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.

What if the Pope came to Minny Street?

Friday to Saturday evening I spent with a bible study group from Pontyclun Parish, who invited me to lead their annual retreat focussing on the Acts of the Apostles. This took place at Trefeca out in the Powys countryside, an hour and a half north of Cardiff. This was once the home of Hywel Harris, one of the great Welsh language preachers of the 18th century Methodist movement in Wales. Trefeca now houses the well apppointed conference centre of the Presbyterian Church of Wales. I had been there for ecumenical missionary meetings twenty years ago. It was pleasing to find the place as tranquil and beautiful as it ever was, and to be there with mission as the centre of attention once more.

While waiting for the others to arrive, I browsed the Western Mail, and found in an article measuring one square inch at the top of a column an announcement that the Arcbishop of Canterbury was due to speak in Minny Street Welsh Independent Chapel, Cathays at 10h30 on Sunday morning. Minny Street is just around the corner from St Teilo's in Flora Street, one of the four churches of Central Cardiff Parish. This was the first I had heard of it. Elsewhere in the news I learned that +Rowan was being honoured by his former secondary school on Saturday, so it was unlikley to have been an error. One of the retreatants, a lay preacher of that denomination, confirmed that he knew +Rowan was under invitation to speak there, but couldn't confirm the date. What a surprise!

Well, actually a bit of an embarrasment if the truth is to be told. Had I missed out on an important circular, or a memo or an invitation? The leader of the Anglican Communion coming to a church in the next street to the place I would, at the same time, be leading one of my four Sunday services of the day. Did everybody else know? Would the congregation be there when I arrived for the service or would they have gone around the corner to hear the Archbishop, or maybe just to wave a flag or two?

I didn't let these discomforting ponderings intefere with a glorious evening journey home, but on arrival I hastily opened my post and went through my inbox in search of signs that I had overlooked a vital message. But there was nothing there.

Next morning, the faithful dozen were at St Teilo's as usual. Nobody had seen that square inch of newsprint I'd read, but someone said it had been harder to park than usual - extra cars in Flora Street, people speaking Welsh emerging from them, headed away from our church. After the Eucharist a handful ventured around to Minny Street to see if anything was going on there, but all was shut. The congregation had dispersed by that time.
Madonna performed to 59,000 in the Millennium Stadium that same evening. Several full pages of text and photos covered the event in advance. The streets filled with provocatively dressed fans from lunchtime until way past Evensong - a nicely festive atmosphere, quite different from football match days, when the centre feels more like a war zone.

The contrast between the visits of these two media celebrities couldn't have been more stark. But I daresay that if Pope Benedict had come to Minny Street Cathays, he'd have got as much coverage as Madonna, if not more. AND the church's media machine would have made sure we knew well in advance.

Quite apart from the discourteous lack of regard for local Christian communities, who might just welcome an opportunity to support and encourage such a distinguished visitor to their locality (even at a distance), the poverty of communication exposes here the virtual absence of meaningful ecumenical relationships between local urban churches in Cardiff, and across the language and cultural divide.

The need to encourage networking by simply letting people know what's going on is hardly covered by issuing a few press releases that get so little attention. Our Anglican leaders fret publicly about the threat of forthcoming international schism, while their media teams unwittingly help perpetuate, rather than challege the isolation of local church communities and the divisions between them, acting as if they didn't matter. A funny way to maintain a 'household of faith'. However, I musn't forget that in the real world 'oversight' means omission, not pastoral supervision as it does in the church.

Not everyone headed for Madonna on Sunday night. After such an intense and busy weekend I opted to renounce the opportunity to join the St John's Ambulance duty first aid team at the Millennium stadium. That's a pleasant duty regardless of what's on in the arena - game or concert. But it required more stamina than I felt I had, so I went home for some peace and quiet rest.

On my way past City Hall after Evensong, I heard the exuberant sound of live Banghra drumming coming from within, and saw women dressed in festive sarees making their way in - presumably for a reception after a wedding - it's a popular venue for Cardiff Asian community celebrations. I hope they all had a good evening - Madonna fans, wedding guests, and ponderers upon the words of +Rowan, our long-suffering local boy made good.

