AEJCC

AEJCC - Junior evangelical Anglicans looking for a positive future in the Church of England.

In July, I go to the AEJCC - the Anglican Evangelical Junior Clergy Conference. This is a conference with an interesting line-up: Pete Sanlon, Lee Gatiss, John Richardson, the Bp of Peterborough, the Archbishops' appointments secretary, Prof Glynn Harrison and Dick Farr.

I realise I will be in the company of less ordained women at this conference but I will still go and it might be the opportunity I am looking for to start thinking again theologically and academically.

Can I encourage any women out there to consider joining me at this conference?

There will be the opportunity to hear people's proposals for strategies that might transform the denomination? Proposals put forward will be of a particular variety. There are, of course, many, but if there is something meaty you really want to sink your theological teeth into, chew over to digest easily whilst being prepared at times for a needed indigestion tablet, I think this conference is sure to get the guts churning and brain whirring.

Google "Anglican Evangelical Junior Clergy Conference."

Curate Caras

Anam cara is a Gaelic word for soul friend.

Curate caras - Curate friends (Address: https://www.facebook.com/groups/251896991573342/)

I have set up a facebook group for curates so that we can share our journeys with one another. This could become a great resource and accompaniment for the four years in which we are shaped for the next leg of the journey. Please consider joining this group so that you might both offer your insights and receive support from those who traverse this landscape with you.

We might learn from one another across the different dioceses in which we work, all of which take a slightly different approach to our formation.

We could share ideas and just generally be there for one another over the years.

If Jesus lives in us, then we can be Jesus for one another, or at least remembering this, we will be guided to support one another, encourage one another and become a safe space for thinking aloud and sharing the pain and the joy.

See you there.

Tell your friends who are in training.

Rachel

Why bloggers leave

Adrian, who has been a faithful blogging partner, has taken an interest in the Anglican bloggers who have come and gone and his post helped me to articulate finally the real reasons for doing so.

 Lesley said...

I'm rather flattered although surprised that you are missing my blog :)

In my case I wasn't asked to stop nor did I get the impression that it was a problem.

I think now I have some distance from stopping that I started during a painful and lonely time - being separated, and the blog helped me heal and also gave me emotional intimacy with others which I was missing. But when I remarried I no longer had the time nor really the need or inclination to blog.

Plus, I think blogs are more interesting when people are in the stage of faith when they are doubting and questioning - in the way that music and literature is more interesting when written by a tortured soul. I found peace, I worked through the "dark night of the soul" and came to a place where I just wanted to "be"... not really very interesting to write about.

Plus getting married and having more kids and more family in general completely removed all my spare time!

22 March 2012 08:36

 Rachel Marszalek said...

"I think blogs are more interesting when people are in the stage of faith when they are doubting and questioning" - I like this from Lesley - this is very helpful for me. I hope at some point to return to academic theology, until then my life becomes so consumed with the everyday narratives of all people's stories, that I find that there is now little to share. With the imminent retirement of the ABC and the women bishops debate nearly over, my topics of interest are on hold. As I venture out to discover my evangelical roots, which is largely what I am up to now and think through an authentic Anglicanism, I am more likely to rally against much of Anglicanism as it manifests itself in day to day life and deciding to work within the structures for an authentic expression ie the life and death and resurrection of Christ, the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit as central to faith, I am only likely to restate what Anglicanism originally set out to be anyway. If i am not doing that then I will only be voicing my frustration and disappointment with the church and in my own hopes to be a good disciple of Christ, I want instead to be known to encourage and equip from the inside rather than criticise and lament. The decision to stop blogging is a healthy one for me. Do call again however, if ever you are passing by. :-D

Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold) said...

Thanks for the explanations - both of them. Rachel is saying that she wants to work from within, and the blog would just sound too negative institutionally for what she wants to achieve more positively. I can understand that. It might have academic content but there is no time with the pastoral load. I can understand Lesley's change of focus too - I simply took what was said at the time in public but I can see the change of scene meant a loss of need to put out the personal stuff. It was always clear that the doubting and questioning had an emotional force behind it, whereas mine is more detached.

22 March 2012 18:00

22 March 2012 12:49

As I cemented my thoughts on this: the closing down of the blog and a new emphasis in my thinking, I spent some time sitting in a room with another (aside of Rowan) fabulous person who is leaving the scene, (Canon Dr Christina Baxter retires from St John's this weekend). As I shared prayer time with her formation group at college at the the kind invitation of a friend, it is there I saw on the wall a simple white frame containing these words - "What seems like death for a caterpillar is in actual fact a butterfly." In the words of that great muscle-bound, secular theologian of our time - "I'll be back!" but not for a good long while. Mwah!

Au revoir and really this time.

Hello and goodbye - this blog is coming to an end - new seasons and all that jazz. It's been fun. Who knows what the future holds?

I have been hearing for a few weeks that I might be finishing here. Today is the day - I returned to safe territory and was reminded about the importance of prayer and evangelism - the ground is shifting. I am going to start over and might relaunch something different at some point.

This site will still float around in cyber-space as a resource, I suppose, or even as a testimony to a few years of my life. It will be paired down and lose some of its buttons and functions. I hope it still continues to give some of you some food for thought, particularly perhaps women discerning their call in challenging circumstances. God bless.

The boss's resignation

Picture by Adrian Worsfold

Rumoured for months on the blogs left and right
Rowan's retirement was clearly in sight
And now we await with real interest the news
For who'll oversee all those folks in our pews

Ten years up at Lambeth with reactionary feelings
He's seen female priests punch their way through glass ceilings
He's sat on the fence and academically presented
That redefinitions of marriage should sure be lamented
Whilst simultaneously reflecting in The Body's Grace
That we grant sexual ethics a listening space
He's 'Indaba'ed and laboured and generally led
With an attentive ear to the times that has shaped what he's said.


Rumoured for months on the blogs left and right
Rowan's retirement was clearly in sight
And now we await with real interest the news
For who'll oversee all those folks in our pews


The conservatives resented his less than firm stance
Unmoved by his poems on the trinitarian dance;
His appeasement of factions and tolerant take
"He's put this Communion's ideals at stake!"
The Manchester amendment a little too late
And approaching July, the Women Bishops debate
Shall surely do much to unsettle these chaps
Who at Rowan's retirement will resound with loud claps.


Rumoured for months on the blogs left and right
Rowan's retirement was clearly in sight
And now we await with real interest the news
For who'll oversee all those folks in our pews


The liberals have found him a bit more appealing,
His thoughts on Sharia leaving less of them reeling.
His listening process doing much to gain favour
His articles and theories bringing with them fresh flavour
But his generous approach seemed so suddenly to sour
When his Anglican Covenant sought to reframe the power
And province after province rejected his invite
Suspecting part 4 of the document too tight
Creating a greater divide between factions
Who since Lambeth 08 have taken contrary actions.


Rumoured for months on the blogs left and right
Rowan's retirement was clearly in sight
And now we await with real interest the news
For who'll oversee all those folks in our pews


So what will he inherit, this new man for the post?
A Communion not yet giving up the old Holy Ghost!
There's Spirit in her yet and there's much for the doing
Though swathes of the past we are painfully rueing.
It could be the last time there's a beard below the mitre
The Communion's champion soon to be a female fighter
And so this the last epoch of manly rule
Who for us lot will become the next holy fool?
It isn't a job for the weak of heart
Lambasted and ridiculed and fast torn apart.
If the fabric ain't-a-splitting of this global enterprise
Then it's sure instead to be the ABC as he strives
To keep us together this unruly family
Of blessed Anglicans wed in matrimony.

... we wait and see....