Late Post About a Chance for Frequent Vicarage Cake

I have kept on forgetting to blog this – I was too tired before the summer and now it seems a bit late. But just in case there’s someone with massive skills in rapid filling of forms, a desire to serve alongside the Vicar in our multicultural inner city parish, and a good appetite for homemade cake, how about checking out the advert on our church website for a Families and Communities Worker. The deadline is this Friday, so you’ll have to get your socks on if you want to apply!

If it’s not the job for you, do please pray that the Lord sends us just the right person, and that God’s kingdom will grow here.

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Rapping a Catechism

One of the MTs who will be joining us in September, Radiohead, is, rather surprisingly for someone in their early 20s, a big fan of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. He recently blogged about Cranmer’s Catechism that is contained in the BCP, and sketched out a version in modern English.

The same evening another friend linked me to this excellent rap from Shai Linne, who captures the basics of a catechism in truly modern English and includes a few ‘Big Words that end in -SHUN‘. I’m thinking our kids might enjoy the Shai Linne best at this stage. But who knows, maybe they’ll be Cranmer fans too once  Radiohead moves in…

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The Vicar on Video

We’ve slowly been souping up our rather basic church website over the past few months. The best thing we did was get our kind computer-literate friend to change it to a WordPress platform, which was familiar to us from blogging. The old site used Joomla and was just too difficult for us to get our heads around.

We try and update the site a couple of times a week to keep it live, and it seems that people are beginning to use it a little. Most of our congregation aren’t on the internet, but we think that the website is especially important for those who aren’t yet in church.

In our quest to make the site friendly and useful, a video of the Vicar has now been produced by Capable, a church member, and Compassion, who is a great friend of our congregation. I think they’ve done a great job and we’re hoping it’ll be a good introduction for people visiting the website. At least they won’t be surprised by the Vicar’s Scottish accent!

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Tim Keller in Oxford

Following on from Monday’s post, I came across a link to audio and video of  Tim Keller’s talks on Encountering Jesus from the OICCU mission earlier this month. We were praying for these talks – all the rest of the activities going on around Oxford, whilst the Engineer’s godmother helped, staying in one of the colleges. And it was good to remember that missions were happening at universities and colleges around the country, even as the slow grind of the meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod was depressing us.

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Another Good Reason to Come and Hope with Us

Thinking about getting in touch about our Ministry Trainee scheme? The scheme is going to be even better next year, as we’ve just had the go-ahead to renovate the chilly attic where our Ministry Trainees are housed. The excellent local Walter Stanley Trust, which supports ministry in our deanery, has agreed to lend us the money for the renovations so we can go ahead and make the space more comfortable.

We will also be able to house two MTs, instead of just the one, in a comfortable apartment with two bedrooms, a shower room and a living/dining room with kitchenette. And it will have central heating! Rocky and Happy have bravely lodged here in more austere conditions, but we pray that these changes will enable us to train more folk for ministry for the benefit of the kingdom of God in this parish and beyond.

The local paper has recently featured an article about the renovation project – with a couple of good pics of the Vicarage and the Vicar.

Rocky has met all sorts of interesting people in his time as an MT with us

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Come and Hope with us

This summer our lodger Rocky is marrying Bee and leaving the delights of our chilly Victorian vicarage for theological college to train as a vicar himself. When he leaves a space will open up in our attic for another Ministry Trainee (or hopefully two). Our Ministry Trainees are involved with all aspects of church life, leading work with children and youth and small groups, they visit parishioners and have many many opportunities to exercise their gifts. They truly get to see ministry from the inside. If you think you (or anyone you know) might like to spend time living in our house, serving our community and learning about God, with the added incentive of plentiful cake and some lively children for company, do get in touch.

More details are on our church website.

Lovely living accommodation

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Five (or More) Ways to Encourage a Vicar’s Wife

A lovely parishioner visited me yesterday and brought a bunch of flowers, knowing that I’d had a pretty stressful few days. Sometimes being the Vicar’s wife can feel lonely. You’re in a weird situation that not many people understand and people keep on calling at your front door asking the Vicar to mend their bikes (amongst other things last night). So when someone from our congregation thinks of me and lets me know they’ve been thinking of me, it really warms my heart. A little encouragement goes a long way and helps me to persevere.

And then a Vicar’s wife friend on Facebook asked for some help in drafting a talk on ‘Five Ways to Encourage a Minister’s Wife’ (she’s not just speaking to Anglicans). There were lots of great ideas there – and they’ve inspired me to write my five:

1. Treat the Vicar’s wife as a real person, a normal member of the church family. Don’t give her too many messages for the Vicar as she’ll feel horribly guilty when she forgets.
2. Be a pew buddy – sit with her on a Sunday morning – if she has kids give her a hand with them.
3. Let her know if you’ve been thinking of her or praying for her (maybe in writing).
4. Make sure she regularly gets on the Minister’s Wives conference, or a retreat, or something spiritually refreshing, and try to ensure she gets enough time with her husband.
5. Flowers, wine and chocolate, obviously, or even an invitation to Sunday lunch for the whole family.