Demolition time

Within a week or so, the familiar if ugly profile of the church halls on the site of St James’ Parish church will be no more than a memory. Demolition started on Monday last, quite a task on an enclosed site. You can’t just bring in a bulldozer and push the building over.
First there’s a lot of dismantling to be done. Electric and telephone wiring, water and gas pipes have to be removed – once you’ve gone through a telephone obstacle course to find out who’s responsible for cutting off supplies, removing meters and sealing off the mains. The weeks leading up to this have been a nightmare of negotiation and bureaucratic steps required to give the project managers freedom to work.
A significant amount of responsibility for this process tracked itself back to me as incumbent of the Parish. I can't say that anything in my theological college training or experience in thirty five years of ministry provided me with the expertise to make light work of this. I daresay the majority of lay leaders in the local church would want to say the same.
It’s probably more complex to demolish a building than to erect one. After the service supplies, there’s the partition walls and ceilings, doors and windows to be removed, drains to be sealed off, sinks and toilets to be taken out. It took hours to remove equipment and furniture before the demolition team arrived. The first thing they discovered was that we’d forgotten about the roof void – full of seats (some broken, some never used, brand new, over-ordered a deace or more ago), also large children’s play toys (absorbed into the next-door school’s stock, fortunately). The demolition team do their job painstakingly. with care. There’s so much for them to think about , to ensure work doesn’t damage surrounding buildings, pollute the environment, or endanger the public.
We didn't have the money to repair the halls. Several months ago the company redeveloping the neighbouring tower block into apartments offered (by way of compensation to the school and church for a year's noise, pollution and disruption) to demolish the halls, then re-surface and re-fence the areas covered for school playgrounds. It was a handsome offer. The outcome will greatly enhance the sites of school, church and apartment block. Turning the offer into a reality proved a little more complex than anticipated, but at last the job is under way!
So many people have over the past century of the life of these hall buildings invested time and energy in them. When they ceased to have any value as a meeting place, their users moved on or the groups disbanded. Evidence of their presence is left behind for others to clear up. They take their memories and their regrets with them. Their junk is left to go in the first of many giant skips that take stuff off to the nearest landfill - office furniture, old typewriters, computer monitors, a dead video player, endless broken chairs and desks, punctured footballs, and table tennis table.
The halls stood on the site where the first iron mission church was erected on the site in 1878. After the present church was built and opened in 1894, the hall buildings were erected. They served ‘senior school’ pupils at Tredegarville church shcool for fifty years. Following a fire in the school, they were pressed into service as a dining room and classroom area until rebuilding was complete, then returned to Parish use as ‘the Guildhall’. The premesis was home for many years to an operatic and drama society, until this moved on and the long spiral into decline of both church and community took place. The funeral rites for this dead community amenity are left to a harrassed cleric and churchwardens, and a dozen brawny suntanned guys in hard hats and hi-viz jackets.
We’ll get used to the empty space once new railings and gates enclose an expanded school yard, revealing the lines of the school, sparkling with the everyday vitality of work with children. All who lived and grew up with the Guildhall will regret its passing. There’ll be more regrets when St James’ church closes next month. Thankfully it won’t be demolished. We're all hoping that it can be leased or sold to a new owner sympathetic with the aesthetic qualities of this landmark buildings and its part in twentieth century city history.
Much use could still be made of St James’ church by community, school or Parish, but nobody so far, seems willing to raise or give the £100,000 needed to repair, adapt and an extra £100,000 needed to develop the running of the building over the next five years. That’s the cost of a house in some parts of Cardiff these days. But it’s money nobody is willing to spend. If we can’t, or won’t come up with the price of using it, we are destined to lose it. Sentiment is worthless unless it materialise in action. ‘Be doers of the Word not hearers only’ said St James’ in his Epistle general. How sad his advice has not been heeded. God forgive us all.

