Yoblog – Musings of a Church Youth Officer

I’m delighted that Michelle Brown has now started as Y&C Officer for the Edinburgh Diocese and I’m sure she’ll do a cracking job. Michelle is also a part-time worker at Old St Paul’s and has loads of experience.

As I count down to baby’s arrival, there is not so much to blog about as my life is pretty routine.  I do see myself turning into my late grandmother and have a new found sympathy for the older generation who may display some of the following tendencies:
Going out once in the day is enough
A need to be not too far away from a seat/toilet
Only going places where and when you can park at the door
Having a focus on food
Enjoying a little nap when one can

Ah well, it is hopefully temporary for me, but I have been eyeing up those mobility scooters….

It’s  a funny thing handing over your job to somebody else.  It helps if you know and have confidence in the person taking over (which I do!).  But it is also a bit weird.

How much do you tell them what needs to be done and how to do it?  How much do you leave them to find out themselves?  Do you give them a list of warnings and details of ‘politics’.. or leave them uninfluenced by the past, perhaps enabling a fresh start.

Maternity cover also has that added nuance that you’ll be coming back again in a year or so.  So you hope the job will be well done.  But then there is the creeping insecurity that the person taking over may do the job way better than you and that nobody will want you back again.

Sometimes this job has been a puzzle, pretty solitary at times, so I’m actually looking forward to giving the reins to somebody else for a bit and then comparing notes.

I was thinking I hadn’t blogged for ages, but when you are under doctor’s orders to do nothing, there isn’t that much to tell!

Somebody should hopefully be chosen in the next couple of weeks to do my maternity cover and then some action should pick up.

In the meantime I’m pottering about within my limitations doing obscure nesting type tasks!

Why did the courier choose a house that they never normally leave parcels with if  I am out?

Why did it have to be left with the family who are burying their baby tomorrow who died last week aged one day old?

Why did it have to be a cot mattress that I had ordered for our new baby?

A while back a couple of mums in the congregation expressed enthusiasm at starting a toddler group in the church.  I felt guilty for being a bit of a wet blanket pointing out all the pitfalls and logistics that would need to be overcome and suggested a trial run ‘holiday club’  during the school holidays to test the water.

Having been away in recent weeks, today was the fourth meeting and the first time I could make it along.  I’d left some material and ideas but the two mums have kept it going and there were around a dozen little ones there today.  So on paper, it looks like a success.  Bringing local families into the church building, providing a service to the community… all good stuff.

Except the two mums are feeling angry and frustrated.  The other mums are not doing what they expected them to do.  They are just sitting chatting and expecting their kids to be entertained.  They are not  stopping the over boisterous behaviour of the older ones.  They are there as consumers (or are they called ’service users’ these days?!)

It feels like a common theme in church life.  People getting burnt out and frustrated that people are not helping out and following the rules.  But there are no rules.  Or different people have different ideas of what the theoretical rules might be.  But they are never stated.

The Church is for everybody with no strings attached.  But that can be a challenging gift to give.

I don’t know what will happen.  Either the group needs to be formalised and have more structure and shared accountability or it will dissolve in it’s current form at the end of the holidays. Not bothering is an easy option.

I wonder what the vestry opinion will be?

Well, I’m a little bit further on.

I’ve now learnt that “Millennium” is spelt with two n’s and not one.

I’m niggled that I can’t find the Millennium Prayer that was circulated widely with candles in late 1999.  My late grandmother had it on her mantlepiece.  If I Google it, all I get is stuff about Cliff Richard.  Bah!

I know being a priest is about vocation, but sometimes even though I am not in that place when faced with grim experiences of church, I feel like saying “move over and let me at it”!

A service that lasts two and a quarter hours is not my idea of fun, nor did it appear to be anybody else’s yesterday.  Ok, it was a special day – the church centenary, but still unless people actually enjoy being there, I don’t see the point.  You can enjoy going to a service on many different levels: interesting theology and personal challenge, humour and entertainment, good music, a spiritual experience, a quiet place to reflect, somewhere to feel part of a community….I think only a few people actually enjoy being bored.  A church service shouldn’t be a penance or an ordeal.

I’m becoming quite proficient at ways of entertaining small children with minimal items.  The staple item available in most churches is a service sheet.  Maybe I should run a session on service sheet origami as I’m getting quite good.  As a service drags on, the items made become more inappropriate and tend to degenerate to the well loved paper aeroplane.  Yesterday I had a few wax crayons, a few drinking straws and two coins.  Coin rubbing and paper boats with straw flags were made.  Paper aeroplanes were played with on the church steps outside towards the end.

Interesting conversations were had with people in the queue for the single toilet which my children visited 4 times between them during the service.  I unknowingly chatted to the priest’s son, and asked if it was always this tedious…maybe the feedback might help!

In a congregation of over 300, there was one other child apart from my two.  The priest waffled for 15 minutes even before the first hymn.  Somebody read the full history of the church in a very dry manner for about 30 minutes.  And then the sermon was still to some.  And once you thought it had finished there was another 30 minutes of votes of thanks.

It is probably lucky that the church is funded through tax in Germany.  People opt in and pay the tax because they want the church for baptisms/weddings/funerals but I’m not surprised families don’t bother attending regularly the rest of the time.  I’d struggle to.

The local church here was celebrating it’s centenary yesterday and had a fair running all the way round the building with the usual kind of stalls with a mixture of music going on in the building.

The finale was the grand weigh in of the clergy in the “guess how many hymn books your clergy team weigh” competition.  Having not seen the hymn book, nor the sturdiness of the clergy, my guess was not that hot, but they did a good job at constructing a see-saw for the weigh in out of various items magiced out the back of a horse box.  As the correct answer was 317 and I think very few churches these days have (or need) that many hymn books, the weighing in started with three 25kg bags of cement per person and then the books got piled on top.  Good entertainment and makes a change from naming a teddy!

A few other ideas have been stored in the back of my head too for potential future use, somewhere, sometime!