The technological bee in my bonnet

Computers have played a big part in my working life for the past twenty years, as church organisations have been less and less capable of affording administrative help. It’s as much a hindrance as a help really, if things go wrong, or the work load builds up. Being a priest is about working with people, not about machine minding, or organising working with people, except that in our present culture, the two have become hard to separate, and the tasks harder to share out.

That said, I have been much entertained, out of work hours, not by computer games but by following the developments in technology and its social use. I discovered early on that I wasn’t much good at programming, but at least I understand how things work. I can troubleshoot computers, take the lid off and tinker with insides, like many blokes do with cars. In my wife’s eyes, I blur boundaries between work and leisure in a unhealthy way; i.e. it takes up too much of my spare time.

For the past seven years years, I have followed very closely the rise of the free Linux operating system, and Open Source Software, learning to use it, unaided, not without difficulty, but with growing commitment. Now I run a Linux system alongside my standard Microsoft PC for variety and interest. I follow most discussions in the tech journals and blogs (Curious? Try for starters) about the merits and de-merits of contrasting software cultures, and how they can be used to make the world a better place.

Following the recent Cardiff Vision Board conference presentation about new technology applications in local government services, I felt emboldened to write to Crispin O'Connell, Cardiff's head of ICT and ask about Cardiff’s attitude to Open Source Software. It was a small attempt at advocacy, putting down in writing some of the issues which matter to me about the world I'm part of. The collaborative enterprises which make up the Open Source community represent one of the most significant social projects of modern times, not recognised or valued nearly enough. It’s another kind of good news I want to promote. It may not seem so religious, but the movement is about people freely forging creative working alliances for the common good. There are people of faith (and of no faith at all) participating. The substance of what I wrote, minus some of the specific questions I wanted to raise is what follows..

“Much of our city’s current successful social innovation is driven by and rests upon new information technology. Economic development relies as much on appropriate electronic infrastructure as it does roads and other transport systems. Delivery of information services technology represents a huge investment in hardware, software and trained personnel. Notice is being taken in the heartland of the computer industry in Silicon Valley (CA) and elsewhere about the environmental impact of the multiplication of computer ‘server farms’, consuming huge amounts of energy, and the disposal of redundant hardware.
The need to upgrade to more power-consuming systems is driven by the industry’s business ambitions. New software is designed around state-of-the art hardware which needs to be purchased, rendering perfectly serviceable equipment redundant. Replacement costs become a significant drain on information service budgets, as well as adding to environmental hazards implicit in disposing of old equipment. We have no more than the beginnings of safe recycling procedures for old electronic equipment. The volume of computer hardware needing recycling grows with each major innovation in what computing can deliver. Might it be possible to slow down the rate at which equipment is dumped if some of it could be re-used to good effect?
There is an international movement of academics, technology professionals, and volunteers dedicated to creating, maintaining and promoting reliable software, free to users, not dependent for its effectiveness on having the latest, fastest equipment to run on. Partners in this enterprise, spanning over seventy countries, develop and maintain software and provide web-based user support which costs little to access. Open Source Software (OSS) and Operating Systems – notably Linux – is already deployed to maintain server infrastructures in government, scientific, military and educational settings around the world, because of its proven stability and reliability, and high levels of security. By design, it is nowhere near as vulnerable as many comparable commercial and domestic products. It doesn’t benefit from huge advertising budgets, but commends itself by results. OSS is available for only the cost of an internet download and a blank CD, it can be freely distributed without requirement to pay licensing costs. In the past two years, the adoption of free operating systems and software has started to make an impact on the desktop computer market as well as server infrastructure.
In Europe, the government of Munich and the state of Extremadura are in the process of moving all their computer operations to free OSS. Some departments of Bristol city have switched, also some local government departments in the North West. Altogether a dozen European Community members including Britain are adopting OSS in some government operations, also more than dozen national governments in developing countries, including China, not only because of savings on licenses, but also because it is possible to re-use older serviceable equipment with relative ease, thus expanding computer resources at a lower capital cost.
One high profile OSS related project currently publicised is the ‘One Laptop per Child’ initiative of American entrepreneur, Nicholas Negroponte, now moving towards production of a robust simple laptop, driven by solar or hand cranked power, costing $100-150. It has wireless network capability and can easily be used in collaborative projects at school as well as in the home. The laptop is driven by a Linux operating system and loaded with good free educational software. The Brazilian and Nigerian governments have each placed initial orders for a million. Another major achievement of the Open Source community is to secure international consensus on a non-proprietary file format for many kinds of documents. Called the Open Document format (ODF), files of this type are readable by different brands of software, so that no document is unreadable when switched from one kind of machine to another, as was once commonplace. It’s digital photographic equivalent is the JPEG file. Some states in USA and Australia are now adopting ODF file formats for all future official documents, and implementing a conversion process for all archived documents, to ensure everything in the public domain remains readable in future and thus compliant with freedom of information legislation.
The adoption of Open Source software solutions promises large cost savings, longer life for hardware, lower total cost of ownership. From the user’s viewpoint OSS programs are as friendly in action as commercial software, so there’s no reason why conversion to OSS and re-training users should be a major burden. One criticism of OSS is the lack of driver software for scanners, printers etc, because major manufacturers have been reluctant to write additional software for an emerging minoriy market. The Open Source development community, however has its own engineers producing free equivalent drivers. Some big manufacturers are changing their policies and now producing extra drivers for their machines – HP, Samsung, Epson – adapting their products to diversifying markets.
A thorough investigation of the benefits and problems of adopting Open Source software could well be of strategic benefit to this city. Open Source developers have the freedom to use derived products for commercial benefit, so there is a lucrative crossover between voluntary and commercial sectors. Establishing, promoting Cardiff as an Open Source friendly city could enhance its attractiveness to outside investment, particularly from Asia, which is innovating at great speed through OSS. A policy of OSS adoption in local government and especially in schools could be economically advantageous.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to be overcome is the conviction that standard commercial products must be best, because it is conveniently marketed and consumed, but real value is proved in action. Nobody can be unaware of the expensive, time wasting struggle of computer users, everywhere to secure their systems, free of viruses and ad-ware. Open Source software, by design, minimises vulnerability to attack. It’s not just costly Apple products that have this benefit, but also free Open Source Software.”

Just a day after sending this, I was delighted to receive quite an informative and personal response from Mr O'Connell. Heavens, he could have been patronising or defensive, but he was neither. He just told it as it was, as much as he could to an inquisitive stranger. Without much external publicity, it appears OSS solutions are being deployed where it is found to be worthwhile to do so in the City's computer arsenal. Advocacy of OSS in educational use (my particular obsession, of which more anon), he revealed, even has its own homepage on the Local Education Authority’s website (which to my shame, I had visited without noticing). This was one small fact I hadn’t come across in any computer journal article about Educational uses I’ve read in recent times. Talk about keeping your light under a bushel. Advances are being made in local government, albeit in a discreet way

But what about the Church? Diocesan and Provincial administration centres. How much money are they saving / spending on deployment of OSS software solutions? Is there any adoption? Do they know what I'm talking about here? Llandaff Diocesan Secretary says that he reads this blog. Well, here's a test .... Looking forward to hearing from you, Peter!

View from the board room

Friday last I attended the inaugural meeting of the Cardiff Proud Capital Vision Board, the rather esoteric title given to a gathering of senior city government executives with counterparts in other public agencies dealing with environment, health, education, sport, employment, business, transport, media, etc. This is a successor to a body called the Community Planning Implementation Group (CPIG for short), a body whose meetings I have attended over the past four years as an observer on behalf of the Archbishop, who was invited to take part as the equivalent of a church's CEO, even though the church has others who discharge many CEO functions. It makes you realise what a difference of management culture there is between church and city.

The idea of these gatherings was to oversee the way strategic plans directing present and future development of the city and region are put into practice. This is necessary, as so many major transforming projects rely on collaboration, or 'partnership working', in the current jargon, between different organisations and agencies with a wide range of interests and responsibilities.

You cannot redevelop city centre retailing, for instance without working with those concerned with transport, communications and public safety, for instance. Health and Sport overlap. Employment and education need to be bedfellows with economic development, if the city is to have the skilled work force it needs, essential to huge prestigious new projects designed to 'reposition' (another new bit of jargon) Cardiff as a front-runner on the European capital cities map.