The media circus comes to church

Getting all dressed up
Thursday morning I was at St John's by nine, and soon after the BBC film crew vehicles started to arrive, plus the team dedicated to 'dressing' the church for the purpose of filming. The mis en scène, for the opening scenes of this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special edition, was to be in a church adorned for the festive season. The elegant fifteenth century pillars were draped from top to toe in spirals of shiny red satin cloth, and kitchy plastic vines (?). The young man tasked with this took his life into his hands eight times at least, mounting a 15 foot ladder to cast his drapes and vines out and around the pillars. A Health and Safety nightmare, but not for us, since the Beeb had charge of its own employees. But as the guy was old enough to be my son, my heart was in my mouth anyway.
Antique style lanterns on poles were added to a selection of pew ends of the main aisle for a bridal walk - a mighty fire and safety hazard in the real world, and more plastic flowers and vines installed, not to mention a couple of super iron standing candelabra I wished they'd forget to take away.
By evening the building looked the epitome of bad Italian ecclesiastical taste. In TV-land the church where the drama is set was meant to be somewhere in Chiswick, London, not Parma or Palermo. TV producers are omnipotent it seems. They can violate the norms of taste and culture with impunity. Then the punters watch it on TV and start demanding the church be dressed up like that for their nuptials. It's a bit like 'You may kiss the bride', which features in no known traditional or modern Christian liturgical text but has insinuated itself into the action as people see it in Hollywood movies.
All our church notice boards were taken down and stashed away out of sight. All evidence of context erased. No Christmas tree, however, and no alternative noticeboard was erected. These were to be digitally added later in a cyber studio. If I'm to suspend disbelief for a bit of sci-fi entertainment, I'd prefer everything else was as authentic as possible ... I wonder if Chriswick turned down this unique video opportunity?

Tea and sympathy
The church Tea Room stayed open for business. Customers were meant to come in only through the churchyard instead of having the usual choice of two entrances to get there. As it was a nice day, and a University Graduation ceremony day at St David's Hall just down Working street from the church, there was a steady flow of business, though very little of it from the theatre technicians beavering away all around the building. One proud 'nice' family of a graduate hi-jacked a table meant for customers in the churchyard, and downed two bottles of Champagne there, leaving the bottles for us to throw away. I wonder if they saw that in a TV programme too?
The set dressers seemed to get through the day on paper cupfuls from Café Nero over the way, and pasties from the shop opposite the West end tower. Some folk just aren't spiritually ready for decent bone china cups (bought at auction), home made soups and those cakes-to-die-for that make our little enterprise so valued by Cardiffians and people from around the world.
Several church members turned up to act as 'welcomers' ( also known as ' church minders'). I printed them nice little official badges, which they wore with pride as they chatted up crew members and fielded visitors. Some walked straight past the rather dopey Beeb security hirelings, unaware of the goings on in church, the variety of trip hazards, not to mention the guy tottering atop the ladder. Some were disconcerted and annoyed as they'd come seeking peace and quiet. Most took it in good part, appreciating being greeted and informed by a church member, shown a little of the building and sharing a little of the excitment of the occasion. The usual handful of 'regulars' showed for the 11h00 Eucharist, which took place, a little tensely amidst the hustle and bustle of the moment.

All systems 'go'
Thurday evening and early Friday morning, all the cameras and recording equipment arrived, and the cameras were rolling by 8h00 recording Phil Thomas, our Organist's hands playing .... oh no!!! Not the traditional incoming Bridal March from Löhengrin, but the traditional outgoing Wedding March from Mendelssohn, to accompany the entry of the Bride. The producer decided it was 'brighter'. I'm glad the film is set in fictional Chiswick. We don't do such 'vain things fondly invented' in Central Cardiff wedding services.
Chris, my new Voluntary Deacon came Thursday afternoon, and again on Friday her day off, to share in the meeting and greeting. As a Doctor Who fan this was a treat for her. She was in her element watching the 'takes', chatting with people. The scenes shot didn't include the Doctor, but rather a key story character played by a comedienne I'd not heard of before called Catherine Tate. I consider my ignorance of media personalities to be a pastoral gift. It means one can deal with every human being equally. No more, no less. What else can anyone ask for?

Confession time
Well, the truth will out, I gave up watching TV, apart from news and current affairs some years ago. Game shows and reality stuff are insulting to viewers and participants. Most drama I find too brutal or sordid and leaves me feeling more depressed about life than actual reality does. Speech and music, and a bit too much surfing suffices to keep me up to speed these days. Radio Drama has much better pictures. I hate the contrived illusions of video world and pity the generations growing up who know little better. Thus, I haven't watched any of the 21st century re-incarnations of the Doctor Who show. But, if they don't make unreasonable moral demands, I don't mind the modern illusionists using the church, so long as they pay enough to help us keep this building open as a sanctuary of prayer, encounter and hospitality for the rest of the year. One day these things will be as popular again as TV 'entertainment' is now.

