New Blog - The Tentmaking Minister

The accused is one Jonathan Hawkins, Your Honour - Clerk in Holy Orders and regarded as one jolly fine chap!

OK, so I need to convince Jon to take some more pictures of his handsome visage, but this is the man whose Blog I am delighted to feature this week.

The Tentmaking Minister

In his own words:

I am a latecomer to ministry as a priest in the CofE, having first pushed on the door some 30 years ago but finding it not yet open.
Consequently I have spent most of my life working as a Chartered Surveyor in the residential market based first in Essex and then in Buckinghamshire.

 During my life I have been privileged to marry Jackie, to have two sons, and now a grandson. We now have a regular excuse to travel to Miami where our grandson lives with his mum & dad

I have been a tinkerer with computers since before the BBC brought one out. The first upgrade I did was with a soldering iron on the motherboard because that was how it was then (showing my age again).

 As a consequence I have used, messed, played and worked with computers and all sorts of different operating systems but am now nearly standardised on Apple Mac products having made the change a year ago.

 Over the time I have used computers we have seen a tremendous increase in their use for communication and sharing things with others including sharing our love of God on the ‘net’. I have created several web sites for churches in the past as more and more people when seeking a spiritual home will search ‘Google’ etc to find what is on offer.

 I have been reading blogs for sometime and felt that I might have something to share with others about my own journey, my call to serve in a nearby village, and my struggle to see where the CofE is going, so I decided to start. Well, I decided that a while ago but have procrastinated a lot over the vexed question as to whether I would have anything of value to share that others might be interested in.

Eventually I realise that I would only find out by doing, and so ‘The Tentmaking Minister’ blog got started. Only time will tell how it will work out.

I have been delighted to have have found Jon's blog. As decent a man you would be hard pressed to find, and that alone qualifies him as a one to read. However, I enjoy Jon's blog because it has some other 'bits' which makes it distinct to others. If you are a computer-type, then you won't be disappointed. We are from very different ecclesial backgrounds, but that makes no difference to us. He is a big-hearted, pastoral man and I commend him, and his excellent blog to you in those terms.  Read him and follow him, please.

New Blog - Two Steps Forward

This week's featured blog is 

Two Steps Forward

It is the work of Rachel Firth, the about-to-be Vicar of St. Stephen's in Lindley, somewhere north of London. She is about to complete her curacy at Halifax Minster, and is new to this blogging lark.

I have got to know Rachel a little through the life I live through Twitter and her views are to the point, apposite and very calmly laid out. Posts of my own here have benefitted from her comments, and she is not afraid to wrestle with the issues plighting the blogosphere. Her perspective on matters is, to say the least, proving to be refreshing. 

A liturgist, a ++Rowan loyalist - perhaps you can see why I might choose to champion this blogger and her writing. She can even make a dalmatic look acceptable, and that alone makes her worth a punt. 

Please give her blog a try, follow it, and you will not be sorry - or your money back.

...and please keep your recommendations coming in.

I give my thanks to the excellent Rev Robb Sutherland, the Rocking Reverend, who recommended Rachel's blog to me. His well established blog [Changing Worship] is worth a read too, and a more decent geezer you will hard pressed to find. 

New Blog - Lay Anglicana

Lay Anglicana

As promised, my first featured blog in this new thread which I devote to the promotion of new blogs. 

When I mentioned this last week, I received a very encouraging response and can fill new next month or two. Thank you to those who either approached my directly or who recommended new blogs of note. 

Lots of blogs are written the clerics. I am one of them, so won't judge - but this week's blog is not one such site. It's title gives it away, really. It's author, Laura Sykes is, and I hope that she will forgive me for so saying, of a demographic for whom social media is not perhaps first love or competance. She is a ready and welcome presence in the dialogue of Twitter and Facebook, and I commend her and her blog in those terms. Please give her a read, and maybe even click her 'Follow' button too.

In her own words ...

Laura Sykes served from 2005-2010 as a ‘lay worship leader’, one of about thirty in Andover Deanery (UK) taking services of the word after minimal training (eight evenings in successive weeks). Her experiences led her to start a website on this new species of fauna – ‘lay anglicana’ – where laity and clergy could exchange ideas on the role that the laity might play in the worship life of the church.

 Ideally, there would be a priest in every parish church. However, in the words of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, ‘if you want things to stay the same, everything will have to change’. The Church of England knows this, but is very resistant to change. For every two steps forward, there seems to be one step back. In the absence of any other forum for the laity freely to voice its opinion qua laity (the House of Laity being part of the establishment), Laura is highlighting some of the issues facing the Church, encouraging all that seems good while pointing out that ‘the Emperor has no clothes’ if and when it seems appropriate, eg over current developments in the Anglican Communion. 

Now a pensioner, she is at an advantage in being financially independent. She calculates that, so long as her polemics do not actually land her in the Tower of London, the expression of her trenchant opinions may be a catalyst for constructive change, as well as being a delightful occupation for her old age. The website discussion forum is at http://www.layanglicana.org/forum.php   and the blog is at http://layanglicana.blogspot.com

Blog Announcement - Giving Something Back

Blogging can have a tendency to be an introverted and slightly self-centred pastime. We sit and write about what we want to write about and the subject matter, by necessity, revolves around us and how we're feeling. That is its nature, and part of the deal really.

Certainly, you have all been very supportive of my flights of whimsy and have walked with me on a many of my little inner-jaunts. For that I thank you all, once again.

Something that really gives me a buzz is to help people along the way. It is part of ministry and it is part of what makes me tick, and already I need a second hand to count the numbers of new bloggers I have helped out. It is my pleasure to help and my desire to pay the blogosphere back. So ...

From next week onwards, I am going to have a regular blog slot that spotlights new blogs. I will either talk about  the new blog myself or invite its blogger to comment here. I ask of you a couple of things:

1. That if you are a new blogger you seek me out and introduce me to your blog.

2. That if you read my blog that you will at least give the blogs that I feature a once over!
3. Spread the word - a new blogger may appear that was hitherto hidden!

The blogs I seek will be...

a. Of interest to the readers of this blog (which is to say, look at my blog roll and see what I read - so Christian, Armed Forces, that sort of thing - though not exclusively so, take a gamble)

b. That you have been blogging for six months or less

c. That if the blog is older than six months that it has fewer than ten posts

That's it!

Featured blogs will be entered to my blog roll or one I create specifically for the job, and I will commit to following and reading them. I have already seen that there are some wonderful new blogs emerging, each with distinct angles on their chosen topic. This endeavour is, to be sure, as selfish as it is altruistic!

I have no idea how (or if) this will go. If it goes well, I might see more blogs than I can feature and will have to prune that particular bush - but I will regard that as a happy accident. My decision is final - mostly cos this is my blog, so there. 

Happy Blogging - reveal yourself to me!