connect better but hope that we might start to do so.
Monday, 8 February 2010
How connected are we? 3
How connected are we as a District?
Not sure if anyone was waiting for part three of this series looking at how connected we are but here it is! In this one again I will be looking at how connected we are to the district from my perspective. I do realise that the experience of readers may be different but I share this as my view.
I have recently started attending Synod after a 26 year gap so I have had two very different experiences. My early visit to Synod in the early 80’s led to me going to Conference in Plymouth so was in some senses a meteoric rise to fame as they say. As I remember it Synod back then was very much a business meeting and very formal in the way that things were done and CPD was always quite obvious sitting in the front of the Chairman (proper title for this back then). I was almost certainly the youngest person there and as I looked round I saw what appeared to me at the time as a fairly exclusive club and while there was some interaction between people I got the feel that they were people who knew one another quite well. As a newcomer I found it very difficult because I knew no one apart from the people I had gone with from my home circuit.
Our Synod is different in the way it works now – while there is business we also have workshops and special speakers come along and I find this quite interesting. As the new boy I don’t feel much different to when I went years ago – I always seem to have to make the effort to engage people in conversation and still feel that there is a degree of an exclusive club about it.
I am certain that there are some people who have been at Synod ever since I last went in the early 80’s and I know that one of the ladies in our circuit has apparently been going for thirty years. In our circuit meeting when we look at selecting representatives to Synod most people duck or look at the floor just in case they get chosen. It often seems that even the people who go automatically would rather not.
I suspect that many of the points about circuit events are even more applicable to District Events – a number of our District Meetings are held at a church that is fairly central to the district but attendance will still be quite poor.
I am aware that many of the people in our churches are very committed to what they do, but it seems unfortunate that they often end up going to circuit meetings and then to Synod.
I don’t have any answers for most of these points but it may be a good idea to apply the six year rule to Synod to enable some new blood to be involved – I know in our circuit meeting there was always one person who volunteered as soon as the Chair of the meeting asked if anyone was interested in going. I think other people were then able to stand back because we had a willing volunteer.
One of the other issues with the system at present is the lack of feedback to the local churches –although we do have a session in our circuit meeting I am not sure that then goes back to the churches. I wonder how many of our folk could tell you the name of the Chair of our district or who the secretary is or even the treasurer but then I suspect they would not be able to tell you the name of the circuit officers either.
Next time a look at Conference and Connexional Offices.
Not sure if anyone was waiting for part three of this series looking at how connected we are but here it is! In this one again I will be looking at how connected we are to the district from my perspective. I do realise that the experience of readers may be different but I share this as my view.
I have recently started attending Synod after a 26 year gap so I have had two very different experiences. My early visit to Synod in the early 80’s led to me going to Conference in Plymouth so was in some senses a meteoric rise to fame as they say. As I remember it Synod back then was very much a business meeting and very formal in the way that things were done and CPD was always quite obvious sitting in the front of the Chairman (proper title for this back then). I was almost certainly the youngest person there and as I looked round I saw what appeared to me at the time as a fairly exclusive club and while there was some interaction between people I got the feel that they were people who knew one another quite well. As a newcomer I found it very difficult because I knew no one apart from the people I had gone with from my home circuit.
Our Synod is different in the way it works now – while there is business we also have workshops and special speakers come along and I find this quite interesting. As the new boy I don’t feel much different to when I went years ago – I always seem to have to make the effort to engage people in conversation and still feel that there is a degree of an exclusive club about it.
I am certain that there are some people who have been at Synod ever since I last went in the early 80’s and I know that one of the ladies in our circuit has apparently been going for thirty years. In our circuit meeting when we look at selecting representatives to Synod most people duck or look at the floor just in case they get chosen. It often seems that even the people who go automatically would rather not.
I suspect that many of the points about circuit events are even more applicable to District Events – a number of our District Meetings are held at a church that is fairly central to the district but attendance will still be quite poor.
I am aware that many of the people in our churches are very committed to what they do, but it seems unfortunate that they often end up going to circuit meetings and then to Synod.
I don’t have any answers for most of these points but it may be a good idea to apply the six year rule to Synod to enable some new blood to be involved – I know in our circuit meeting there was always one person who volunteered as soon as the Chair of the meeting asked if anyone was interested in going. I think other people were then able to stand back because we had a willing volunteer.
One of the other issues with the system at present is the lack of feedback to the local churches –although we do have a session in our circuit meeting I am not sure that then goes back to the churches. I wonder how many of our folk could tell you the name of the Chair of our district or who the secretary is or even the treasurer but then I suspect they would not be able to tell you the name of the circuit officers either.
Next time a look at Conference and Connexional Offices.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Lost Generations!
Methodist Preacher has another challenging post on his blog and it made me think of my first foray into Methodism in the early 1980's. I cam in through the witness of a young lad who kept inviting me to go and hear a gospel rock band called Blazing Apostles. I eventually went along and then accepted a further invitation to go to the youth group at his church. This youth group had about 60 young people who were very much into contemporary worship and interested in the charismatic side of the church. Most of them had read 'Nine O'clock in the Morning' by Denis Bennett which was an incredible story of his awakening to the working of the Holy Spirit. In one meeting there was a message in tongues but before there could be an interpretation the visiting minister who I suppose either did not understand what had gone on or didn't want to rushed on to the next thing on the programme and the moment was lost. One of the girls from the youth group was almost physically sick because she said she really felt that she had the interpretation.
Going on from this point I attended synod and on my first visit to it got elected to go to conference in 1982 - at the time I was out of work and at some points in the week I really fumed as people in very expensive suits with posh accents pontificated on the topic of unemployment and I have to say I doubt if any of them had ever been without a job or struggled to make ends meet, or if they had it had been a long time away. I did at one point say to the minister I sat with for most of the week that I was incensed by these people - he suggested I should go to the podium and say something but of course as someone in their mid twenties attending such a huge event I did not have the courage to do so. If I were attending now I would have no hesitation but then I looked at all these posh people who appeared far superior to an ordinary working class Black Country lad and bottled out.