From the vision proposed by our political leadership to its implementation through many different kinds of initiative is a long and complex journey. It took me several years of attentive listening to understand some of the jargon, and even to discern how far all the participants really understood the purpose of the exercise. Indeed, the difficulty of the exercise was uncovered when a review of CPIG was undertaken after its first three years, revealing a mixture of successes and failures, but also dissatisfactions in areas where it seemed little progress in partnership was apparent.

I had my own concerns in this review process, representing the head of one church out of many, in a situation where ecumenical instruments of collaboration have become weak with the weakening of member bodies, and where few of the churches have large enough an organisational profile to figure prominently on the radar of a huge corporate body like city government. Being the only religious observer was for me an interesting experience, presenting a conundrum to some participants. There are many churches, not to mention other faith communities that could also have been represented, but no adequate framework for collaboration or participation. One senior local government officer agreed that local government had only fragmented, partial knowledge of the city's religious community groups, and that research was needed even to be able to invite them to assemble without excluding anyone.

Given recent concern about the need for social inclusion expressed by national government, about other-faith religious communities and their young people, it seemed to me there's an issue to address here. As Cardiff has been mercifully free of conflict surrounding religious or ethnic communities for generations, social inclusion has not figured on anyone's political agenda, though some civil servants see there's a problem. Religious culture features little in the way the city presents itself, and largely because religious groups have made little effort, and have remained turned in on themselves, disinterested in the common good, apart from their own local and domestic needs. It's not only a problem of other faith communities, but also of the Christian enterprise. My conclusion was that the city itself needs to challenge religious groups to greater participation. But how to achieve this in the face of political apathy? So far, no answers.

The new Proud Capital Vision Board began life with a couple of presentations on the new approach to policy making and services, and attempted un-successfully to define its principal tasks in an interactive sessions that was poorly managed. Not an auspicious start. We were not short of top level expertise, but surprisingly short of skilled facilitators to help retain the focus on the process in hand. So we'll end up, as usual with most of the necessary work needing to be redone in the back office and served up for people to nod though. It's the way with all large organisations I guess, Churches included.

Of organs and window guards

Since our ‘Father Willis’ organ got restored to its original working condition over a year ago, I’ve got so used to the regular monthly routine of Friday lunchtime organ concerts, this rarely gets mentioned in my postings. One reason to mention this now, is that recently we had Thomas Trotter one of Britain’s finest organists back for his second recital, the first being the inaugural concert of the restored instrument. Philip Thomas, our organist and concert organiser, the instrument’s custodian and tireless promoter, had, over nine months careful stewardship of concert retiring collections, succeeded in putting enough money away to cover the cost of Thomas’ second visit. This meant the concert retiring collection could be used to raise funds for another project. What for? Window guards. Window guards? Yes, window guards. Not very sexy or noble, but very necessary.

Before the Cardiff blitz, the church stained glass was removed for protection until the war was over. That’s how we know the age of the window guards covering some, though not all of the stained glass most of which was returned to its place 1945-46. Many of them rotted away over sixty years leaving little trace. A few had been replaced at different stages, several on the north side of the church within the past three years. One new post war window never had a guard over it. This, and a neighbouring window over 120 years old were both vandalised eighteen months ago, on two separate occasions over 48 hours, smashed with a lager bottle by person or persons unknown who had climbed over the fence to do this. It happened the weekend of one of our rare weddings. Sue, the bride’s mother was terribly upset, not because it was going to make the church look unpleasant to photograph, but because in the run-up to the wedding she had simply fallen in love with the building, its people and its activity and was horrified at such sacrilege.

After the wedding Sue and her husband Peter started to attend church regularly. She started obsessing (healthily and constructively) about getting the windows fixed, and getting some preventative measures in place. The outcome of this was a personal campaign to raise funds to get safety guards put on every window lacking one – a project with an estimated cost of £35,000. They had recently retired from business locally, so between them they had lots of professional contacts to solicit for support. To date, over a third of the total needed to install the guards has been raised.

The two vandalised windows took six months to repair at a cost of £7,000. These were the first to receive new guards, since then a third has been done and another is to follow shortly, much to everyone’s great pleasure. At the Trotter concert, Sue stood up and spoke with great eloquence and brevity about the value of the project, and evidently the 300 strong audience agreed with her, for the collection produced an amazing £1,050 – the cost of one more new window guard.

When churchwarden Allan and his wife Lyn celebrated their golden wedding back in the summer, many of their friends joined in by donating to the window guard fund as a thank offering, raising £2,000 beween them all. Neighbouring pizza entrepreneur Tony Venditto taxed his sales a pound a piece, to raise £1,000 for a window guard. We reciprocated with a posed photo for the local papers, with pizza in church. Well, we are the church, not only in the market place, but for the market place, and we are still learning how to value the goodwill people have for a church about its business, even in this secularised multi-cultural new age. Sue has done us good by recognising what the church community values, seeing it with fresh eyes, and realising that our efforts at valuing our heritage encourage others to do likewise. The good old virtuous cycle at work again.

Changing circumstances, changing roles

One of the purposes of creating a new city centre Parish focused on St John’s Church, is to enable me as Vicar to focus on ministry to the institutions at the heart of the city, its businesses, hospitality, public services and local government. My churchwarden joked the other day that my wife is the only person on the church electoral roll who is actually resident in the new city centre Parish. And it’s true, since all those who are signed up live in different residential areas away from the centre, and travel in to make themselves part of the worship and hospitality that characterises the life of St John’s.

It’s not that ours is the only residence among offices, shops, arcades, theatres and restaurants, far from it. Around two thousand occupy new-build high rise apartments – student residences and luxury apartments - plus the remainder of old low rise flats and established houses like ours. With several more new housing construction projects in hand, and the re-adaptation to dwelling spaces of areas above shops, the city centre population will rise fourfold in the next five years. Add to this three new hotels planned, bringing the number up to a dozen, and those sleeping in proper beds in the city centre area, transient and resident together, is set to hit ten thousand, by the end of this decade, from a low of five hundred a decade ago.

Of new residents, whether students or a new generation of apartment dwellers, only a few drop in to St John’s or any other church on a regular basis. Today’s mobile lifestyle takes people all over the place for work and leisure. Home may be a dormitory or a place of refuge, but not much of a base from which to socialise or engage with others in the local neighbourhood. New lifestyles represent a new pastoral challenge, and quite frankly we don't really know where to start engaging with it. Maybe in a few generations people will settle more, have children, reconnect with the place they live for most of their activities. The agenda for ministry in the city centre will be different again another two decades from now.

For the moment, the redevelopment of the retail environment, promises to create three thousand new jobs and bring many more tens of thousands in to shop every day. This is a huge challenge for running the city. If churches have any interest in the welfare of the city, either short or long term, it’s necessary to have a constructive working relationship with those who run the affair, in public services and in city government itself. This is now one of my responsibilities, now I'm about to change from being Team Rector of Central Cardiff to being Vicar of the city Parish of St John the Baptist.

I’ve been gratified at the positive response I’ve met to my announcement of this change from people involved in making the city work. Living up to the challenge will be a long slow journey, given the complexities of everything connected with running a place with a throughput of a hundred thousand people every twenty four hours. On a day to day basis, developing ministry to tourists, sharing the the church’s offer of hospitality, conducting worship, encouraging the team of volunteers who work at St John’s continues unchanged, if less pressured. Now I'll have more time to respond to different opportunities arising from contacts I make and the concerns about city life shared with me by different individuals. Also, I have a little more breathing space to consider the future - how church ministry and mission might develop practically in new ways for new times.

On my ‘do do’ list is to re-vamp the church website, as one kind of publicity which I already know from emails I get to deal with gets read across the world. There's the church magazine too, and other print publications. Due to our investment in an advert in Cardiff’s promotional 2006 tourism brochure, and a mention in a local city walks guide, the presence of St John’s as ‘must-visit’ place has seen tourist numbers rise 50% this past six months. The Tea Room is busy most days it is open.

Just now the annual ‘Cards for Good Causes’ charity Christmas Card shop is preparing for business in the St John chapel area of the church. This also brings in large numbers of people. For the past couple of weeks a Christian Aid exhibition about post Tsunami reconstruction work in Sri Lanka has graced the North Aisle. In mid-November few weeks time South Wales Artists will turn that aisle into a gallery to exhibit paintings for sale by talented amateurs, bringing in many more people, just to look, and enjoy the peace and quiet.