Prayer in the midst of life's illusions
Anyway, back to the story. The Tea Room couldn't open on Friday as it was needed to prepare the stars for their appearances. We were well compensated, needless to say. I was consoled by the fact that several of the regular Tea Room volunteers came to join the midday Eucharist congregation, tucked tightly into the sacristy to leave the rest of the building free for uninterrupted filming. It was the only compromise made to filming apart from restricting church access.
All the Friday 'regulars' showed up, plus those freed from serving food and drink upstairs. Fifteen of us, bonded in worship by an unusual occurrence, and blessed by doing what we love best, no matter what else is happening around us. The last time a celebration in a different setting had quite such a satisfying impact on me was with a youth group around a boulder in a Valasian alpine pasture seven years ago. Again it was gratifying to see members of the church 'home team' just being there for people, being recognised and accepted.

Who is the real thing?
There were sixty 'extras' on site for filming, all dressed in style for a nuptial outing. They were used in different ways for different angles and only occasionally were all on the set at one time, so there were a lot hanging around at any time, waiting to be called, and we got to chat with them, and find out how many different walks of life they came from. At one moment I was amused, sitting outside in the churchyard chatting, to realise that cameras were being trained on me through the railings, by someone assuming I was an actor. Both Chris and I sporting our clerical gear were from time to time subjected to the question: "Are you an actor or the real thing?" It's an interesting question if you're the 'real thing' and you're acting the role of pastor and welcomer, but it's not the same as "Are you paid by the BBC?" There was an actor playing the cleric in the script. Chris learned he was a lay minister in a London Anglican Parish, commissioned to help distribute Holy Communion in his home Parish. Yes, there is a difference between reality and illusion, but it takes a bit of disciplined thinknig to make sure the difference between the two is always maintained. How good are we at doing this in the world of many virtual realities, I wonder?

Aftermath
The day's filming ended almost to schedule. Richard, our bell tower captain went upwards and fiddled the tower clock's hands to instructions issued over a walkie talkie, so that the movement of the hands could be filmed. A special elevating platform vehicle was brought in to film this. Once the work was done, the crew had problems stutting it down. Itz seems the accellerator stuck open, creating huge volumes of noise, and driving away customers from Piazza Italia opposite the church. Then the extending arm dropped slowly out of control on to an (empty, thankfully) table. Apparently the lorry from the hire company meant to pick up and return this vehicle turned up punctually and went away empty because the crew were slightly delayed - profitable for somebody no doubt - so, the platform had to be taken around into Working street and parked until it was collected after the weekend. Fine, except that the arm with the platform on was parked over the church railings, within a metre of a priceless window and a turret capable of giving lead thieves easy access to the church roof.
By the time filming was over, I was at home trying to re-focus on getting ready for Sunday. Around ten at night I remembered there were things I had forgtten to bring home with me from church, so I popped in the car and went down to find this platform compromisingly parked. On the way home I calle din Central Police station to ask them to keep an eye on it till Monday. Fortunately it was plumb in line with the surveillance camera on the Quuen's Arcade roof, so I slept soundly. And I got a call from Central on Monday to check all was well. One nice spin-off from this was seeing a guy I knew on night duty reception in Central Police station (a thankless task Friday nights). He's someone I know from St John's. He brings his elderly mother to church every other week, as his work shifts permit, but had never volunteeed that he worked for the Police. Now I know, and appreciate the effort he makes. Silver linings abound.

Decisions decisions

Excuses
Blood pressure check up first thing Monday morning - the worst time in the week after a long hard Sunday. It was down, but still not as 'normal' as the Doc would like it to be. He is being very pastoral towards me and trying to understand the pressures and demands. But then life has far from returned to being normal. Coping with crisis just goes on and on.

I was supposed to go on a (mandatory) Leadership Training Course run by the diocesan Continuing Ministerial Education team during the daytime Monday to Thursday, but the week's diary was out of control before I got the details (late) of where and when, so I had to send an apology. Pity really, as I'd decided I was going to spend the four days protesting that I was tired of being in 'church leadership', and would happily hand over all my 'leadership' responsibilities to someone with more energy and competence, in order to return to a simple laid-back life of prayer and pastoral encounter.

Anyway, it wasn't to happen. I couldn't even get someone to take my place to celebrate the four regular weeday Eucharists, and I wasn't going to cancel them if I could help it. I wasn't going to give up playing guitar for 'God on Mondays' either - it's a precious moment of meeting with families finding what church can mean outside the conventional expectation.