Having had this experience I can understand much of what MP is saying in his post about the lost generation - there are only a handful of that 60 or so young people who still have any connection with the church, Methodist or otherwise and it really is a great shame as there was a great deal of potential among these young people if they had been nurtured and allowed to develop without the strait jacket approach that seemed to prevail.
Going on from this point I attended synod and on my first visit to it got elected to go to conference in 1982 - at the time I was out of work and at some points in the week I really fumed as people in very expensive suits with posh accents pontificated on the topic of unemployment and I have to say I doubt if any of them had ever been without a job or struggled to make ends meet, or if they had it had been a long time away. I did at one point say to the minister I sat with for most of the week that I was incensed by these people - he suggested I should go to the podium and say something but of course as someone in their mid twenties attending such a huge event I did not have the courage to do so. If I were attending now I would have no hesitation but then I looked at all these posh people who appeared far superior to an ordinary working class Black Country lad and bottled out.
Having had this experience I can understand much of what MP is saying in his post about the lost generation - there are only a handful of that 60 or so young people who still have any connection with the church, Methodist or otherwise and it really is a great shame as there was a great deal of potential among these young people if they had been nurtured and allowed to develop without the strait jacket approach that seemed to prevail.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Mutter, Mutter, Groan, Groan.
There are a number of other blogs I read regularly mainly of the merry band who label themselves Methodist Bloggers and there are often some interesting and possibly controversial articles that appear. Some of them are to do with the way Methodism works , how ministers are stationed for instance and I am sure there are many members who have stories they could relate regarding all sorts of things that have happened in the past.
Because I am not a 'dyed in the wool' Methodist (my super's words) I often ask questions about the way we do things - some quite silly like why do some churches stand while others sit when the offering is brought forward and others more to do with the rules and regulations which govern us (CPD) like do we really need so many rules?
In 1982 I went to conference in Plymouth following a fairly meteoric rise from door steward to church council member to synod member and then representative to conference. I was very fortunate in that I sat next to a minister from our district who guided me through what was going on and swiftly took me out of the room when any 'boring' business came up (usually finance or property related). At the time I had been unemployed for around 9 months and one of the debates was about unemployment when a number of well known Methodists spoke in the debate about the whole issue of unemployment and as speaker after speaker got up I sat and got more upset all the time because I wondered how many of these folk had any real experience of unemployment. If it were now with the benefit of age and experience I would have been down to the podium to challenge what was being said, but of course then I was still 'wet behind the ears'and just sat and seethed.
I still get a little annoyed by some things that go on at the highest level and I don't always agree with the decisions of conference or what the 'official spokespeople'say on my behalf, but then I suppose there are a lot of members who don't agree either. I have to say though that I accept the governance of the church and will comply with the decisions where they affect me.
One thing I do find is that members at our churches will often mention things that are in the news from a Methodist perspective and one of these issues is the discussion surrounding a new hymn book and of course I was at conference when the current book was approved. Many people have raised this matter and it seems to me that there are a number of things that seem to be coming up in these conversations. I list them in no specific order and think that they are points that are important to the folk sitting in our conversation week by week.
1. Do we really need a new book?
2. In some churches they will comment they already have a number of books and this just seems silly.
3. We have only had this book a few years (26 actually but of course not as long as the previous one).
4. We know very few hymns in the current book so why have a new one?
5. We have projection equipment so do we need a new book?
6. Can we afford a new book?
I suppose at some point the issue of a new hymn book will come back to districts, circuits and local churches but ther is perhaps some food for thought in the points above.
Because I am not a 'dyed in the wool' Methodist (my super's words) I often ask questions about the way we do things - some quite silly like why do some churches stand while others sit when the offering is brought forward and others more to do with the rules and regulations which govern us (CPD) like do we really need so many rules?
In 1982 I went to conference in Plymouth following a fairly meteoric rise from door steward to church council member to synod member and then representative to conference. I was very fortunate in that I sat next to a minister from our district who guided me through what was going on and swiftly took me out of the room when any 'boring' business came up (usually finance or property related). At the time I had been unemployed for around 9 months and one of the debates was about unemployment when a number of well known Methodists spoke in the debate about the whole issue of unemployment and as speaker after speaker got up I sat and got more upset all the time because I wondered how many of these folk had any real experience of unemployment. If it were now with the benefit of age and experience I would have been down to the podium to challenge what was being said, but of course then I was still 'wet behind the ears'and just sat and seethed.
I still get a little annoyed by some things that go on at the highest level and I don't always agree with the decisions of conference or what the 'official spokespeople'say on my behalf, but then I suppose there are a lot of members who don't agree either. I have to say though that I accept the governance of the church and will comply with the decisions where they affect me.
One thing I do find is that members at our churches will often mention things that are in the news from a Methodist perspective and one of these issues is the discussion surrounding a new hymn book and of course I was at conference when the current book was approved. Many people have raised this matter and it seems to me that there are a number of things that seem to be coming up in these conversations. I list them in no specific order and think that they are points that are important to the folk sitting in our conversation week by week.
1. Do we really need a new book?
2. In some churches they will comment they already have a number of books and this just seems silly.
3. We have only had this book a few years (26 actually but of course not as long as the previous one).
4. We know very few hymns in the current book so why have a new one?
5. We have projection equipment so do we need a new book?
6. Can we afford a new book?
I suppose at some point the issue of a new hymn book will come back to districts, circuits and local churches but ther is perhaps some food for thought in the points above.
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