Failed Ministry and failed Ministers ........

What is failure in Ministry?

It is a worry. Starting any new job you wonder 'Am I up to this'?

Will I meet expectations? Will I do what is expected?

Will I succeed?

It is not an existential question or even a question of Matriculation.

But it is a question!

Failure to pay the Parish Share?

Failure to visit enough folk?

Taking too many days off?

Or as happened to my first Vicar, in my training Parish, becoming so engrossed in a book that he forgot a funeral, and when the Undertaker knocked on the door, as he observed later, found him: just reading.

I was once described by a former parishioner, after I had left the parish some years before, as their best ever Vicar.

I pointed out that my immediate predecessor, tragically, died in office, his successor ran of with the organists wife!

So all I had to do was leave in good health with the person I arrived with.

A successful ministry?

David Sheppard in his book Built as a City in a remarkably open passage in the book described walking back from his meeting with Mervyn Stockwood, The Bishop of Southwark, having been offered the post of Bishop of Woolwich, wondering what happens to failed Suffragan Bishops?

Of course he wasn't a failed Suffragan because he was made Bishop of Liverpool.

I had a curry with him when he came to Newcastle as part of the Faith in the City Commission and asked him what he meant but I can't remember his answer.

So St John's, Shotley aka Snods Edge, where there be, not dragons, but Arts Festivals, Beer Festivals and world famous teas, is a place of true conviviality.

A little corner of the kingdom we pray to come, on Earth as in Heaven, a place of peace, justice and conviviality ......

So we pray for good health, well balanced relationships and a second retirement at 82 ......


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