Permissions
There was a Tredegarville school governors' meeting, straight after 'God on Mondays' at which I had formally to seek permission to hold Parish worship services in the school, once St James' is closed down. Not everyone is happy about what we propose. There are anxieties which arise from failure to recognise that we are trying to care for people who are outside the existing congregation, plus those of the congregation who have stayed loyal but do relish being welcomed by near neighbour churches, and losing touch with each other an the fellowship of their distant youth. Anyway, we don't know where this venture will lead, and won't unless we give it a try.
I was contacted by the Representative Body's Properties Office to inform me that it was my duty to put in a request for planning permission in relation to the tidy-up works planned for two weeks hence at St James' which will give the school more play area and a secure boundary. I thought this was routinely done when the church want through its faculty procedure, but apparently not. This was something special to do with the transfer of a strip of land a few feet wide and fifty feet long from one Church in Wales organisation to another. City Planning would be interested - interested in what? A theoretical and internal change of ownership of a gap between buildings filled with rubbish, excrement, occasional needles and dossers, sordid enough to be mentioned in a modern novel about Cardiff low-life. Just the thing to make my blood pressure soar.
I got on to a local councillor whose planning consultative group I am a member of, and explained what had happened, asking his advice about whether turning an eyesore into a bit of extra school-yard space was really an issue for the Council as it seems to be for someone in the legal bunker (which seems to be making a bid to become the Church in Wales command and control centre, rather than its servant). His response will be ... interesting.

News of SD Two
Tuesday morning, I had the pleasure of taking my new colleague Chris to sit in on the monthly Retail Partnership Board meeting. People were, as ever, welcoming, and there was lots of interesting input, especially as we were being treated to a first look at the latest designs for the Grand Mall of the St David's II shopping centre. DHL, the meeting Chair was on the ball as usual and said astutely: "Now that looks like the main Mall I visited in Dubai recently, or was it Singapore?" A great discussion starter on the theme 'How are shoppers going to know they are in the Capital city of Wales, without overkill on dragons and daffodils?' Tricky - the designers and architects are not really on the same planet as the rest of us. Their enterprise is still far too London based. I never forget how when the first architects model of the city centre was unveiled, the tiny model of St John's church had been placed on the board recto-verso, with the tower at the east, not the west. It was great to joke about, but a serious side effect of remote control management and design.
Worries about the effect of redevelopment on the supply of shoppers' parking space in the city have been with us for the past two years. A big effort is being put into providing new 'Park and Ride' schemes, but a bit of brilliant lateral thinking has produced an enterprising solution. IKEA in Grangetown is too big for the region's needs and its parking twice what is needed. Five hundred of them are to be taken on for weekday Park and Ride - ten minutes ride from the central shops. IKEA's big retailing time is weekends and holidays. No doubt their restaurant will get extra business from tired and hungry shoppers on the way home. Another site in the Bay promises an additional 350 parking places to ease the loss of central multi-storey parks. City centre site clearance starts in earnest this coming November, a demolition and excavation exercise that will produce enough rubble to fill the Millennium Stadium. It'll all be up and running for Christmas 2009, so they say. While we are waiting, teams are preparing to excavate a new main sewer route through the back streets using underground boring equipment. This report was also the butt of jokes and puns. It's a great meeting, never a dull moment.

Look Who's coming
In the afternoon following the meeting, I had a meeting with Patrick Schweizer, a BBC site manager working for the Doctor Who Production team to finalise details for a two day film crew use of St John's to stage a wedding scene as part of this year's Christmas special. The team would like to have been left to its own devices, but we insisted that weekday worship would continue as normal, and that there would be several 'welcomers' from the church team around during both days, to keep an eye on things and be helpful to the crew. This seemed to me to be the most suitable way of avoiding accidental misuse of the building or its furniture, and was accepted meekly. Taking the church out of use and restricting public access at the height of the tourist season is not the best thing to do, so it was important some of the locals were around to explain politely, rather than leave the task to some BBC security gorilla in a hi-viz vest. It also meant that we were seeking more compensation than the BBC were offering as a starting price. A bit like haggling in reverse, they met our reasonable demand in the end, though some thought we should have held out for more.
Eventually, the publicity will help augment our visitor count. We've noticed more visitors coming in because the City Centenary town trail (in which we feature), its guidebooks and markers are now in place. We have English, French, German and Welsh guidebooks for taking away, and they are disappearing at a pleasing rate. It's a nice quality product.

