Dancing with wolves

As usual moving proved not to be as easy as it should have been. There was no house for the Aldersley Team Vicar. Jim had lived in Church Cottage, a house owned by the parish, but the parish wanted it back. So the diocese had to set about finding a suitable house in the area. In the end one of the parishioners decided she wanted to sell and the diocese bought the house on the basis that they would put an extension on the back to make it suitable for church meetings. It took them a couple of years to get around to doing so.

The move was also complicated by the fact that James announced his retirement from St Michael’s Tettenhall as soon as my appointment was made official. He took the (female!) NSM curate with him. With Mark fully occupied in Pendeford that left me to cover the interregnum as well as get to know Christ the King.

Christ the King had begun life as a hut in a field for the new development of Aldersley after the war; it was served by curates from St Michaels. A multi-purpose church had been built in the late 1950s with a sanctuary at one end and a stage at the other. But a 1960s curate had decided it needed to be a “proper” church and had built a hall at the back.

Then just before I arrived the people started to self-build an extension with new loos and a meeting room, and run out of enthusiasm. The one person, another Jim, left responsible for the work was too busy with his own job, and building an extension to his own house, to complete the work. Any attempt that I made to suggest that it was all too much for one person was met with consternation that I didn’t think he was up to it. He wasn’t but I wasn’t going to be that confrontational in my first weeks in the parish. So it was several months before I could issue an ultimatum that I needed a timetable and full costings for the work so that I could also put it out to local businesses. In the end that was enough for Jim to walk off the job and leave me to clear up the mess. Naturally no major builders wanted to tidy up after someone else and it was only when I found a local builder that we could get the job completed.

The congregation were open to new ideas and came up with a few of their own. There was a dedicated group who provided a constant stream of social events to keep the congregation together and bring in new people. To begin with these events were held ion the hall, but were so successful that we soon had to move them into the “church”. Over the years I was there I managed to reintroduce the idea of multi-use spaces and by the time I left there were 15 different groups meeting on the premises with 500 people, adults and children coming to something over the course of a month.

Every couple of months there would be 120 people at a social of some sort and I soon found myself drawn into the cooking rota. Providing apple pies or shepherd’s pie until no one else would do the vegetarian option and I ended up with that.

The bill for the extension was soon paid off and the spin off for the congregation was an increase in numbers and a fall in average age with many young families joining. And the Sunday School, struggling with only a couple of children, ended up with over 50 on roll and eight leaders. Someone also started a toddler’s service with a couple of songs a story and some craft time.

And most importantly for me I began to feel that I was among friends.

Part of this was based around the Bishop’s Certificate. This was something else that I had inherited from James and was a two year course to prepare people for ministry in one way or another. The first year I just finished off the group that James had started; but after that I moved it to my house and enrolled half a dozen from the Christ the King congregation. It also enabled me to be a bit more systematic in my thinking and much of the background reading that I did for the course fed into articles and sermons as well as the weekly newssheet where I began to write a commentary on the readings.

In order for that to happen the diocese needed to extend the vicarage. They refused to use my local builder who could do it quickly and cheaply and sent in one of their major contractors who preferred new church building. So it was done as a part time job as and when the builders couldn’t do their main job. Instead of six weeks it took three months and cost twice what the local builder would have charged. And it was not as if the work was any better. There was no co-ordination between the builders, the kitchen designer and the sub contractors doing the electrics, plumbing, tiling and flooring; who all seemed to arrive in a random order. And during that time I was expected to run the parish from the only room in the house that remained unaffected.

The kitchen designer put the cooker in a different place from the cooker point the electrician put in. The gas point is hidden behind the units and only I know where it is. The tiler couldn’t be bothered to cut the tiles in the cooker alcove and so just wrenched the units off the wall to slide the tiles behind them. The floorer didn’t bother to hoover the floor before laying the vinyl so there were several lumps of concrete ready to work their way through. Only at the last minute did the diocese agree that the old kitchen tiles didn’t fit in with the new ones in the extension and send someone in who chipped the tiles off and then painted over the uneven wall that was left. Needless to say the diocese simply failed to get any of them to remedy the work and all were presumably paid in full.

One year I was asked to write the Lent Course for the Council of Churches and so I looked at an alternative view of church history through the Celtic Church; the diggers and levellers; the Quakers, the African Independent Churches and the ecumenical movement; though there was some comment that the only book I had referred to about Roman Catholicism was “The sex lives of the Popes”.

