Revs and Stripes

This racy little number (the car, silly) could be taken as a metaphor for how some of us in the Scottish Episcopal Church like to see ourselves - small, zippy, a tad unpredictable, liable to be misunderstood (think of being pulled over by ra polis because of your go-faster stripes) and slightly OTT in appearance. I don't know if anyone would actually see all these qualities in the gathering of Lay Readers assembled in Oban today, but it threw up some interesting insights.

The visiting facilitator from The East (cf the magi) might have been forgiven for thinking he'd arrived on another planet. Lay Learning is one thing when coordinated in an urban environment, but you have to think twice about flying someone to a meeting - it has to be seriously worthwhile to have them make the journey. Argyll and The Isles is peopled by small congregations being run by lay people, throwing up questions about Reserved Sacrament use (and the understanding of its use), the best use of the few stipendiary clergy we have and the necessary training for the laity who have the will and the commitment to undertake it. All the problems of running a voluntary organisation surfaced in the discussions, and few of the answers.

I don't have the answers, of course. But there are some things which struck me with some force. The need to remember that for everyone who hated their childhood education and therefore may run a mile from anything which reminds them of it, for everyone who shuns intellectual activity from whatever reason, there is someone who needs to learn, needs to find substance and stimulus in their faith as in the rest of life. We have to feed their minds as well as tend for their souls. It seems to be a feature of church life in some areas just as it often seemed in school that you bend over backwards not to alienate the less academic - but the cerebral must be cared for too. And that means that at some point along the way there has to be professional input.

There was talk of advertising, publicity. I'd say the best advertisement is the result. So if your punters are lit up with the experience of faith and what happens in their church that will be the best advert you could have; if they are gloomy killjoys with a need to address God only in Elizabethan English who endure patiently a weekly service lacking in any spark then most seekers will run a mile. And there are all sorts of beastly puns hovering on the rim of consciousness - puns about revs...

Go-faster stripes, anyone?

Father knows best?

Yesterday culminated in a strange audio conference which left me feeling completely brain-dead - though rather by the means than the content. Picture it: a Skype conference which had to be abandoned because of background noise on one mic which interfered with the speech on all the others - because only one Skyper can speak at a time. I ended up with the phone to one ear, the lone Skyper in the Mitchell Library in the other, typing notes to the skyper with one hand while trying to contribute sensibly to the discussion.

But the content too was strangely wearing. In a church which is relying more and more on the education of lay people to maintain standards and even a presence in rural areas, it seems to me vital that the education provided is efficient, relevant and cotemporaneous with the activity which requires it. And when much of the training is being given to people who have already coped with a working life, a family - and simply life, Jim - it seems unrealistic to insist that there is only one road to follow: that of academic accreditation through seminars and essay-writing.

I had a late-night listen to a conversation between Ewan and some Canadian educators (I'm a glutton for punishment) and was struck by his insistence that over-control of teaching and the perceived need to be seen to be producing something were in fact stultifying and got in the way of real learning. As a classroom practitioner, I have known this for many years, and realised that my increasing seniority (years, not position!) let me away with doing my own thing - because in the end my pupils shone.

I'm afraid that this controlling of the process is going to put people like me off, if it's allowed to prevail. I am not ever going to demand ordination, so the system is actually quite safe, but I'm enjoying the informal group learning that we're doing here in Dunoon and don't want to lose what we have. But if many clergy are still stuck with the "teacher/father knows best" format of teaching/training, we'll remain a wee pocket of forward-looking learning in a haze of important-sounding acronyms and accreditation by universities we never knew existed.

And maybe that will be just fine.

Lay Learning - and bothering

I spent today at the General Synod Offices in Edinburgh, at a meeting of the Lay Learning Group. The composition of this small committee varies round a core, but the main point is that all but one of the dioceses are represented and we all feell we have our contribution to make. I always feel I'm more of a consumer than a provider, but realise after today's meeting that there's some work on the horizon as we plan a possible learning event in the autumn.

At this point the finer points are but a gleam in +Brian's eye, but there's an exciting buzz about this which I can only hope will grow louder.

And in one of these interesting side-tracks which always enliven a meeting, I learned of how people in one diocese had "decided not to bother" with the Lambeth-inaugurated Listening Process. I wonder if "bothering" should perhaps be a given for Christians - a sine qua non of our calling. Any thoughts?

Christmas medley, anyone?

Just back from a visit to Edinburgh - a heady mix of a stay with dear friends, a meeting of the Lay Learning committee of the SEC and a visit to the German Christmas Market in Princes Street Gardens, where I took this rather low-quality pic on my phone. I would have had my camera had it not been for the horizontal rain on a snell wind as we left the car; actually we had a sufficiently long splash of dry to glug down a mug of scalding gluwein at the market stall and feel suddenly much cosier. We were not, however, tempted by the big wheel - it looked decidedly shoogly to me, and a sure ringer for a bout of hypothermia.

And the Lay Learning? I have much to debrief on this one, but came away thinking about the balance between content and delivery systems in any sphere of learning. There's a debate into which I stuck a toe over on John Connell's blog which threw me into reflecting further on this; the tension between knowledge and the communicating of same is complicated by the problem of having to engage with an audience which, unlike school pupils, can turn away and demonstrate only indifference - even harder to deal with than hostility. And the problem of sentences like that last one is that one loses the will to live ploughing through them - could do better, Blethers!

On a lighter note, a thought about Christmas carols. As we skelped home through the incipient floods on the M8 we listened to a sampler CD of new carols. After one particularly ebullient offering, we were struck by a mental image of the Christ-child, square-faced and open-mouthed, wailing inaudibly as the heavenly hosts gave it laldy over the manger. Makes you realise how very good are some of the by now classic arrangements - a case of content not matching delivery systems in many of the new ones.

We made it home in tempest, storm and wind - another quote for the carolophile!