To be or not to be?
The day ended with a Parish Church Council meeting, to discuss suggestions by the Bishop that the Parish be split to relieve me of some responsibilites and allow Chris and to concentrate on city centre work. This would put Jenny's successor in charge of a Cathays pastoral area, containing St Michael's and St Teilo's. I have misgivings about dividing up something that's working well. There are all sorts of issues, financial and organisational that will be rendered less easy by a separation. But what do the people want? The clergy helped establish the pros and cons and withdraw for the laity to discuss freely. Much to our surprise they agreed to go with the Bishop's proposal. Several key voices in leadership were absent, and St Teilo's under-represented, so this can't be a final position. After the meeting, I emailed a report to the Bishop. My brain buzzed with unanswered questions all night, so I got up at seven and emailed him a memo with nine questions arising immediately. No doubt there will be more!

Tredegarville triumphs and trials

'God on Mondays' revisited
Remember 'God on Mondays' ? It's our school term-time venture, over in St James' church, to bring together children from Tredegarville church school with their parents for a time of Christian worship and storytelling. Started last year before Christmas, now in its fifth series of themed teaching services. The school teachers are marvellous. Generally around half a dozen of them turn up in support. Another fifteen or so parents and relatives, plus children from six months to eleven years old, so we are usually 35-50 people. I lead singing with the guitar and Jenny my colleague tells stories, usually out of the Gospel, only this summer half-term series is based on the lives of the Saints. The church War Memorial chancel screen is decorated with strings of paper people figures of church heroes, and even more strings of figures with the names on them of the adults and children who turn up with delightful regularity. It feels like we are slowly, carefully making community happen, building relationships of trust and affection, or rather, to be honest, building upon the existing bonds of trust and affection well established by the school with its parents and children. Chris, my new colleague has joined us, leading worship and enjoying a new experience - three clergy working together at the same time, right on the edge (sic.) of the conventional frame of parochial religion.

Unexpected blessings
Given that 'God on Mondays' gathers parents and children, it's not surprising that the spin-off has been several families asking for Christenings. St James' , although by far the weakest of the four churches of the Parish, has seen four times as many baptisms as the rest of the Parish put together over the past few years. Most people who ask have family roots in the area. Christening their kids is an affirmation of their identity and their sense of belonging in a shifting world. They don't come to worship apart from this special occasion. We try to make it as special as possible, but have to admit that far too much of our worship makes no connections with their longings, their spiritual search. But 'God on Mondays' services and the social interaction produced bridges the gap to some extent. Our biggest surpise came when Julie, one of our Mums asked if she could be christened. She'd missed out as a kid, and mentioned it awkwardly, with embarrassment to some previous clergy, but never been taken seriously. After we'd recovered from astonishment, Jenny and I agreed that we should act decisively. At the first Monday service after Easter, Julie was baptized in St James, and on Trinity Sunday, she was confirmed at a Deanery service in the Parish of Canton. She now comes on Sundays as well as Mondays with her kids. It's been a marvellous experience accompanying her on her journey.

In the midst of life we are in death
Back in April, the Parish recognised that we couldn't afford to keep St James' open any longer despite 'God on Mondays'. In May the University property department officers came and gave the building the once-over to see if it might meet their pressing need for space. Silence since then. After six months of silence, the London-based Historic Churches Building Trust officer got in touch to ask if a joint site visit to St James' with CADW, the Welsh building conservation agency, would be possible, to evaluate the Parish's application for £25,000 to repair a seriously leaky roof - one of the issues that has defeated the church council over the past five years. I wrote back to say that we had been forced to seek redundancy for the church, and received by return a rejection of our application. The building remains one of Cardiff's landmarks, no matter who can afford to maintain it. But we are no longer eligible to be funded, or even part funded.
If we were to take all the salaries paid out to administer and monitor these funds so conscientously I wonder how many more buildings might be saved from ruin. Aspiration to save our heritage is a worthy thing, like aid to the Third World, but the way funding is organised to preserve jobs and channel energy away from the purpose never cease to amaze me.
Meanwhile, St James will close on September 16th, with a European Heritage Open Day event. We'll keep open house and run a local history exhibition in conjunction with Tredegarville school next door - the church was founded from a local pastoral mission which started with schooling in the area back in 1850. Sunday and Monday services will continue in the school hall, saving us a huge amount of money in costs of heating, lighting, insurance and repairs.
We're all sad to lose the building, but heavens, how much has sentiment been costing us, both in money and worry? Nevertheless, losing this building is hard blow for both church and school.

