Blog

Rev'd Pete Grassow is a very good friend of mine. We met whilst I took my sabbatical in Cape Town and this was the beginning of a long lasting friendship. At the time, Pete was responsible for the Phase 1 ministers training programme which was similar to Foundation Training in some respects. I taught some of his students and he returned the favour when he came to spend some time in England and we went on to develop a student exchange programme which provided a wonderful opportunity to expereince another culture.

Pete has a blog - www.rockinthegrass.blogspot.com and he recently published a blog about clerical collars which I thought might be worth sharing as it is so thought provoking and presents a side to wearing clerical collar which had never crossed my mind before.

He writes:

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I spent the day in my uniform.


I have been a Methodist minister for the past 30 years. And I very seldom dress in official clergy garb. When I first began this ministry, I had no wish to be like the senior ministers in this church: they dressed in black, and many wore their clerical collars permanently. They did not connect with the rock music culture that shaped me - a culture of blue jeans, t-shirts and informality. I wanted to be the kind of minister who was approachable; one who young people could talk to; one who stood alongside people who were marginalised by the formality and the rigidity of the “professional clergyman.”

Later in my ministry I found myself amongst poor, working-class people. These were people who worked under supervisors and foremen in factories and on shop floors. They translated this into their church life and wanted me to be their religious “boss” / supervisor / foreman. And I resisted this by refusing to dress in a way that reinforced the power of the clergy. For the ten years that I was their minister, I never once dressed in any clerical uniform. I wanted to underline the fact that that we were a team of people – each bringing different gifts and abilities to serve the common good, but no one more powerful than any other.

And so I have spent most of my life dressing down, dressing like my congregation, dressing in ways that speak of being a team rather than emphasising status. But I am gradually discovering space for “Clergy Clothes”: there are moments when it is necessary to be clearly identified as clergy – like when I officiate at a funeral of people who are strangers to me and my church… it simplifies matters when the mourners can immediately identify who the minister is. There have also been other moments – such as walking into a busy city hospital, or participating in a political protest – when being instantly recognisable has been useful.

I am now finding it helpful to dress as a clergyperson for sacramental moments: Baptism and Holy Communion are becoming increasingly strange to the society we live in. People in my congregation are no longer schooled in my church tradition. Many have come from little or no church tradition at all. So I need to find ways of indicating moments of special significance. It is therefore helpful to put on a uniform to indicate to those who come to church that this is a special event.

Today I wore clergy uniform…..Because it is Ash Wednesday.
And I wanted to mark this as a significant day in our Christian journey.
Perhaps I will wear my clergy shirt tomorrow as well - to mark this journey of Lent....... I will let you know.

I have recently returned home after a bit of a gruelling stint around the connexion which has involved many meetings, many sets of papers to be read, many trains travelled on and many cups of tea. It has not quite stopped yet either and I am just preparing for a similar stint which will last for the next couple of weeks. However, I do not wish to leave you with the impression that I am somehow ‘super important’ or that you have to feel sorry for me – far from it. I am a member of the Order doing what the Order has asked me to do just like everyone else and what is more, whilst I may acknowledge that my bottom is somewhat numb from all the sitting, I am in the best of spirits, not least because it was with great joy that I took part in the examination of the Order’s candidates for reception into full connexion, ordination and membership last week. .

As I listened to the stories of their lives, ministry and growth in belonging to the Order, I was and remain deeply humbled by those narratives. They linger in my ears, and I can almost recall word for word various sentences that touched deep inside my very being and left me in awe and wonder at the journey God takes each and every one of us on. Some of those journeys are painful, some are exasperating and some just seem to be a joy without end. What I cam away with was the enveloping sense of being part of something much bigger – something that was three dimensional connecting to God, our heritage and our futures together – heady stuff.

I often walk past York Minster and as I do, I always reach out to touch the walls of the building. There are millions of others who have worshipped, prayed, told their stories in that building and it is as if the walls have absorbed this and somehow when I touch the walls, I feel connected to it all in a very tangible way although I am not sure what the passing tourists make of it! I think that the walls of the Centre do much the same – absorbing the narratives, prayers, supplications and lamentation of all those who come and share – candidates, students, probationers, ordinands, members, friends – all that just come to be; all that come to offer something to the life of the Order; all that come to receive. One probationer remarked that just to sit at the dining table, a table which originally came from the Wesley Deaconess College at Ilkley, was to sit at something which had absorbed the years of history and tradition of the Order and therefore was something they too had become a part of. The profound nature of that remark gives an indication of the calibre of the candidates we are about to receive into membership of the Order. God is good.

For those of you who are avid blog readers, you will note that I have not made an entry since the 25th April 2009 - a fact that I am often reminded of by some members of the Order who will prompt me every now and again about my inattention to the MDO blog site.

Well, I am not normally a New Year's resolution person - knowing as I do that they are often as my Grannie used to say, like pie crusts - so easily broken. However, I have made not one but two resolutions this year.