This week, outside the church, on the west railings of the north churchyard, there are five large yellow panels with black artwork on them, done by a member of Cardiff's One World group, expounding the importance of international trade justice. This is one World Week, and the third year the exhibition has appeared, growing by one panel each year. It's remarkable given the rowdiness of revellers in the streets several nights each week that the panels have never been vandalised. Next week, the Royal British Legion will be planting a field of crosses in the churchyard behind the same railings, to prepare for the Cardiff & Vale Branch Garden of Remembrance. There's another bigger Garden of Remembrance that will also be planted with crosses, just a quarter of a mile away at the National Cenotaph behind City Hall, in Cathays Park. Both are as much dignified protests against the futile violence of war, as they are commemorations of those killed.

The church and its environment is a busy place, but it rarely loses its tranquility. This holy place is the engine room for every other city activity we try to become part of. ‘Our lot is set in a fair ground’, as the Psalmist says. (Ps 16:7) As its custodians church members have much to live up to.

On Muslims and Mosques in Cathays

As I was preparing to celebrate the evening Eucharist at St Teilo's last night, a dozen men arrived in church, whose dress declared them to be Muslims of varied ethnic backgrounds. Due to a mix up in their leader's diary they were 24 hours late for a meeting of the local community and police representatives being hosted by the church. There was more laughter than embarrassment at the mistake, and many warm greetings were exchanged, ending with a invitation to the handful of us who welcomed them to visit the local Mosque in Wyvern Road the following night to join the members for their Ramadhan breakfast, or iftar, as it is known, part of their celebration of Lailat al Qu'adr, the 'Night of Power', a vigil celebration which commemorates the descent of the Qu'ran from Allah in the seventh heaven to the first heaven from whence the angel Gibril (Gabriel) dictates it to Muhammad. Matt, one of the churchwardens and myself were free and promised to attend.

I had been to the Wyvern Road mosque once last summer with my wife Clare, when an Open Day had been held. The buildings were once the St Teilo church hall, but were sold off twenty years ago, when the fortunes of the parish took a downward turn. It was good to see it still in religious community use, and indeed to see how international a Mosque it is. Being close to the University, many attendees are students and single, others are settlers of many years standing, local businessman and university people with generations of their own families in the Mosque with them.

We were warmly greeted, and at the end of opening prayers, served with a meal of soup, curried chicken rice and vegetables, followed by a milk pudding and lots of tea. We chatted with various elders from Pakistan, Palestine, North Africa, and interestingly with two students from Azerbajahn, brothers who were both mathematicians and computer scientists. There was even a talk about Lailat al Qu'adr by a teacher from a neighbouring Mosque, possibly an Omani by his dress. Perhaps because it was Ramadhan, when people set aside more time for their devotions, many arrived to pray in non-European costume, making it all the more clear how many nationalities were present, several dozen at least.

By nine o'clock there were more than two hundred men praying the late evening prayer before the vigil proper, and goodness knows how many women out of sight, either on the stage behind a curtain, or out in the back hall preparing meals for all these attendees. Hundreds of Ramadhan breakfasts are served up nightly here, perhaps because this is a Mosque that welcomes many single people. Commonly Muslim families break their fast at home together, so this was something special and pastoral, serving a mobile community - and yes, just as many mobile phones went off during prayers, and suprisingly often, people answered them, even made calls in the prayer hall, despite pleas to switch them off.

Our hosts and those we spoke to were very natural and uninhibited in speaking about matters of faith and the problems all believers in God share due to the modern political secularism that seems to want to problematise religion and religious believers. The teacher who spoke was at pains to remind his audience how much the three Abrahamic faiths share in common, (sounded like one of my sermons!), and how Muhammad demanded that all the prophets of Judaism including Jesus, should be revered for their lives and their teaching.

Whilst we may never agree on the meaning of the life and death of Jesus, with the Qu'ran taking Jesus straight to heaven and effectively bypassing the significance of the cross, their prophetic take on Jesus has value. I remember Walter Hollenweger, professor of mission in Birmingham in the eighties writing about the Qu'ranic view of Jesus, and saying that it possibly lies closer to the view of Jesus which would have been held by some first Jewish believers believers - 'early Semitic Christology' he calls this understanding of Jesus as an anointed prophet of God. The idea of Jesus as Son and Word of God belongs more in the realm of Hellenistic thought. Islam was born among semitic people, even if they aren't so very keen on their Israeli cousins nowadays. I guess we all get to work first with perceptions and ideas we inherit from our ome culture. Question for everyone is: how necessary is it to remain stuck there? How can we move to a new experience of God's truth coming to meet us from beyond, not conjured up within us.

Both Matt and I were presented with copies of the Qu'ran accompanied by an English translation as a memento of our visit. Our hosts asked that we should bring them a Bible, and next day Matt organised a suitable presentation gift purchase. I wish more non-Muslims could have this experience of being welcomed by fellow believers who are thoughful, intelligent and determined to live a godly life in what is for most of them a foreign land. It reminded me of my time in Geneva's international community as a chaplain to an expatriate congregation - thinking of which, in eight years there, I never made it once into the principal Mosque in Petit Sacconnex, despite the Consul's residence being opposite, plus an old people's home where I took communion to an ancient international civil servant for several years. But prior to 9/11, it didn't seem to be such a priority. Pity too, as it was a fine purpose designed building in grey Jura limestone, befitting an international city, not a red-brick seond hand church hall in a Cardiff back street.

Next year, building starts on a brand new Mosque at the other end of Woodville Road from St Teilo's, a multi-million pound project to replace the warehouse building that community presently uses. There's been some controversy and internal division over the new building apparently. I hope this doesn't lead to a characterless compromise construction that looks more like a large lego version of a Mosque than the real thing. Modern computer aided design seems to be producing more and more buildings that look like models of buildings than the real thing. Architectural symbols of faith communities, whether ours or someone else's, should still be substantial contributions to our visual landscape to my mind.

Interestingly enough at the bottom end of Cathays, another group of Muslims has taken over a rather fine former Baptist church, with an ornate frontage, and byzantine like cupolas and portico. When I pass that way it's often busy. With its somewhat oriental facade, it has stuck me that the possibly suits its new owners idea of a sacred place better than its previous owners with their more austere origins. Interesting times!

Light in the tunnel

From the bad news
Thursday last, Jenny my former colleage was inducted as Rector of Radyr. It was a full house at Christchurch Radyr, around two hundred people, and a warm air of anticipation. At the start my anticipation was tinged with apprehension. How long are Chris and I going to be able to cope with the routine workload before a successor is appointed? Already I am faced with doing five services a Sunday until the end of the year, when the separation of the new parish is meant to come into effect. At that stage the Area Dean takes charge of finding ministers for services in St Mikes and St Teilo's, or enforcing cutbacks - something I have never been happy to do unless unavoidable. There are so many distractions for people these days, that once a routine habit is interrupted, regaining it may no longer be guaranteed.

To the good
Having said that, I don't really know why I worry so much. Obviously, not enought faith. We restarted God on Mondays two weeks ago, having moved the event from St James' church into the school, and were delighted to see the same number of familiar adult and children's faces turning up and singing lustily. And no, I needn't have worried at all because Paul, the outgoing Central Cardiff Parish Warden, who will undoubtedly continue as one of the Wardens of the new Parish of St Mike's and St Teilo's, took me aside after the induction service to tell me that Archbishop Barry had already written to all the new Parish Wardens to propose the appointment of Revd. Caroline Downs as priest in charge of the new Parish. This is as good as it gets as far as I'm concerned, as Caroline, lives in the neighbouring Parish of Roath nad has been working there part time for the past five years, handing with aplomb and great humour some very tricky situations. Funnily enough she had been guest preacher at the St Mike's Songs of Praise only a fortnight ago - already known and well liked, and an excellent choice, since she can start work quickly without housing hassles initially, since she and her husband have their own house. It's great news for Cathays, and a relief for me, to know that two of the churches I have cared for over the past four years will now be in good hands.

