Doing some research on ministry thoughts (long post coming) and discovered this little gem from July 2007:
“I was told a few days ago that there is a group of people in the parish who welcomed my arrival but who are now eager for me to be gone.”
I had forgotten that. Makes me realise that many of the tensions which erupted into the open last year had been a long time coming.
The Lord being my helper, I’m going to be here for some time yet.
Ah! the joys of parish life.
Let me tell you the funny story of the “I’ll be here long after you’ve gone” person from one of my previous charges the next time we meet for a pint! (Too long and too shocking for a family-rated blog like this one!)
My favourite is the comment about my colleague in a parish where I served. His wife was greeted in the high street with the comment: ‘We saw Hitler off and we’ll see him off!’ And that was one of the milder pieces of abuse directed at them. I learnt alot from both the Rector and his wife about grace and God being the ground of confidence in one’s calling.
Is this sort of attitude peculiar to anglicans? The last vicar of my local church had similar opposition.
Seems to be something about those church buildings that make people fight so bitterly about what goes on in them. I rather think we should let the buildings close and hold meetings in a school hall instead.
But, Tess, it ain’t the buildings that have such sociopathic attitudes. Put a sociopath in a neat and clean school hall, or put a sociopath in a building with gothic windows, and he’ll still be a sociopath! (IOW, wherever sinful Adam goes, there sinful Adam will be)
Justin, a sociopath would never be so pathetic as to whine from the pews 🙂