A quickish bloggish thank you for all those who have been involved in making my leaving weekend really amazing and have sent me off in great Ramsbottom style (happily without pie....). Thank you so much for all your generous gifts and beautiful words and prayers and company and all the joy...... a little overwhelmed really.
Here's a little of what I shared with Christ Church at tea and cake on Saturday.....
As you may know, cake features quite heavily in my life. I
actually don’t eat huge amounts of it, but I do like to make it. This is a very cakey church – the most memorable line from my ordination was ‘Jesus is looking
after the cake’. I’m not allowed to bake that often because others get in there
first…. I bake when I am stressed (when I was going through settlement I was a
baking maniac), I bake because I enjoy….. I bake….
My most read post on my blog is about cake – Baptist cake –
after being challenged to really go for it in my inventions for college I made
cakes based around the Baptist declaration of principle – the thing that holds
Baptist Union churches together – revels cakes because we are all different and
you never know what you’re going to get, but we all hold Jesus as Lord, coffee
drizzle because baptism full immersion new life, and sherbet fountains because
we have to tell the whole world about it….. the pinnacle of my experimental
cake experience….
You may know that I have been baking through the great
British bake off book and I’ve just finished the bread section with some really
quite dodgy doughnuts…. It’s been a challenge, because bread is not my natural
instinct – I don’t even really have a great passion for bread – it serves a
purpose but…..
What I tend to do when heading for the next recipe is leave
the book open for a while on my work surface…. I read the recipe, I half
memorise it, I think about it, and then I make space and begin. The thing about
bread though is that it needs time to rise and you never know how long you
might need….
The way I approach baking is a bit like the way I approach
the big decisions in life. I leave a book open, share my ideas with God who
shares his ideas with me and we sit on it together for a while…. And this is
what I have done with thinking about whether to move on from here or not. In
March last year I sat on a train, having bought the wrong train ticket, but to
the right place, and pondered…. And I decided to start testing the waters to
see if moving on was right. There were a number of things that happened in the
months following, some of them challenging, some of them exciting…. and I spent
some time exploring the challenges around
and the possibility of moving on and decided to test the waters….. to actually
begin the rollercoaster ride to today.
Sometimes when you bake, what you come up with is not what
you expected it to be.
I entered settlement in September (otherwise known as
Baptist dating agency) hoping that I might move closer to my family or stay in
the north. Easy? God had other plans. Unexpected plans.
I got the list of churches and nothing really looked right,
but then I was sent the profile for a church that didn’t fit any of my criteria
but when I read the profile it was clearly the right place. It was like the
church and me were walking to the same rhythm…… and I visited and every time I
raised a concern, a question, it was answered by God with a ‘but, what if?’
In many ways the move doesn’t make sense – #doyouknowHim? is
just beginning, we’re beginning to see signs of new life in church after a
period of loss, my church family here is one of the best. I have great support
networks, I’ve just got involved in a number of different projects in wider Baptist
life…… this is home.
But God calls…. And one of the advantages I have in my
calling is that I can just (just ha ha) pack up and go….. and so I must.
It was a bit like God said…. Right, let’s do this – we’ll
make this a quick rise….. but it’s also been coming for a long time – God has
been preparing us all for what comes next. A slow riser with a speedy explosive
ending.
This will be always be the church where I began my ministry
and will always have a unique place in my heart. From giggling at the name of
the town to being surprised that God would ever call this Baptist by complete
and utter conviction to an ecumenical context to being part of a Christ centred
community that has changed so much in the last 7 and a half years. We’ve grown
deeper and more confident in our faith as the spirit has breathed new life into
us. This church family is a true family – in all its challenging oddities (I
wouldn’t say it’s always been a smooth ride) and in its deep loving nature, and
that’s one of the reasons that me leaving has been so difficult. But this has
never been about me, this has always been about following the way in which
Christ calls us.
Everyone here has walked with me in different ways – as part
of this church family and so many of you beyond……some of you have seen me at my
worst when I felt like quitting and running away – some of you have held me up
without realising how strong you actually are. I’ve been allowed to run with it
when it didn’t seem to make sense and you’ve embraced my creative bonkerishness
with great gusto even when I smash stuff up and make people cry. As I’ve grown
as a minister I have come to understand the kind of minister who God has called
me to be – a community builder – a lurking with intent minister – a fire in the
hearth that helps make a house a home.
Since I announced I was leaving it’s all been a bit
bonkers….. and I’d love to be staying longer to just say goodbye properly and
put everything into place. I’d love to be staying longer to wrap up
#doyouknowHim? better – the craziest but one of the most brilliant times of my
ministry life…. But I can’t. The bread is ready, and as I head off to a place I
don’t really know where it is, I am assured that God, in the craziness of it all, knows exactly what He is doing.
In my first January here it was our 40th
anniversary and I was reminded of our verse for the year from that year as I
sat with a small group of people last Saturday night renewing our baptismal
vows conscious that each person there had been key on my journey…. So let me
leave you with this:
“Your life in Christ makes you strong, and his love comforts
you. You have fellowship with the Spirit, and you have kindness and compassion
for one another. I urge you then to make me completely happy by having the same
thoughts, sharing the same love, and being one in soul and mind. Don’t do
anything from selfish ambition or from a cheap desire to boast, but be humble
toward one another, always considering others better than yourselves. And look
out for one another’s interests, not just for your own’. Phil 2:1-4
Onwards we row.....
