Closing and listening

Things are a little up and down at the office here at present...hence not quite so many posts as usual, but hopefully over the next couple of weeks we'll settle into the rather odd routine of being here but not officially existing any longer.

John Daniel and I both finish at the end of March, for the record, but the National Mission Team/Office was officially closed a week ago last Friday. So it's a bit like a couple of phantoms wandering around an old house, haunting anyone who comes by, but not being particularly scary.

Jason Goroncy (pictured at right in a contemplative mood) presented the annual Inaugural Lecture at Knox College for Ministry and Leadership yesterday. It was centred around the Eucharist, had a rather odd title which currently escapes me, and hopefully will turn up as text on his blog in the next few days. At which point I'll pick up on all the things I missed either through finding neither of my pens worked, or through trying to think about something he'd just said and then missing the next bit, or through the couple of moments when I nodded off - having slept very badly the previous night. No fault of the lecture, Jason!

No offence, Jason! It was a great lecture. I just need a bit more time to absorb it...

Official closing

Today, the National Mission Office officially closes. John Daniel and I stay on for a period, tidying up lose ends, but in an official sense we're 'not here.' (It's debatable, according to some lights, whether we ever were, but that's another story.)

So for the time being there will continue to be blog posts. The Service of Recognition was held last night for the Team - you could take the word 'recognition' in a number of ways, I suspect: recognition for the work done, recognition that we actually existed and did do some work (in John's case, a heap of work); recognition that the National Mission team will be greatly missed; recognition, belatedly, that perhaps it shouldn't even be departing the scene - but that's a done deal.

More than one person, in presenting their tribute, gave the impression that my main work has been to blog. That's not quite the case, although I believe that the blog has been one important aspect of the last three years in the life of the NMO. I've done quite a few other things while I've been here, from admin work to running errands to making coffees to cleaning up to writing up information I've researched (mainly for John, but also for other people) to doing a heap of reading online (the distillation of much of which has appeared on here or in the ezine).

Peter Cheyne, (the current Moderator for the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa NZ) who was leading the Service last night, invited me up to speak, along with John and Heather. When I demurred, not being a person confident to speak on such occasions, he said, with a grin, Well, I guess we'll hear about it on the blog tomorrow.

Which means that there are people who read it. And one good thing about Facebook is that the blog posts published here also get published there....and get a wider readership. Considering that most of what has been presented here has been the wisdom of other people rather than mine, that's only as it should be.

Clergy Self-Care?

I do not think clergy need more lectures about self-care.

It seems that at every ordination or installation service I attend there is a charge given about clergy self care. One minister stands up and tells another minister that they know they are about to work themselves to death, so resist the temptation. “Take your day off…set boundaries…don’t try to be all things to all people.” All this is done in front of an audience of lay people who are supposed to be impressed that we clergy would need such a lecture. It has become a cliché, and seems to have trumped prophecy, theology and the love of Jesus.

Lillian Daniel begins a short post on clergy self-care in the above fashion. Is she right about what she's saying: do clergy make more noise about self-care than they do about actually achieving anything in this area? Are clergy worse off than the average working person? Do you think her answers to the question are the right ones? Read the post and let me know.