Goodhand in Banbury

  One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, ……Psalm 27 verse 4 Well moving into retirement after 38 years means finding a church community to be part of. This is a novel experience for us both. Jill always found when she moved she still had the same minister me!  The need to find a church involves a number of potential challenges for a minister. Do you go looking for a church within your own denomination or spread the net wider? Do you let on that you are a minister? What kind of church community are you in fact looking for? Does the theological stance matter? Just some of the questions to be grappled with. I wanted to be able to shop around and keep a low profile. Having led worship for so long it would be fascinating to see how you are welcomed as a stranger. Even more to see what it’s like to be on the other end to sit and receive. But where to start? My girls would say the websites. So before we moved I na

  Over the years some people have implied or said that for us moving is easy. They assume that because moving goes with the role of an itinerant minister that somehow we are different. What it must have been like for ministers years ago I really can't imagine. Some moved every three years. Some sending their children away to school to stop disrupting their schooling, and having to make do with the furniture that was in the manse!!!!  We have thankfully only moved four times in ministry and that has felt a big thing every time. Okay we don't have to house hunt which is stressful, but it is "here’s the job here's the house". So now it's a fifth and hopefully final move (apart from the  trip to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland).  Every move has been filled with a sense of the unknown, a bit of excitement and always a sense of “I wonder if we will make friends”. You worry particularly for your children often to the point you forget to acknowledge forgetting it&#

After  the excitement of my final services we took a couple of days out to mark the beginning of the sabbatical. So a return to a favourite east coast destination. Staithes is a wonderful place to make a base from which you can easily get onto the costal path to walk and clear your head.  Like all small communities Staithes has changed as peoples patterns of life have altered. The final Methodist chapel (Weselyan) has closed and turned into apartments. Love Divine, Sunday School, and Kindly Light. Amazing to think this small community had four chapels at one time. We remember seeing a handful of people still going to the chapel when we first stayed locally. Of course it highlights how our history of chapel building, resulting from the various strands of Methodism, has often sapped our energy with maintenance of the status quo. If only these chapels has come together sooner eg at Methodist union, then we might still be a force to be reckoned with. So a few pictures of the delightful sce

 It is now six weeks since we left Sheffield after 14 years living and working in the inner city.  But I need to re wind to Palm Sunday and Easter Day before I start on living in Banbury. On Palm Sunday I shared in my final service at St Peters LEP Ellesmere. It was a wonderful time with a delicious buffet that followed. The warmth of a community that I have increasingly grown to love and care about was very tangible. I will miss people and leading worship in their great worship space.  The pleasure was added to a couple of weeks later when Jill and I joined Bill at his 100 birthday party and to be invited to say a few words was a genuine privilege. There will always be a special place in my memory of St Peters, a community that welcomed and accepted everyone without placing demands upon them. They really are Christ like. Rosie , Jean and team went to a lot of trouble to make it a wonderful time. Then Easter Day saw my final service in Sheffield and it was everything I could have hoped