Another of the jobs I inherited from James was looking after the ministry team. In fact this was a part of my job description. Christ the King were meant to move down to a 0.5 post after Jim left. But James persuaded the diocese that with the interregnum coming up there needed to be an experienced priest in post to hold the Ministry Team together. This was a loose group of people that James had gathered around himself to share out the work in the parish, but with increasing numbers having gone through Bishop’s Certificate and several having gone on to train as readers there was some scope to formalise the arrangements. So I took the team off for some training from the diocese, and changed the meetings from a business meeting where jobs were handed out, to a more reflective meeting on the nature of ministry where ideas could be shared and new thinking encouraged. Three people from the team put themselves forward for ordination, and Glenis, one of the churchwardens at Christ the King, was also licensed as a reader.

I tried not to get too involved with St Michael’s. It would have been easy to have been taken over by them, but that would have been unfair to Christ the King. So I let them run the interregnum by themselves. One thing that I did do was to have some input into the appointment where the paperwork and the interviews made it clear that I was responsible for the Ministry Team.

Sadly the best person for the job would not have fitted in to the set up at St Michaels, which was very traditional with a large choir and nods towards an Anglo-Catholic ritual. So as usual the safe candidate was appointed. As he arrived David made it clear that he was to be in charge of all things, including the Ministry Team and denied ever having seen the papers that I had included with the parish profile. So not only did he take away from me a large part of my responsibilities he also made it clear that he considered that Mark and I were simply curates of his. The concept of team ministry seemed to have passed him by as well as the idea of Ministry Teams. He refused to be [art of the diocesan team training; and quickly vetoed the applications for ordination by two of the candidates from the ministry team. As the third had gone direct to the Bishop, David couldn’t touch him.

At several meetings when we were discussing what was going on and I had tried to explain the growth in the church at Aldersley he interrupted with the comment that Christ the King was not viable and that there shouldn’t be a church just half a mile form the parish church. I didn’t like to point out that his own congregation were departing in droves and he was alienating the people he should look to for support. Once when I was arriving back from holiday late at night at Heathrow he refused to help cover Christ the King and I had to take a service after arriving home at 4.00am. That morning at St Michael’s there were three readers an NSM and David himself. Having his own team at his own beck and call was more important than helping a colleague. I made a comment at the next team meeting and he asked me to have lunch with him. We went off to a pub where I expected him to apologise. Far from it, he began laying in to me as being disloyal and generally treating me as a naughty thirteen year old. I pushed the full plate on one side and couldn’t eat a thing. As someone with no people skills and little concept of ministry in the 21^st century it was inevitable that he would eventually be appointed Director of Ordinands.

Some of his congregation started to join me at Christ the King and he began to gather around him the sort of people he wanted in his church. Every year there was a memorial service at St Michael’s for those families who had been bereaved through the year. Most years I wrote the service and as usual turned up to take part. One year I was met at the door by one of these newcomers who looked down her nose at me and asked me what I was doing there. “I’ve come to chat up the young widows”, I said. If looks could kill.

But at Christ the King I was developing true community. The playgroup had been at arms length from the church when I arrived but I started a hall users group which met twice a year and brought all the groups together to iron out differences. Gradually the playgroup began to feel part of the set up and not just the renters of the hall. A youth theatre group began to use the stage in the main hall. They were mostly young people themselves and were not very good at paying the rent, though they did put on a show for us. The next year, with no rent forthcoming, one of the church council turned up at their show at a local school and collected some of the rent from the takings. But mainly there was a relaxed atmosphere between the groups and not too much red tape. Another group that started to use the building was the Potter’s House. This was a Pentecostal church that had had to leave their old premises when the rent was hiked. So they came to me. They took over the church as our morning service finished and were often still going when we went back in for an evening service.

I didn’t have a regular evening service but at least once a month tried to put on a special service from my increasing collection of themed services that I had developed over the years. One week the other churches turned up and I pointed out that I had included a few hymns composed before 1850 so that St Michaels would feel at home. I was soundly told off for that at the next staff meeting.

Meanwhile my social life was picking up. We went bowling with the youth group, dancing at Goodyear social club, and trips out with the church. Each year there was a trip to a stately home Luton Hoo and Blenheim among them and instead of a weekend in retreat, Christ the King went for the weekend to the Christmas Market in Lille. I began to play tennis again. There were three tennis clubs in Tettenhall. I wasn’t posh enough for one where you needed to be nominated by twenty members; I wasn’t good enough to play at another; but there was a third, which used courts at the cricket club where they accepted anyone with a racket. So I went there on a Thursday morning for a couple of years.