Clearing the desk
The Archbishop certainly moved fast in response to our urgent pleas, hastening to resolve urgent concerns before going on a well deserved sabbatical. I've been quite short with people who've moaned to me about him having several months of paid leave. They don't really have much idea how how much he has to carry, even with a small staff support team, fulfilling a demanding pastoral task of rallying flagging demoralised legions of faithful, coping with a bureaucratic system failing to catch up with the 20th let alone 21st century, despite the hi-tech tools at its disposal.

A thankless task
On top of this, Barry has a valued role as an Anglican Primate of the world wide Communion of churches, straining at the leashes to break apart because of the difficulties some member churches have with the idea of agreeing to disagree, respecting each other and living together with differences. Ease of modern international communications has taken Barry away from his diocese and province for too much for its own good for these high level deliberations which seem to have done little or nothing to prosecute the Gospel cause - 'the Primate Wars', my good friend Martin calls this. I resent all this as a waste of Barry's time, and our resources expended on processes which seem unconnected with the mission we're actually engaged with at home.

Contrary agendas
Do the 'led' really want to break communion with each other as much as the leaders think. Or is it just the 'led' who have cash and influence to spare, trying to be the tail that wags the ecclesiastical dog? I think most people don't much care about these so called divisive issues. They've moved on, seen life differently, and are aiming to live the Gospel truth from within their real experience of people and relationships, as close to the compassion of Jesus as they can get, closer than one can get just by endless debate over Biblical texts and church regulations. Sure we can't do without scripture, but following Christ in the everyday world is miles bigger than just scripture or church law. I don't notice Christ letting us down either. I wonder what He thinks about these power struggles.

When will we ever learn?
Our ways and means of management and self-government as church leave a great deal to be desired. Sometimes basic communication skills and disciplines seem to be lacking, other times it's a lack of accountability in decision making, as I've found in some of my dealings with the Representative Body of the Church in Wales. How we will ever become a mature egalitarian networking culture within the communities of the church is a mystery to me. We still cling to past privilege and status (under the guise of 'responsibility'), and look to a way of being in society that belongs to the past.

Time for time out
I'd hate to be in the driving seat, in Barry's position. He sure deserves a good break from it all. I hope he'll do as little as possible with his time, and enjoy some freedom from all activity, whether gainful or futile. Come January, I'll be taking time off as well, and heading for the Swiss Jura and Alps once more. This thought will make light work of the harsh pressures of the next ten weeks or so.

A Family Treasure

The day after Jenny's farewell celebration, Clare and I attended a first ever Kimber family re-union at a hotel outside Bristol. This brought together thirty odd people, two of the four surviving aunts, cousins, spouses and offspring, including my daughter and grand daughter Rhiannon, who at two and a half was the youngest. We'd been promising for some years to get together on some occasion other than family funerals, but not got around to it, until cousin Dianne took charge of masterminding the arrangements. It was an excellent occasion for sharing photographs, comparing likenesses and telling stories, particularly of my paternal grandparents, and the family home in Duffryn Street, Ystrad Mynach in the Rhymney Valley in the days when coal was king in South Wales.

My grandfather John learned steel erection working on New York skyscrapers as a young migrant at the time of the Titanic, then returned home to marry Gwenllian, daughter of a market gardener in Cardiff, who was co-incidentally a stallholder in the market adjacent to St John's church, which is now centre of my ministry. He worked on mineshaft sinking projects all over the South Wales Coalfield. The family is said to have moved house 26 times before settling in Duffryn Street, when Grandpa became under-manager of nearby Penalla colliery. It was so near that there was a substantial coal tip (aka spoil heap) beyond the gardens the other side of Duffryn Street. As kids we used to play there. He trained me to recognise plant fossils imprinted in the abundant carboniferous shale of the tip.

It's really the internet which has brought our generation of cousins into contact wiht each other after what seems like decades of childrearing between weddings and funerals. Several are interested in the family tree, notably cousin Lindsay who has traced Kimber family ancestry almost back to the Civil War. My grandfather seems to have shared this interest in the family record, with his willingness to recount his offspring and thier deeds. The Family Bible, which John and Gwenllian bought when they married in 1904, was handed on, at my grandfather's death to my Uncle Mostyn, his youngest son, with the understanding that it should eventually pass to me as the son of the eldest son, my father Jack. Mostyn's widow, Auntie Mary brought the Family Bible with her to the re-union and handed it over to me to pass on eventually to my son for safe keeping.

I recall seeing it last at Grandpa's funeral over thirty years ago, and remember also looking at it with wonder as a child fifty years ago. It’s big and ornate, like a church lectern bible, typical of what was once commonly found in the best front room in family houses of my youth, though now somoewhat delapidated with one of its brass clasps missing. It’s not an Authorised Version King James Bible. It's called the National Comprehensive Family Bible, published locally by Jones and Jones in Porth, in the Rhondda. In addition to the text of scripture it contains notes and commentaries by notable bible scholars of the time.It's is a typical artifact of Victorian non-conformist religious culture, following the practice of the Geneva Bible, once common in Puritan influenced Britain, of printing scripture plus commentary side by side to assist in reader’s spiritual formation. This publishing practice continues with modern scholarly equivalents today.

I doubt if the choice of commentary much mattered to my grandparents. I don’t actually know if they read it with the children Sunday afternoons, as many pious families did in those days. It wasn't a practice I was brought up with. What I do know is that the ornately supplementary pages in the front of the book were used to record the births and achievements of their eight children and many grand-childen over the next sixty odd years. It's an old fashioned family database in fact.

Uncle Mostyn, writing just fifteen years ago, in a note inside the cover, comments on the book's worse for wear condition and speaks of it as a sacred heirloom testifying to generations raised on hardship. Grandma had penciled inside the front cover 'Please wash your hands before you handle this book, Mam'. Often it would be covered with a fine layer of dust, coal dust, polluting everything within a mile of the mine.

In varying degrees our family members were churchgoers, mostly Anglican. I suspect the book's contents were more revered than they were read. What mattered to them was that the family story, as it was recounted in the front pages, was bound together with the story of God’s dealing with humankind. This is, or should I say was, a commonplace heirloom, far less valued these days. Family Bibles turn up for auction on the internet or in antique shops, perhaps because a family line has come to an end, or perhaps because this treasury of memories no longer means anything to its inheritors.

There’s widespread interest in family trees these days, in gaining or re-gaining a sense of forgotten identity in a world where so many wish to be recognised only by what clothes they wear or beer they consume. It seems people want to know where they came from even if they don’t know where they are going to. Linking your story with God’s story in scripture requires a huge effort, a measure of hunger for the truth of our existence, the meaning of our lives. Old family bibles are a religious commodity from our past, when bible knowledge was so much more commonplace that it mattered less whether your family heirloom was read or not.

There’s not much point in lamenting that things aren’t what they used to be. We’re faced with the challenge of recovering the habit of reading and remembering scripture for its true worth, and recovering the habit of discussing it together as a natural enterprise of thinking people, rather than consuming the latest video epic giving its own spin on half a biblical narrative wrenched out of conext for misinterpretation.

I must say, I'm much taken by the Bible Society's catchword 'Bible poverty', not just to describe the situation in those parts of the world which don't yet have scripture to read in their native tongue, but those parts of the world where secularism deprives people of a sense of the value to be gained when one reads, marks, learns and inwardly digests, what has been written and is within everyone's reach for our godly learning.

Parting of the ways II

On the feast of St Michael and All Angels, the Patronal Festival of our newest Parish Church, the Parish said farewell to the Revd. Jenny Wigley, who has been my partner in the Gospel for the past three years, based at this church. She celebrated the Eucharist for the last time as Team Vicar. For better for worse, this was my sermon.

This feast of dedication of the church to Michael and Archangels is in many ways a pivotal moment. This is the building’s tenth anniversary year. We shall celebrate its consecration next April. We’re saying “Farewell God go with you” to Jenny after three years of ministry here. Although ministry is generally ‘more of the same’ given our need for a regular diet of worship and social activities, this tends to obscure the significant changes that take place as a result of a particular person being the pastor.

It came as a shock to all of us that Jenny’s departure should lead to the Bishop’s proposal to create from Central Cardiff Parish, a new Parish of Cathays with its own Vicar. It’s his response, as our leader to the changing needs of ministry in the city centre, and in Cathays.