The first one is to spend a year with Mary - so often a figure neglected in the protestant tradition and almost never mentioned in Methodism. I have for a long time been fascinated by Mary, not least because I think she offers to those who have grown up without the benefit of a positive mother role model in their lives, a way of discovering motherhood in a way that is meaningful to them. So, I have raided the on-line bookshops over the Christmas break and am settling down to read and ponder and try to get to know this remarkable woman, the bearer of the incarnate God a little better.

The second resolution is to try and use the blog site a little more creatively and regularly! Maybe you will hear a little more about Mary…maybe a little more about what I get up to on behalf of the Order…maybe peripheral nonsense!

I look forward to reading some of your responses even if they are nothing more than ‘get a life and don’t bother.’

So, a very Happy and blessed New Year to you all from a very snowy York and a housebound Warden.

As I write this, I am preparing to be away from home for a week to take part in the Diaconal Candidates selection Committee. Amongst other things, there will be laughter, tears, much chocolate eaten and gallons of tea drunk. For those of you who have served on this particular committee, you will be aware of how emotionally and physically draining it can be. However, I am sure that you will also remember how your heart soared when you heard the stories of those who were offering as candidates and how you were reminded of your own call to ministry.

In my minds eye, I am taken back to my time at York Institute, when students would come along to begin Foundation Training. They would present themselves for interview, full of fear and expectancy all at the same time, asking of themselves ‘What is this feeling, this urgency, this prompting that I am feeling….why will it not go away?’ As a tutor, I was aware of the awe that some students held you in – you knew the answers and you could tell at the drop of a hat whether people should be presbyters, deacons, lay workers – whatever. Mindful that some of the most holy and faithful people I had ever come across were placing themselves into your hands and so fragile and beautiful were those stirrings to ministry they were experiencing and I was witnessing, I used to find myself holding my breath least I should break them or blow them away. I often found myself saying to students ‘Actually, I don’t know – I don’t have the answers you seek….but I will help you find them for yourself.’ The reality was although my own midriff or instinct, experience and learned wisdom might have prompted me to suspect individuals were more likely to be called in one direction than another, they tested my call as often as I tested theirs. It was in that environment of constant questioning, discerning, seeking God’s will that influenced my own development as a deacon as much as theirs, preparing to offer themselves for ordained ministry.

I am sure that everyone of us has a story to tell about their own candidating process - how they completely fluffed their answers, maybe completely froze or could not stop the stream of consciousness that was coming from their mouths. Maybe how they were so nervous they felt sick or suddenly discovered really profound things to say 10 minutes after their interview was over. I have heard so many deacons comment upon the fact if they had to candidate now, they would never get through. However, you did, and I am sure that the God who works in, and with, and through all things, has used you – the unique and gifted and loved-by-God person that you are, where ever you have been to further the Kingdom here on earth. I urge you, brothers and sisters, to consider your own call afresh – not many of you were wise by human standards, not many of you were powerful or of noble birth. But, God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are. There are a dozen unique, gifted and loved-by-God folk preparing to offer themselves to the Church as candidates for the Methodist Diaconal Order. Remember that you once walked in their shoes, placing everything that you were at that time into the hands of another and so you might like to hold these precious individuals in your hearts and your prayers as they are obedient to what they feel God is asking of them at this moment in time.

In the words of John O’Donohue….

May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
To come alive to the eternal within you
To all the invitations that quietly surround you.

Palm Sunday in the Minster was as usual a grand event. The visitors, the music, the colour, the choir singing, the priests processing in, all clutching their dried palm branches which were then ceremoniously plunged into a large container of sand, looking not unlike Christmas trees in a strange way except of course, they did not have baubles on or a fairy on the top….by the way, has anyone seen the Easter Crackers you can now buy in Tesco – what is that all about?
The thought occurred to me that when our Lord rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, palm branches would be ‘the’ things that you waved around to mark something spectacular happening –the equivalent of football scarves or even underwear if you are a fan of Tom Jones (I am not suggesting anything here!). ‘What’ I pondered as the Passion was sung, ‘would we greet our Lord with today?’ I was not oblivious to the fact that there were two other ‘waving’ opportunities in the news this week – on the one hand the G20 protests where we have seen those who waved their banners in protest carefully managed or ‘kettled’ I think is the phrase used and hidden away in corrals by those in authority, where they sought solace in each other as they were trapped for hours until later when they allowed to travel on. On the other hand, the funeral of Jade Goody which looked remarkably similar to the funeral of Princess Diana in many respects with flowers being thrown onto the car which carried her body and the service in which last respects were paid and testimony given was relayed to the crowds waiting outside. The crowds there were not ‘kettled’ and neither were they hidden as they sought solace in each other.
I found myself wondering how one could square the circle of grief that overcomes those who feel moved to protest because our world is on the brink of ecological and financial disaster, a world that sustains and nourishes us and yet are silenced and those who grieve so publically about someone they have never met yet, becoming part of some surreal family, the head of which has shared their living and their dying in such a voyeuristic fashion …where in all this would I be waving my palm?