Mailing deadline achieved

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Today the final version of the Spiritual Capital research project survey questionnaire went into the post, nearly 270 envelopes in the end, to all the religious communities for which an address could be found in the City and Borough of Cardiff. Thanks to the hard labours of Roy Thomas who has been managing the project for us over the past six months, I've had nothing to do with the hard practicalities of doing a big mail-shot that I've been party to setting up. This is the first, time I've not had to manage it myself I recall, when I look back over the number of mass mailings I've done over the year - back to my time in USPG circulating over 600 parishes across Wales, parishioner mailing lists and so forth.

There's less need for things like this today, since it's become possible to use the internet to make enquiries and distribute information. Mind you, I just hate those little pop-up surveys which appear and block my view of an article I'm trying to scan quickly. The monthly diocesan distribution of church publicity materials is now done via the diocesan website to save paper, and people can ask for hard-copies if they are not web users. This doesn't prevent tons of ecclesiastical junk mail from others arriving through the post however - people selling furniture for church halls, maintenance equipment, vestment catalogues, various missionary societies, charity appeals - especially at this time of year. All this has to be sorted through before binning or reading/passing on/using. Our survey adds to this mountain of paper.

I only hope that recipients realise that this envelope is a 'one-off', and that a reply will be beneficial to the position of all Cardiff's religious communities when the research is publicised next year.

Creation in the midst of desolation

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I'm posting some new links tonight, representing the outcome of discussions and bits and pieces of work I've done in recent weeks. These relate to the CDF funded research project, for which we now have a small team of University Research workers in place, preparing for the fieldwork to be done between September and December. In order to publicise what we're doing, I've created two simple website, a blog that chronicles the stages of project development, and another blog that will be the collecting point for stories and raw case study material to feed in to the researchers.

Working with Roy, who is managing the project on behalf of the Steering Group, is proving very stimulating because he sees many more angles than I do of the whole picture, and at the same time is as keen to prosecute the cause of getting the contribution of all religious communities to civil society taken much more seriously than it is locally.

Between our efforts and those of the Gweini research project, now in full swing, I hope that a proper appraisal of the 'social and spiritual capital' generated by faith-communities will lead to some changes of attitude on the part of civil society. Too many seem stuck in a mindset that belongs to the past, where it is presumed religious people all stick to the kind of beliefs and behaviour that Richard Dawkins so devoutly and enthusiastically labours to discredit.

Actually, the work I've been doing on the side gives great cheer on a day like today, when I had to play caretaker at St James' for a couple of hours, to give access to the contractors who are going to be removing the font to the school and the reredos down to St Theodore's Port Talbot, now that all the permissions are in place. One of my tasks was to shift half a dozen large display panels from church over to school. They were taken down last September and used to mount the exhibition of school and church history we prepared for the closing weekend of the church. I took them down ready for removal, and they've stood propped up by the door, still covered with exhibition material, ever since. Nobody bothered to come and fetch them. The church still has lots of old hymn and prayer books, altar frontals, and stacks of dismantled pews which we failed to re-cycle. There simply hasn't been enough people, or enough interest to clear the place properly. It's been too painful.

I'm just hoping and praying that someone with the vision and energy will come along and see the potential of the building as a community arts centre. Over the past year, several different groups have taken a look at the place with interest, but have been non-committal, perhaps because it wasn't yet definitely up for grabs', so to speak.

I wait to be surprised.

Change in view at 'God on Mondays'

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Due to our holiday in Corsica, today was the first 'God on Mondays' during this half term, spent telling the story of St John the Baptist. This coming weekend I'm away and not back until Monday night, leaving just one more opportunity before the end of term school service, telling the story of St James the Great. Our parish 'heroes'.
Both were martyrs in the proper sense of the word, dying rather than killing others for the sake of God's truth. How I hate that perversion of language so commonplace in the Arab world. I am not persuaded by that semantic arguments on this. Martyrs witness at the cost of their own lives to the truth of God. If suicide bombers witness to anything it is to be demonic belief that might is right, that violence can redress injustice - this is the opposite of what has stood throughout twenty centuries of Gospel faith.

I hope that church school children at least will grow up with the right ideas.

Next term a significant number of our God on Mondays regulars will be moving on to secondary school. I'm going to need to rethink what we are doing and consult about how to attract the interest of a new wave of people to join in. Things change. It's been going two years now.

The faith communities research project moves forward slowly. The Steering Group appointed by the City Centre Churches Together met for a second time tonight. Our University sociology researchers start work in earnest on 1st July. I'm feeling less neurotic about it all now that more people are involved, even if progress is slow.