There had been an annual cricket match between the churches. It was supposed to be members of the congregations but St Michael’s had always put in members of the local secondary school team and so always won. So it had been discontinued. One year it was decided to revive it and true to form St Michael’s fielded the secondary school team as their own. But Pendeford church had anticipated that and had a few ringers of their own for their match with St Michael’s which they won. In a spirit of sportsmanship they put their congregation in against Christ the King and we managed to beat them. So everyone won one game. I wrote a short service to end the day.

There were no secondary schools in Aldersley, Aldersley High was just outside the parish and had no interest in clergy being involved. So I went into Palmer’s Cross school who were very welcoming and did not expect me to be a governor. There I took assemblies and the occasional class and joined in the social events. At the other school I was a governor but not really welcomed into the school on other occasions.

Glenis sadly developed a brain tumour almost as soon as she was licensed as a reader. She had been an enormously valuable member of the church, running the PCC during the interregnum before I arrived, and then helping me get established. Her ministry was widely recognised and she continued to take services as long as she could.

But her example had sparked the thought of ministry in others and Keith went into training as a reader and also helped at healing services. He had been a major part of the social committee and with Joyce had masterminded the endless suppers as well as holding an annual barbeque in their garden. At one of these I had my beard shaved off to raise money to replace some of the church windows that were rotting. The event raised nearly £1000. I immediately went to the Edinburgh festival with my son John for a week and returned with a beard again, so there were a few complaints that none of those who had paid saw me in daylight without a beard – not a pretty sight I assured them.

A couple of the young mums were part of the South Staffs Musical Theatre group and they invited me to join them. Over a couple of years I helped with props for Cabaret, lighting for a couple of fund raising shows for Purple Dreams and finally on stage as part of the chorus in My Fair Lady at the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton.

In between all that I would get into Birmingham to Friday night jazz at the Symphony Hall and a variety of plays and shows at the Alex or the Hippodrome.

I went off to the nuns at Stanbrook Abbey for an eight day silent Ignatian retreat. Now me and silence is not a good mix. All sorts of things come into my head. I need people around to bounce ideas off. But it seemed a good idea at the time. About half way through the second day I was getting frayed and when my session with the retreat conductor came around I said I didn’t know what I was doing so he gave me a couple of Bible passages to think through. I went away and began to write my impressions. A couple of days later I showed him my writings as an example of my inner turmoil. He said they were good and I should keep it up. They became the basis of Cooped up Angels.

But the torment continued. On the last night I was awoken at about 3.30am with a thud in the back that lifted me from the bed and a sound like an express train going down the corridor outside. I was certain that the demons had finally come to get me and remained frozen in terror until daylight came. At breakfast everything seemed normal and no one broke the silence to comment on the events of the night. It was only when I got home that I discovered that the Dudley earthquake had happened in the night and shocks had been felt as far away as Worcester.

I had been elected onto Diocesan synod as soon as I arrived back in the Lichfield Diocese, though once Keith Sutton retired as Bishop I was no longer part of the inner circle and less often called to speak. It was the beginning of the move towards church growth. There were various presentations on the changing face of the church and various ways of moving forward. I began to apply some of them to what I was doing at Christ the King – not difficult with an enthusiastic congregation. At one diocesan meeting I was extolling the ease of expanding congregations when I was approached by a priest from West Bromwich to talk about his church. It was St James at Hill top.

I was becoming increasingly aware that my contract was time limited and that David was unlikely to encourage me to extend it, and would anyway drop it to 0.5. So I approached Bishop Mike about the possibility of a move. He asked if I could repeat Christ the King elsewhere and I said I didn’t see why not given congregational support. He asked me to go to St James Hill Top.

As it was just a few miles from Aldersley I could keep in touch with many in the congregation there. After Sue had left I discovered that many of “our” friends were in fact hers and Aldersley had become my social base as well as a parish to work in. I wasn’t just seen s a “vicar” but as a person. But a year after I left I got a call from David. “Please don’t contact anyone in Aldersley in future,” I was told. Although it had always been the tradition that clergy moved on from the people as well as the parish it had rarely been enforced and in most of my parishes my predecessors were around. And often useful to take a funeral or two. But for David rules were rules and I had to leave behind the only friends I had.