With the arrival of new halls of residence, the face of studentland is soon about to change. As multi occupancy landlords find their profit margins slump, houses will start exchanging their ‘To Let’ signs for ‘For Sale’ signs, and the balance between domestic households and transient households will shift in favour of families again.

The kind of pastoral activity that has long been a feature of St Michael’s could become a feature of St Teilo’s again also. Albeit differently, St Teilo’s is equally as ready and open to varied community uses as St Michael’s is. Two mission minded congrsgations serving the same area deserve a new mission minded pastor to give them the support they need.

After so many years as a daughter church on the outskirts of the Parish, dependent on Curates coming and going every few years, there could have been great reluctance about the new demands of being a self supporting Parish, cutting the apron strings and moving on to independence, but this is not the case. The confidence is there, largely thanks to the energy and teaching which Jenny has offered. For this we must thank her.

St Teilo’s lost its independence becoming part of Central Cardiff, and its faithful few have striven to retain a sense of distinct identity and purpose, and to shape a new future for the church, despite discouraging setbacks. As a result it now serves Cardiff’s music education and performance needs in an unique way. It has a financial stability that enables the congregation, though small and seasonal to keep looking outwards, ready for welcome what unfolds in the future.

Thanks to the missionary vision of a previous pastor, and the few who responded and worked with him. These are two quite different ways of being church to combine in a new Parish – you might say chalk and cheese – it’s part of our cherished Anglicanism that we seek ways to live well together appreciating and benefiting from each others’ differences. Your new parish priest will, I hope and pray, be fit to rise to the challenge of leading both churches into a shared future.

We meet tonight to celebrate together, perhaps for the last time as the Benefice of Central Cardiff, before we set out on the paths appointed for us, by the Bishop’s call to mission, doing fully and freely what each congregation knows how best to do in our own settings, flourishing where we are planted. Of course there’ll be more meetings, to complete the necessary business of separation and re-establishment of our different parish structures. Coming together was for better or for worse, so too will separation. We can give thanks for many blessings over the past six years, and there will be many more blessings to celebrate in times to come, if we continue in trust to respond where our Bishop gives us the lead.

We don’t need to worry about set-backs, we’ll take them as they come, groan and struggle, adjust, compromise, reconcile, move on with our eyes, not even on the Bishop, but on Christ the Good Shepherd who goes before us. But what’s all this got to do with the feast of St Michael? Plenty to my mind.

Angels are spiritual beings with different missions from God to humankind, protecting, healing, announcing etc; just as we’re human beings with different missions from God to the world we live in. Michael, as the figure on the church’s east wall declares, symbolises the promise and hope of ultimate victory over evil - Christ’s victory over evil in human flesh, a victory Michael represents, in an order of reality above and beyond what we know. There could be no more safe or confident occasion on which to say farewells, not only to Jenny, but to start saying farewell each other, as we turn towards new tasks, not needing to look back, or regret anything except that this wonderful life is all too short to give God all the glory he deserves for the grace we’ve received in every step we take. Whichever way we go, we’ll meet again, in the workaday re-unions of life and witness in this city and then finally in the company of all the angels and saints, in the heavenly city, our true home and destination, where there will be no temples, no parishes, no diocese, no Representative Body of the Church in Wales, only God, only God, who will be all in all, the fulfilment of all our meaning and purpose.

Parting of the Ways

Within the space of this past week, the Parish Churchwardens and sub-Wardens unusually met twice, first with Archdeacon Bill Thomas, the diocesan Registrar David Lambert (a church lawyer, in case you didn't know) and the Bishop's Chaplain, Chris Smith, and secondly with Archbishop Barry Morgan. On both occasions the subject was how to create two parishes out of one, and bring to an end the Rectorial Benefice of Central Cardiff, founded six years ago, in order to create a team ministry to serve the central area.

I've worked in teams most of my ministry. Many of those I work with in the service of the city act as part of one team or another. Partnership is the buzzword in city development strategy and planning. I would have preferred to see the church creating larger teams and more effective working partnerships in order to serve people whose work experience is not too dissimilar. But clerical leadership prefers to go against the grain - to be counter cultural, you might say. This is a church buzzword nowadays, used without reference to the past and almost no justification, when I reflect on what 'counter culture' meant thirty odd years ago.

Anyway, don't look back, just keep going forward or die ... I have to facilitate an episcopal initiative (viz: dividing a successful working team of four churches), which I don't agree with, even though it's intended to set me and my new colleague Chris free to explore all the emerging possibilities of city centre mission and ministry at a time of accelerating change. (By the way, the big time demolition work has started. The city centre Ice Rink has gone, Toys 'r Us is next for the giant bulldozers.) Well, I'm free to say my piece, but I don't run the show. I'm only an actor, not the producer, so I have to make the most of whatever direction is given, or quit the set.

So, onwards and upwards ... which the home team did to their great credit, negotiating in the most constructive and collaborative way how to split the parochial area and organise the division of its assets. You can't quite call it an amicable divorce. It was more their trustful response to episcopal leadership, which I find hard personally to emulate in these times of schism, knowing too well that all of us professional pastors have feet of clay, and fall short of our own visionary aspirations and potential. The driving force behind the initiative and the response to it remains a desire to see a new priest serving the area as soon as possible, by whatever means the Bishop believes opportune. Creating a new Parish of Cathays out of Central Cardiff Parish means sacrificing revenue from the sales of unsuitable houses, in order to provide a new Vicarage. Sale promised a modicum of financial security, but it's more important to ensure there's a priest in the community.

I don't share the official version of how we should be doing mission any more. I dpon't think that smaller pastoral units will necessarily survive the course. In bigger teams, working together in the spirit of the Gospel, other members compensate for the 'weakest links'. Pulling together, 'all for one and one for all' make survival possible. But nobody seems to see it that way in the church right now, so we'll learn what's right by doing. I think we've lost the plot, and are fast becoming a 'church centred mission' rather than a 'mission centred church'. But maybe congregational survivors all over the place just feel happier with the former concept than the latter. I'm just grateful that despite my misgivings I end up able to give more time to St John's, which somehow, by divine grace, manages to be a 'mission centred church' no matter what leadership it gets, and despite the fact that much of its mission centres around the church building and the affection it retains in the heart of Joe Public.

It's a funny paradox really, but our raison d'être comes from the fact that we are a sacred space in the commercial heart of the city, visited by a thousand people a week, looking, seeking, connecting or puzzling with the mystery of faith represented both in our beautiful building and in the equally beautiful smiles and welcomes of our members. People come and go, they take what they can, or what they will from what we offer. They canot be dragooned into membership. We cannot impose any conditions on them. What we can do is work together for them in the hope that God touches their hearts, either despite or because of us. We don't know which, we just trust.
I wish more congregations across the city could have a chance to meet the public to the extent that we do, and be educated by the experience, as we are. Maybe working together would be less of a challenge subsequently.

The major policy decisions have been taken and future plans are moving towards action. The new Parish of Cathays comes into being on the first of January 2007, and becomes someone else's responsibility. I just hope and pray someone will be appointed as the new Vicar and it won't just be left in the hands of a series of caretaker clergy. Someone other than me will have to organise these arrangments. It's a nightmare of a job, as available locum clergy get fewer and fewer on the ground. But I shall worry until I see that those I have led and cared for over the past four years are happy and settled, without regrets.

First anniversary

It's a year to the day since I started this blog, on the anniversary of my ordination, except that I got it wrong last year. I was priested on 19th September 1970, Deaconed on 20th September 1969. Same place, same Bishop. That makes thirty seven years in public ministry, an amazing period of change. Even in those days there was a looming energy crisis and a looming environmental pollution crisis. Now more people know about the problems, which continue unabated, and don't yet have the whole world united in tackling them. In those days, the Cold War was being waged, and enough nukes to destroy the planet a thousand times over were still aimed at each other.
Nuclear stockpiles have been reduced, but the number of governments holding them has increased. Not exactly good for the future of the world, on top of the other concerns.