Many of these things would encourage any church member, but I’ve tried to highlight some of the things I’ve found especially encouraging myself. What do you think?

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Census Confusion

As Formfiller-In-Chief in the Vicarage, the lovely census form falls to me. Actually, we have two of them, as the database people think that The Vicarage at House Number, Street Name is a different dwelling to House Number, Street Name. Anyway, I will be communing with the forms over the weekend and battling with the usual question:

What exactly does your husband DO?

Before I get to the that, there’s the question of the Vicarage itself. I’m not sure whether our landlord is the Vicar’s employer or not, as he’s not officially ‘employed’ – he’s an ‘office holder’ and the house is part of his ‘freehold’.

And then, of course, there is the employment question. The Vicar is not really an employee (although the diocese handle his stipend and he answers to the bishop), nor self-employed (though many of the ways that HMRC look at him are similar). I think he may be ‘doing any other kind of paid work’. The folk over at Thinking Anglicans are also wrestling with this and are suggesting ticking all the boxes in the first employment question (26) – although I think that option is really for people who have more than one job.

Alas, you do not have that choice for Question 33 and you must choose between being an employee and being self-employed. What will you all be choosing? And there is also the challenge of describing what you do in your main job. Pastor-teacher? Cure of souls? Ministry? Preaching the word and administering the sacraments?

I’m also looking forward to answering Q37: At your workplace, what is the main activity of your employer? If we go with the thought that the Vicar is employed by the Lord, I could have some fun with this: Running the universe. Upholding all things by His powerful word. For example.

Looking forward to hearing your suggestions. And it’s meant to be completed by Sunday…

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Worried About Your Clergy Tax Code?

Never fear – HMRC have made a teensy slip-up. They’ve posted PAYE notices with erroneous tax codes to ‘most stipendiary clergy’ according to the CofE. The Vicar’s tax free allowance had almost halved!

I thought it might dip a bit, after we spent less on gas and electricity than we anticipated last year (clergy have a special tax-free allowance on part of this due to their homes being used as a place of work). But I hadn’t thought we’d been that frugal.

So, just a bit of a clerical error, then… Perhaps something to do with the disbanding of the specialist clergy tax team which used to operate from Bradford? Who knows? I’m just glad I don’t have to think about tax for a while now – I did the forms in the summer because I have to work out the tax for Child Tax Credit anyway. In previous years I’ve done Child Tax Credit and then left the tax until January, but I actually managed to completely finish the job this year. Unusual for me, but pleasing at this stage in the year…

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Vicar’s wife job description: Part 15 – Printer paper & BAP forms

One day earlier this week saw me strolling up to tow-un (you have to use the Black Country pronounciation, or it’s just not right) just before lunch. The Vicar had run out of printer paper. Both he & Happy needed some and they had others coming over for a meeting an hour later.

So, seeing the sunshine, I offered to head into Wilkinsons for their very cheap paper. Happy needed his paper to print out parts of his application form for a BAP. For those of you who are not up with all the Anglican jargon, a BAP is a Bishop’s Advisory Panel also often called a selection conference. None the wiser? Well, it’s a two day roasting interview where candidates for ordained ministry for the Church of England are put through their paces. Happy has one coming up in July and needs to get his forms in soon.

He has been away house-sitting for a few days in order to think through his forms and fill them out in peace. The Vicarage is not the best place to be if you want silence to work. Especially not on Sunday when local kids were availing themselves of the tap in our outside loo to fill up water pistols, bottles and buckets for a monster water fight that went on all afternoon on our street, accompanied by raucous squealing.  So Happy came over for this meeting, some lunch and to print out his forms. And for proofreading, which I love to do. I can usually spot a spelling or grammatical error at 50 paces. Although not always on the blog. Sorry.

We need it!

The forms are still a work in progress, but we’re very pleased to be supporting Happy through this process. God (and the CofE) willing, it will mean that Happy goes off to training in September. So we’re praying for someone equally servant hearted and easy-going to come and live with us and serve in our church next year. It’s a great way to explore if ordained ministry is for you, and our diocese are very supportive of the scheme. You can check out the ad on the Vicar’s blog.

If there’s anyone you know who might be interested (they don’t have to be considering ordination, just be keen to have a year or two in church ministry) do please refer them to us! I don’t promise to do their ironing, but they can have homemade cake on a very regular basis…

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