Mike's musings

Pastoral work

Sometimes you need to reach out, and I offered someone on SecondLife my phone number to talk. She called, and we spent nearly 1 hour on the phone. Mainly, she just needed to chat, and that's fine. I actually can listen...

The girls have been away today with Moo at her parents. Mostly, I've been studying for my (last!) ERMC essay, doing lots of reading around the family and marriage, but I've also walked the dog, put the washing through, hoovered and general stuff. It's been lonely without Moo and the girls around.

Labels: girls, pastoral care, secondlife

Being pastoral

Sometimes you get the chance to take a phonecall and listen. And maybe give some advice or solace. That's being pastoral, and it's a great privilege.

Labels: pastoral care

Facebook - the pastoral side

Over the past few weeks, I've made contact with a few people I've not spoken to in many years, through Facebook. And there's pastoral work to be done, to my surprise. That's not why I joined it, it's not why I got back in touch with people. I'm not going to go into details, but sometimes you can clear things up, sometimes you can try to be a neutral, sometimes you can just pray. And that's got to be good.

Labels: pastoral care

Bump ... Naughty Tree

Poor Mel, Jo's nanny, had a disagreement with some very nasty ice on a bend in the road today, which led to a significant argument with a tree. Jo was in the car, they're both fine, the car isn't, and the insurance company will pay for a new car seat and, hopefully, repairs to Mel's car, too. Today's title comes from Jo's telling of the story. So far, there's no sign of the bad language the Mel says she used in front of Jo when she (Mel) called the insurance people...

My friend Sarah (who knows how to blow that instrument) has just started a blog, called Sarah Sax. I look forward to seeing what she makes of it. It's a difficult discipline, in my experience, and I've really, really benefited from posting every day (well, having a post for each day - sometimes I'm a little late), so I'm interested to see what she makes of it. Welcome to our merry band, m'dear.

So nice to be able to blog about something other than myself for a change!

Labels: blogging, Jo, nanny, pastoral care

Judaism and mission

(backposting) Had a very interesting couple of sessions today. We had three people - two students, one ex-student - from the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations. It appears that I was lucky, and got the best session. We had a very interesting and wide-ranging discussion, from the state of Israel to supersessionism (the question of whether God's initial covenant with the Jews has been superseded by the new covenant - or testament - of Jesus: a very fraught question), to questions of appropriate modes of interaction (and/or mission) between Christians and Jews.

Malcolm presented another session on Judaism and mission generally. He raised the question of how we, as Christians, tend to be too hung up on using proselytising for mission, and altogether too obsessed with numerical growth. He wondered whether we should look at conversion by example: how if we live right, people may follow our example. This really got me thinking: our living isn't just at the personal or cell level, but also at the corporate level. The main reason that people who I know give for not being interested in Christianity is that we - Christians - live hypocritically: "how can I take you seriously if you don't even treat women and homosexuals properly?"

A tough evening on the pastoral side: thanks to Sarah for the support.

Labels: ERMC, mission, pastoral care, theology