The gift horse cometh. However ....
Admiral House, next door to St James, is a tower of a building, which has lately been converted from being an empty office block to small desirable, profitable residential apartments. In fact, the portacabins of the site office move out next Sunday, blocking us from using the church car park once again. The building work has given both church and school much trouble with noise, dust, rubbish, vibration from pile drivers and demolition work, as well as parking blockages.
After negotiation, City Lofts the developers, agreed an 'everybody wins' compensation package. The church hall, pretentiously known as 'the Guildhall', with its derelict annexe, plus boundary walls between church and school, are to be demolished, and the space created re-used, fenced in as school playground - the school's space allocation is well below standard, so it wiill benefit. The church will be more accessible, (an asset when it comes to sale), and Admiral House will look a lot more attractive to prospective buyers. I can't imagine that the £30,000 expenditure on this project would effectively buy as effective advertising promotion for the new apartments.
Work begins Monday 24th. At the moment church officers are having trouble communicating with the providors of water, gas and electricity to request termination of services, and final billing. Each facet of these services is managed by different companies using different telephone services (automated and otherwise), so that it's impossible to be sure one has reached the right person with authority to call out workers on the ground to achieve the desired objective. The deadline day could prove to be fun, dangerous fun if they don't get their act together. There's even a 'phone line into the premesis, from a letting that finished seven years ago, which was nothing to do with the church, so there is no information in the church record that will allow us to call someone and ask if they want to come and take away their line.
The final nightmare, having received formal approval by way of a Faculty from the diocesan Chancellor to proceed with all these works, was advice from the Representative Body of the Church in Wales to ensure that city Planning Permission was granted for the re-defining of the school site by fencing and demolition - something we thought was covered by the granting of a Faculty. If this is not received, the work is held up sine die, work which must be finished between 24th July and 31st August, or could end up not being done. Without any guidance of offer of support, the resolution of this issue was dumped back on me as representative of the Parish - a move which is hard not to regard as petty and spiteful. Suffice it to say that those who think they are generous and conscientous in the exercise their duties need to get their vision tested. It's no wonder my blood pressure is reluctant to subside, and my doctor wants to give me sick leave. We're all prisoners of modern legal systems, and their logic that so often defies common sense.

Long Time no blog

It's more than two and a half months since my last posting, unintentionally.

One day I started having tingling and numbness in my left shoulder. My dear wife Clare insisted I should get a doctor's checkout, and I complied. It was, he said, a matter of a trapped nerve in m neck. However, my blood pressure was worryingly high, and I should be taking medication as a matter of course. This put the wind up me, and I went home in shock having argued that it was likely to be caused by the stress I have been recently subjected to with the waning fortunes of my bid to rescue St James' church from closure.

I asked for a delay in taking up the pills to get some time out, lose weight, get back to regular exercise etc, on the grounds that my diet was OK and my general health otherwise not a problem. Blood tests showed cholesterol was not a problem, liver function OK. So, I went out jogging, tried to relax and rest more, and work more normal hours, but there was little impact on my blood pressure.

During my month's period of 'grace' my only colleague was asked to take on a new job this autumn - a well deserved move indeed, but the timing was unexpected, and as I was unable to contact anyone responsible to find out if she'd be replaced sooner or later, I was left wondering what sort of work future I would have, recognising that I wasn't just tired, but feeling rotten, physically ill, and honestly, pretty anxious. I spent rather a lot of time feeling angry, self-pitying and resentful that two years of on-off crisis management had left me in this state with no support other than my wise, kind and long suffering wife.

Thankfully, a fortnight's planned holiday in Corfu intervened. I acquiesced and took with me the first pack of pills to try out on holiday. We had a secluded self catering apartment in an olive grove. Peaceful, beautiful, no phone, no computer, no radio or TV, no car. Lots of pure silence warm late spring weather, excellent food and walking. It wasn't a cure all by any means, more of a retreat. Time for lots of prayer and meditation, exercise, and just sitting together with sheer natural beauty and simple country wine. Really I could have done with a month.

I kept my health concerns mainly to myself at the outset, but slowly it leaked out when I realised that my reactions to yet more stress inducing experiences in daily work had turned from my habitual fight into flight. I had such a surprise to discover how many people, both older and younger than myself are also on medication for high blood pressure, and living contentedly with it, as if it were of little concern, as it holds out the promise of less risk of stroke or heart attack. But what sort of world are we living in that generates in normal healthy-ish people such levels of stress that produce this 'silent killer' ailment? I am still not content with having to dose myself daily. If I gave up public ministry and lived permanently in retreat (happy thought), would the change of lifestyle reduce my blood pressure? It it too late? Is it just a matter of ageing that I am no longer able to deny? Questions to live with, not over-react to.