It was great to see a BBC web-page report of Archbishop Barry's criticism of the proposal to renew the British Trident submarine 'deterrent' programme. He's quite right. Trident is no longer justifiable in an era when threats to humanity arise without recourse to heavy engineering or high technology from people determined to blow themselves up to destroy others. Such hatred and contempt for life has its origins in deep fears about the worthlessness and meaninglessness of the lives people are compelled to endure through poverty, racism and injustice. It can't be put right by force, only by a paradigm shift in human relationships, by sharing more fairly our planetary resouces, freer exchanges, mutual consultations in decision making at every level of human existence. It's just that fear gets in the way.

One way or another there's been a pervasive climate of anxiety, real or imagined, throughout the world in the time my ministry has been exercised. Ever since the sixties, when I first read his books I've been sustained by Thomas Merton's analysis of the world. He was a leading advocate of contronting the folly of nuclear war. "The root of war is fear, fear of everything ..." he stated. The world into which Christ was born was also dominated by "the Great Fear", he wrote in his exposition of the nativity stories. Into the Great Fear comes the Great Joy of God's grace through the incarnate Word. Didn't Jesus say? "Do not be afraid ... I AM". St John summed it up. "There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear." That's what we all need to be working towards, by whatever means. That's how I've understood my life's work, so far.

There hasn't been much opportunity for me to reflect on the passage of time over these years. The present and the possibilities of the emerging future have always held my fascination. We are living in an era of uncertainty and confusion leading to more paradigm shifts, to changes in consciousness and the ways we interpret the world. But are we doing so in an age that has too much self-assurance and no longer enough humility and faith, I wonder? In a way this moment resembles the early twentieth century when Relativity and Quantum Physics were born, and many millions died in war. Many more then, compared to wars today. The new theories soon had a huge influence on how science was done and technology developed. Today, the consequential evolution of computers and their use, speeding up year on year, is leading to new social inventions, ways of working together, inventing and shaping the future, involving more participants than any other social movement in human history. Also shaping how wars are made, fought and ended.

Yet, the Great Fear still stalks the world. More than ever the Great Joy needs to be shared, so that it can be the determining influence that leads us away from annihilation by Mutually Assured Destruction, whether by an exchange of nukes, out of control climate change or the deadly embrace of a zealot with an explosive belt.

Fanatics of all kind are frightened people, inside and outside of religion. The church like every other known religious institution has its share of them. Sometimes it seems as if their numbers are growing, to the extent that they could overwhelm the rest, spread the infection of their fear everywhere. The old framework of moral and religious authority in the churches is breaking up, and occupying too much of our leaders' time and creativity. Their efforts are well intended but misplaced. I feel lots happier when my boss is challenging the ethics of defence policy, than when he's defending forms of institutional church well past their use-by date. I just wish we could do more creative work together on new forms for the future of the church, that empower and include, build community, challenge pious illusion, and build confident faith in fearless people. The world needs this too.

In a time of paradigm shift one has to live with confusion and contention, rival models for analysis and decision making. When the new comes it will surprise everyone, and expose all our weaknesses. But I suspect we're all terrified of being found lacking when called to account. The supreme example was, indeed, in the coming of Jesus, his teaching and his way of life, and the reaction to it. From him we learned openness to change, to be surprised by the new that embraces and transforms the old. From him we learn not to be afraid. How to face death and live to the full. He offered the paradigm shift in our way of self understanding, as human creatures, children of God. It's a pity not all of it has yet sunk in, and that much of our thought and reaction to life is still rooted in pre-Christian values.

The breakdown of the Anglican Communion seems imminent if we take seriously reports appearing on that eminently thoughtful blog Thinking Anglicans Should I be worried? No. I shall refuse to excommunicate anyone, and refuse to accept their excommunications. Welcome, acceptance of differences comes first every time, hard cases and all. For example, I'd rather the druggie didn't sit outside the church and beg for cash to buy a fix. I hate what he's doing to himself. But I won't engineer his removal, or punishment. We have to live uncomfortably with each other and the gulf between until we can learn how best to talk constructively, therapeutically with each other as human beings about things that really matter. Same with those 'orthodox' and the fundamentalist souls who can't accept gays. How can they re-learn what welcome and acceptance really means, when they seem to have forgotten? And how can I restrain my impatience and resentment for them?

Will conflicting opinions and beliefs lead to violence other than slander? That's my chief concern. Renouncing violence as a means to resolve disputes is far from universally accepted as a tenet of Christian faith. Theories of 'just war' soon degenerate into justifying just another war to stop violence, being cruel to be kind. And on it goes. We all have to go back to working on the fear, stop being afraid of disagreement and disunity. Stop being afraid of seeming like fools every time unbelievers play us off against each other in our differences, and make us look like childish idiots. Have we forgotten about being "...fools for Christ's sake."?

Is it that we can't accept others being different from us, because we can't really accept ourselves either?

There's so much work still needing to be done I resent having what seems like so little time left to do it in. Whole years rush by so quickly nowadays.

St James' passover

After a week of hasty final preparations, including mounting a history exhibition in both school and church, and the re-publication of a guide to the church building, we opened St James' doors for the first and last time for a European Heritage Open Day from ten till five, last Saturday, before celebrating the final Eucharist there, and closing doors first opened for worship in 1894.

In the news
On the Wednesday before, I fired off a few judiciously placed emails to the BBC and local press, announcing the event. Thankfully this drew a swift response, next day, including a front page article about further decline in church attendance, citing St James' closure as a case in point. We made the BBC TV Wales evening news, and I was invited to take part in a lunchtime BBC radio phone-in. All this media attention meant the news reached much further than a few posters on church and school notice boards. During the day over 200 visitors came into both church and school, to look at registers and school log books, as well as the exhibition.

The aisle of memory
Many visitors had either been baptized or married in St James'. Others had been 'regulars' in their youth before moving away. A few couples came with fity years of marriage behind them to walk the aisle together and count their blessings, as they put it. Two generations of one family came with their baptism certificates, looked up their register entries, then posed for a photograph. Many were pleased to have a new audience for their reminiscences of times past.

Questions, questions
Apart from mounting all the historic photo exhibits displayed (all the rest was history work from Tredegarville school children), my main contribution was to run the digital slide presentation I'd created from four dozen photos taken during the demolition of the church halls. It happened when most visitors were absent on holiday, and its passing also needed to be recognised because of its long past importance. The hall probably held as much memory as the church for those involved with music theatre presentations, the backbone of much social life of St James for decades before the seventies. Some reminisced at length about the old photographs of the assembled company on stage back in the heyday, and recalled the names of long gone companions for the record. When I wasn't listening to stories I was answering the same few questions about the future of the church and its furnishings time and time again over the course of six hours until I'd nearly lost my voice.

Those who came
The visitors were mainly over sixties, with a sprinkling of more recent church-leavers, present day school staff, parents and children. Over in the school hall, tea and biscuits were served most of the day, whilst visitors sat and leafed through the school log-books to see if they could find references to either themselves or schoolmates.
Chris had printed fifty revised church guides to sell, plus a souvenir colour edition for St James' church electoral members of thirty. IN the afternoon she had to rush over to the school photcopier and reprint another forty to meet unexpected demands. Nearly three hundred pounds was taken in sales and donations, an undetermined sum in collection at the service, plus an anonymous cheque for £150, received later. This financial bonus means we can renew attractively the content of the church notice boards to point enquirers to the school, and some money to put towards the cost of re-locating the font, the eagle lectern and the parclose screen from the Lady Chapel in coming months.

Back to our roots with style, and then quietly
The first school was built in 1871 and the first congregation grew from there through a 200 seater iron mission church to the present building. A missionary congregation in the educational milieu to start with. That's what 'StJames@TredegarvilleSchool' (our suggested new presentation style) will now become.
There were a hundred at the Eucharist. Many of the St James' people were in tears, and were comforted by other parishioners in a moving way. Archdeacon Bill Thomas preached with gentle strong resolve about following the risen Christ. Jenny and Chris led the Eucharist with serenity and radiance. I just sat there in the sanctuary, quite exhausted after my six hour P.R. marathon - so many questions, so few answers to offer, as yet. At the end we paraded with the lit Paschal Candle, across the newly cleared space where the church halls had been, into the school yard and then the hall, for the blessing of the new worship space and the dismissal of the congregation. It was a memorable occasion. Despite the sadness, the hope of resurrection was not extinguished. It was an end, but also a beginning, full of compassion and kindness.

