Dear friends,
A lot has happened since I wrote my letter last week. One of my pet hates as a minister is training, when I am told that I have to participate in compulsory training, I become irritated and never take part with joy, rather with utter reluctance. In May of this year several of us from this circuit attended the launch of the ministerial stationing process and we were led through the code of practice for 2022/23, and to my horror all participants had to undergo unconscious bias training. Last Wednesday evening I joined my “unconscious bias” training on Zoom led by our circuit administrator Emma Bowyer. What followed was perhaps the best hour of training I have experienced in a long time and my eyes were opened to something of vital importance. Very few people set out to be deliberately biased, whether on grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, academic ability, mental health, or any other kind of prejudice you care to imagine. I found the whole experience very humbling, and I look back over many years of Church life and recall so many examples of times when Churches have clumsily offended people and rather than welcoming new people in have driven folk away.
Saturday was the representative session of the East Anglia District Methodist Synod where we met at Downham Market. Our key focus for the day was “World Church” and we had a morning of listening and learning about some of our colleagues in the district who have served overseas. I found myself reflecting on the people of our own circuit and even in our local Churches and I wonder how much we listen to their story, their culture. I guess that the experience of the unconscious bias training made me reflect how in the past my own expectation has been that people wherever they come from, whether it is a major city like London, Birmingham, or Manchester, or overseas, is that they find ways to slot in our culture, rather than us listening and engaging with the culture they have come from. I was conscious on Saturday of my own judgement of people who looked different, spoke differently, or even had differing views to me. Have I got the monopoly on being right.
Sunday was a strange day to be preaching. I couldn’t simply ignore the fact that it was the eve of arguably the most important day this country and the British commonwealth at large had experience in many of our lifetimes. It is a strange quirk of the monarchy that we hailed in a new king last Sunday, before we had said an official goodbye to the monarch who has rule throughout the whole of some of our lives. It seemed important to me to reflect on the seventy extraordinary years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. We may never fully appreciate the extent by which she has modernised the monarchy, influenced changes in the nation and maintained the Commonwealth. It felt to be important that we respectfully held silence and remembered, while at the same time giving thanks for her incredible life.
Monday was one of the most spectacular funerals, and in much the same way as with the platinum jubilee earlier in the year, I was proud to be British as world leaders from around the globe came to our little island as a mark of respect. I sat and watched most of the BBC coverage of events. It was good to see our President of Conference, Rev Graham Thompson at the front with other Church leaders, what an amazing experience it must have been for him during his presidential year. I found the whole experience enthralling, impressive, and moving, and as I have said many times over the last few days, we have been watching history in the making. The Queen was one of those people who could command the respect of world leaders and yet at the same time, she could relate to ordinary folk like you, or I and that is a rare skill.
I’m glad that I worship a God, who is all powerful, all mighty, yet cares for me and knows me personally, despite all my failings, my mistakes, my doubts, my sins, he continues to love and care for me. I know that I fall short and maybe at times I fall victim to unconscious bias, but I try to do my best and I am thankful that I stand alongside wonderful people. Let us continue to support one another as we seek to serve God.
With best wishes.
Derek