When I went for a review with my doctor, two weeks after returning to work, my blood pressure was still too high, requiring an adjustment in dosage and monitoring side effects. We spoke about work and he asked if the pressures on me had reduced, and how I was feeling. I had to say 'no', and explained what I was facing with the loss of a colleague, at least for half a year. "In my profession", he said "Doctors carrying double patient load get to suffer from real burn-out." I told him I had two books on clergy burn-out and how to avoid it. He'd never heard of clergy burn-out. Maybe I'm his only ordained client. OK, so am I a burn-out case or a survivor of burn-out? Or what?

There was an article on research into clergy burn-out in this week's "Western Mail", saying how widespread it had become with decline in numbers of working ministers. I didn't recognise the role portrayed by the report given on the research, which made ministry today sound as if it was just about rushing around taking lots of extra services, and carrying an even larger pastoral case load. What a delight that would be compared to the reality. More and more paperwork, negotiation, fundraising, publicising, event co-ordination, caretaking buildings, coping with crisis in organisations fending off collapse and dysfunction. These are the matters that drain life from a pastor trained to be people centred. This produces the stress edging ministers toward burnout, or coronaries, cancer, mental or marital breakdown, even suicide. In a few words, ministers are taking on many tasks for which are they untrained and ill-equipped, simply because there are no longer sufficiently skilled lay church members to take them on. They feel duty bound to do something to try and stop the collapse of all they have cherished and worked for. It's so hard to let it all die, especially when it's been the source of your revenue as well as your way of life and your identity.

It's taken me a while to come back and record all this. Shame is a great inhibitor. Knowing how many sufferers there may be. Not wanting to whinge about how tough it is. Because at some levels it's so rewarding, such an adventure to be where I am in ministry at this time of life, seeing God at work in people's lives in the heart of the city. It makes me want to fight on and not throw in the towel - to 'give and not to count the cost', as that beloved prayer says. Except there comes a time when giving to the limits does nobody much good. Nobody can run on empty. Many things about the church will have to fail and die, since so many people no longer want to support the way it is or used to be. Living with all that heart-break, suffering powerlessness, weakness and limitation, is what all of us in the church must learn to live with or be broken by. A bit like taking up the cross and following Jesus. I'm not so sure how good we are are going that any more.

Nevertheless, a month before my colleague intimated her likley departure, the Archbishop asked if I'd like to help train a deacon who would work as an unpaid volunteer in the Parish. So it was that on St John the Baptist's day, 24th June, Christine Colton was ordained in Llandaff Cathedral and started next day with us. She's a mother of two grown up sons, married to a priest working in the Parish of Whitchurch, a few miles away across town. Moreover, as well as her pastoral and lay training interests, she is taken with the idea of learning her way into city centre ministry. For me this is a great delight. Now I have voluntary lay and ordained partners to take an interest in the world of everyday business, commerce, hospitality and tourism, and make the Church's interest in normal life known by their presence and their attention.

In this opening few weeks I am acquainting her with the routine life of St John's, taking her around to introduce her to people, 'walking the talk', as the saying goes. Amazingly it's a great comfort to have a companion who is interested in seeing the city differently, seeing it as a pastor does. For once I felt a kinship with the police who patrol the streets in pairs. It's encouraging to see the odd glance of recognition, the smile, the greeting from strangers as we pass.

We were entering the churchyard one day this week, and a woman accosted me. "Don't you work here?" she said. I confessed jokily. "Sometimes." "Yes, you're the one I spoke to six months ago. The first time I came in here to pray. The first day I joined AA. I've just been in to say 'thank you' to God. I'm getting my own flat again next week. I'm sober, and wouldn't be if it wasn't for Him above. I've got my life back again, thanks to Him." It was so good to share that moment of blessing with a colleague. The church building ministers to people when its pastors are elsewhere, strugging to cope with the demands of the bureaucracy from hell which is the diocesan and provincial administration of the Church in Wales.

Nothing personal, bosses. You suffer from this organisational dinosaur as much if not more than the rest of us. I just hope you too have moments like this to keep you coping.