StJames@TredegarvilleSchool
Next day, Sunday afternoon, I welcomed eleven people into the school hall, and used the Lady Chapel Altar and candlesticks moved the night before from church. We sang as best we could, and smiled and hugged. Paul, the Parish Rector's Warden came and joined us for the occasion. A quiet tower of strength he is, filling his new leadership role very nicely indeed. I was keen to take this service myself and give my colleagues time to recover from the palpable emotions of yesterday. I shed my tears at the AGM when the decision to close had to be agreed, an open admission of the failure to find the financial support needed to achieve our development plans. Having let go at that point, refusing to give up entirely, the decision to offer worship in the school had to be mine to make. What if nobody came? Well, that would be a sign that my offer was declined. In the event there were three churchwardens, the Head Teacher, one visitor to the city, two children and four adults, one of whom played the piano. I indulged myself and played the guitar as well. I haven't done that at a Eucharist I celebrated for more than a decade.

The right time
Some argue St James has been so weak for at least the past twenty years that it should have closed a long time ago. But, with such powerful and tenacious glory-day memories surrounding this once prestigious building on a landmark city site, it had to wait until a moment when community memory itself was losing its grip. For me, that moment arrived two years ago when no member of the congregation remembered it was the 110th anniversary of opening, so there was no special celebration to mark the passing of another decade. Memory loss and identity loss walk together. The hundredth anniversary had been marked by a week of special events. One decade later, there was no energy from within the congregation to do this. The clergy are easy scapegoats. "Why didn't you remind us? Isn't it your job" is the usual reproach. The clergy's priority is to remind others of what Christ has done for them, to help them celebrate their festivals and remembrances and find their spritual meanings through the life of faith. If they have nothing to recall or celebrate, Christ is still to be remembered and celebrated, first and last.

Finally, it was time to move on. At least, I hope and pray this will become clearer with the passage of time and the travail of re-building an education based worshipping community.

The land of uncertainties

Waiting to see it all in print
Just three months ago, the proposition of creating a new Conventional District of Cathays out of Central Cardiff Parish was mooted. There have been a few discussions since then by church committees, but little new from the Bishop or Archdeacon apart from a modified proposal to constitute Cathays as a proper Parish. Nobody has really explained to any of us what sort of difference this makes in practice. Whether we would understand the difference or find it relevant, I don't know. All parishioners want is to know what date their new pastor will be welcomed and start work. That's even more important than who is appointed.
Two important meetings between Parish and Diocesan officers will happen soon. One with the diocesan Registrar and Archdeacon, to arrange the legal instruments by which one Parish will be turned into two and boundaries set. The other will be with the Archbishop - a Q&A session about his vision for the situation and what is involved in this new development, practically and pastorally. As this initiative is his, I have to take the back seat. Soon, I will be leading only the city centre mission initiative, and the new born Parish of Cathays will be emerging under different leadership, and hopefully with new ideas.

Lot cast in a fair ground
In a way it would be better for both entities to have new leadership, and both start afresh, but I've only just got started after four years, finding openings to do useful things as an unofficial ambassador for the Church in Wales, as well as the Gospel of Christ in the world of government and commerce. The Archbishop is keen to encourage me to respond in whatever way I can. While I still worry about 'burn-out', and whether or not my health will cope, it's an honour to be entrusted (at my age) with such an irrresistible challenge. Yes, I wish I was forty five again, to have sufficient energy for what could be achievable.

Long-suffering laity
Our urban church communities have for the most part been accustomed for decades to welcoming new clergy as assistant curates, chaplains, priests-in-charge, with little or no choice about who comes, or how long they stay, ranging from two to five years. Turnover of clergy is proving more rapid in these times of contraction in church membershp. For many in the early years of ministry their first few jobs are stepping stones to greater responsibility, usually meaning out in the suburbs, or in a commuter town or village. Parishioners usually welcome them without wearying, accept patiently being part of the process. For that I take my hat off to them. Incumbents of multi-church or large city parishes tend to stay the longest and provide the continuity. They also tend to be of rising seniority, more reluctant to move, once reaching the age of eligibility for possession of a free bus pass.

Restlessness assuaged
I've always been restless, yet have managed to stay on average seven years in places I've worked, long enough to see through a complete phase in community life. I'm still eager for things new, and for once I have met my match in the heart of Cardiff. It's been four years on non-stop change for me. Never a dull moment in the Parish, in the city centre. Enough to assuage my fiercest hunger. In the remaining years before I retire, I'll be an observer participant in the redevelopment of the capital's commercial heart, challenged to find and keep a nice quiet dull stable background routine at the heart of relentless movement and change - not to mention the comings and goings of fellow pastors and re-shapings of the insitutions of the church as a result of down-sizing. The challenge is getting my pace right, knowing that not every stimulus requires instant response.

Owning up to our sufferings
It concerns me greatly to observe the on-going procession of clergy struggling with ill-health, taking early retirement, breaking down, even dying prematurely, and know how at the root of the health issue is people not noticing themselves being ground down by their burden of pastoral concerns, driven to despair by indifference, or the flight into trivia or conflict by people they deal with. It's even difficult to enter into open debate about these matters, because it's deemed as being too 'personal', or doing one's laundry in public. The church is called by baptism into solidarity with Christ in a suffering world. We're not good at owning our sufferings, for fear of being regarded as self-pitying, maybe. Denial carries the risk of not being open to receive the healing we need.

This summer of change

Where did August go?

A month already since my last post. Was I busy or something? I'm not really sure. Everyday life has been pretty routine one way or another, except that both my colleagues were on leave in the first two weeks, which meant there was nobody around to discuss things with. There's been a few special events, concerts, and a mission fayre raising nearly £1,100 one busy sunny Saturday at St John's, but nothing too frantic, apart from in the Tea Room, where valiant volunteers have been coping somedays with long queues of expectant customers.
This summer there has been a significant rise in the number of visitors to St John's. This must be partly due to the publication of the Centenary Town Trail booklet, which guide visitors to places worth visiting, marking the pavement outside each with a special plaque to identify it. Early in July, we received a box with a couple of hundred English copies and a couple of dozen translation copies in French, German and Welsh. These disappeared off our literature rack in a month, and we had to ask for more. They vanish at the rate of half a dozen a day, and our church guide leaflets vanish sometimes so quickly that the racks need replenishing two, three times a week. Happily we bought a new photocopier for the church and can now replenish in situ.
From these small telltale signs, I'd guesstimate that we're getting over a thousand visitors a week this summer. That's what we normally get in the run up to Christmas when there's a charity card shop operating, and it's double what we were getting last summer. This year our first serious efforts to make the church better known in the realm of tourism publicity (i.e. we invested money in the coty's marketing programme for the first time). It has certainly shown pleasing results. It's not just about culture or history either. We offer in our literature rack four Christian enquiry leaflets which I wrote several years ago, the beginning of a series I have yet to complete. These have been taken up in double the numbers per week usually expected, in line with the overall visitor increase, rather than a sudden upsurge of interest in Christian questions. Come to think of it, I've not posted these leaflets on the parish website. I must do this now......
Here's the link

Demolition days
Now, where was I? August has seen more city centre building closures in preparation for the three year redevelopment programme. The Public Library, barely 25 years old, yet due to vanish soon, stands empty. It has been re-located just the other side of the main railway line in quite a smartly done up collection of large yellow portakabins arranged as temporary housing for stock, plus a lending facility, all destined to last until the new 'iconic' building is constructed (four years or so?). This will open next week. The Ice Rink, to be re-located in the Sports Village to be constructed down in Cardiff Bay, will get temporary housing until the Sports Village project gets fully under way, in a pupose built arena imported from Finland. Within days of final closure the old rink was being stripped, them demolished from the back, out towards the main street. Soon there'll be no more than a hole, and lots of modern memories. It too was built only 25 years ago.
The 29^th August, when the church commemorated the Martyrdom of our parish patron, St John the Baptist, was also the date when, for the first time since 1932, you could look past the west front of St James’ Parish Church, from Newport Road, and see Tredegarville church school, on the south side of the building, behind a pile of rubble following the demolition of the church hall. It’s a different school you see today, as the Victorian buildings were demolished and rebuilt in the 1960s. The poshly named 'Guildhall' was built in 1933, and used in various ways as a both Parish hall and school building, until the new school was erected.

Forgotten history quest
Nobody seems to recall when the dingy looking Guildhall Annex was added. Also an eyesore. It's gone too. I'd like to find out more, as we’re gathering information to enable the whole story of School and Parish Church at Tredegarville to be told when we have a European Heritage Open Day at St James’ on 16^th September. Church records, will be available for inspection in church, and school log books in school. I've been researching these for points of interest over the past 145 years to mount an exhibition chronicling the journey since the early 1860s when a Parish educational mission started on the site which then became a proper school. It later developed into a ‘church planting’ project. St James was built and opened in 1894.
Mission through education was the means to building a church of ‘living stones’, a thriving community of faith. Nowadays there’s no more than a handful of ‘living stones’ left. We haven’t yet discovered how to rise to the missionary challenge of the 21^st century. But we do have a great model from our own parish history to guide us, and two outstanding Parish schools that are a vital sign of Christian new life. Multi-racial, multi-cultural, including children of many gifts, abilities and disabilities as equals who learn together and build together with their teachers a community of learning with faith at its heart – faith in God, faith in others. Bricks and mortar, the space occupied, are means to this end.
In their neglected dilapidated state, the Guildhall and Annex had become an eyesore wedged between a dignified Victorian monument, and the shiny new surfaces of Admiral House, transformed from unused office space, to apartments for 140 people. Their demolition relieves the Parish of a burden. It makes space to enlarge the school’s playground, and provides extra vehicle access and parking for the church. How much more pleasing to the eye it all will be once the job is finished. The relief at this step is immense.
Chris, my new curate, working with speed and enthusiasm has edited and updated the St James' history guide with new pictures and extra text bringing it all up to date. She's desk-top published an edition to make souvenir copies for people when they gather to mourn the closure of St James' and mark the move into the school for worship, on Heritage day. It's a bit ironic. Some might say it's rubbing salt into the wound to show off a glorious building and its history, then shut the doors on it. But nobody wants to pay to keep it open, either for worship or for socail purposes, as I have found out painfully this past two years. But, in moving back worship into the school, we are returning to where the church community in West Adamsdown first began.

Mighty incompetence
Part of the answer to where August went is the intense worrying produced by the necessity of getting the gas supply cut off from the mains to allow the demolition team to work. For four weeks, British Gas held us to ransom from mid-July, promising on four separate occasions to show up and do the job, which we'd promptly paid £250 for, (in advance, before they would even consider scheduling the job), involving taking out the gas meter and terminating the supply at the main pipe. On three occasions success was sabotaged by the inability of the three companies involved in managing aspects of the gas supply to pass accurate information between them. It held up progress on demolition for the best part of three weeks. At last, it’s over, and new boundary fencing has been erected. The re-surfacing of the playground will now have to happen in the first week of term. The city centre re-development team have all my sympathy!

Stones hit Cardiff

Kitted out for action
Yesterday, Clare and I spent the day visiting an aunt in hospital in Exeter, another city in the throes of having its commercial heart rent asunder by redevelopment. Fortunately it has an effective Park and Ride scheme which brought us within a mile of our destination. It might have been half a mile, but our bus driver's ability to relay useful information nowhere near matched the sociability of Cardiff Bus employees. Nevertheless our visit was not marred by delays or queues of traffic in any way, and we arived home in time for us to eat together, then for me to don my new hi-viz jacket with St John Ambulance shoulder flashes, and 'Chaplain' written on the back and left pocket, and head for the Millennium Stadium.

With St John's First-Aiders
The Rolling Stones were giving a concert, and a team of St John Ambulance volunteers from all over South Wales was on hand to support the professional paramedics and Council employed security stewards in the hundreds to ensure eveyone had a safe and enjoyable evening. Lack of fitness and work pressure has meant that I haven't done a pastoral tour of the Stadium in support of First Aiders on duty for the best part of a year. Every time I do, I come away promising myself I'll do this more often. The teams are welcoming, and there are always unusual engagements with people of all ages who are there, volunteers of duty, only because the event is on, whether sport or pop music, and their vocation is to be among those who are, as the St John publicity strapline puts it 'The First to Care'.

Doing a tour of ambulances on duty when there's an open air event in Coper's Field behind the Castle, or around the Civic Centre is a lot easier. The security screen and the location make it more accessible, since all this happens just half a mile from my calm grassy privileged doorstep in one of thirty remaining residences closest to City Hall, the Law Courts and Central Police HQ. It goes with the job. We don't deserve a such place with Cardiff's urban elite. I'm still amazed at how often (4-5 times a year) the streets serving the heart of the Capital's posh administrative quarter are transformed into a plebian playground, with funfairs, stages and sound systems so loud that the air in our secluded section reverbrates until after midnight. Longer standing/suffering residents say it used to go on until the wee small hours ... I wonder, given how regulated and 'safe' much of this 'fun' is in practice.

Millennium Stadium in business
The audience was 'all-age', in the sense understood by ambitious clergy who want to gather the whole of their flock under one roof at one time for a one-size-fits-all liturgical experience. Babies in wheelchairs with mums, dads, aunties and uncles and grandparents were in evidence. Since I became a grandfather, of course, all grandparents seem to have gotten younger. The football pitch part of the arena was covered by seating, save for a central channel which linked with the stage ... a section of stage travelled fifty yards out into the arena, demonstrating the high quality of contemporary wireless technology sound systems.
I also noticed, since my last Stadium visit, fellers hanging out in the service area several storeys of concrete below ground availing themselves of powerful ubiquitous wireless access technology to send emails and surf the Web with their laptops. A new phenomenon. It struck me because it's only fifteen months since a WiFi hotspot was set up in St John's church to overcome the difficulty of accessing external signals through four foot thick stone walls. And here we were 20 feet under concrete, and people were getting usable signals. Or were they just writing offline and posing?

The show itself
The Stones' produced polished entertainment. The stage, as well as the mandatory video screens and long catwalks into the audience, had four tiers of boxes above stage for privileged participants to watch the show at £500 a throw, unless you had a mate in the biz. A hugely sophisticated piece of marketing, exportable to any part of the world, in a fleet of huge trucks. The commodity? Globalised entertainment, backed with CDs and DVD sales of performances. Four stars, a backing band of another dozen, then scores in the stage crew, marketing and finance people running into hundreds, on top of all the Stadium employees, bar staff, security, and the thirty odd St John's volunteers. This truly is entertainment as heay industry, very impressive in its organisation as well as its technology. Like other heavy industries, it was best experienced behind ear plugs.
Mick Jagger's act was formidable, considering he's my age. But then, he is skinny, and earns his living through all the gymnastics he performs as part of his musical interpretation. I detected some quite rough playing from the orginal band, within the framework of the polished backing band and singers. However the audience seemed to know all the tunes ... well I also knew two thirds of them. However, I never managed to master all the words, so I still don't know what most of them are about, even after watching the videos meant to interpret/promote their songs. I can say this without feeling ashamed nowadays.

Uncomfortably the same
It was a good fun evening, nothing scary, predictable really. I saw Mick on TV, years ago. This was my first time to see him live. Some people I listened to heard him live 20 years ago as well. What struck me was that his energetic (meant to be) provocative body language hadn't changed much in forty years. The songs were still unsentimental, just as frenetic, slick, delivered more with the passion of a gymnast than an artist, if consistency is a benchmark, stuck in a past we may fancy re-visiting, but in reality have outgrown. A bit like some kinds of High Church ceremonial.

Gimme Blues not Circus
When I think of Clapton, BB King, Chuck Berry, I recall artists growing old, still moving on musically, full of self-depreciating humour. Something of the richness of their journey is expressed in communication with their audience. If anything, Mick and co are great rock 'n roll circus, not Blues, alive and well, like Gospel music always ready to deliver the old stories, fresh, relevant, personal and timely to the here and now. I didn't come away wanting more, that's for sure.
I love 20th century pop music as much as I do opera. Thankfully opera isn't circus either. When we go to a Welsh National Opera performance of any kind at the Other Place (the Millennium Centre), I can guarantee it'll disturb or inspire me more thoroughly. Whether I know the work or not, the art of interpretation delivers a certain freshness with whatever music is on offer - yeah, a bit like Gospel and ... the Blues.
As my old mentor Professor Hollenweger used to say, people most need Good News, not Good Olds.