We’re one of at least three churches in the locality running a holiday club for primary school age children (5-11) this week. It was well established before we arrived, and we do it in partnership with the local Anglican church.
The organisation has been done without input (let alone the chairing of meetings) by me, and I don’t mind at all. It is well done. Mind you, I did turn up on the first day and was the only person not to know I needed a yellow t-shirt that serves as a uniform.
To my pleasure, I have been given a floating rôle – ‘minister without portfolio’, you might say. I have just two duties. One is to lead team prayers before the children arrive each morning, and I’m enjoying adapting some material from Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community. The second is to circulate among the activity groups giving the ‘five minute warning’. No, it doesn’t mean we fear a nuclear attack – I just have to tell them they have five minutes to wrap up before moving on.
Beyond that, I ‘float’. And that’s where the hidden ministry has come in. Conversations with parents and grandparents of holiday club children. With team members old and young. Rarely is the topic anything to do with the club. I won’t elaborate, because I don’t want to break confidences. But mostly we end up talking about significant matters in those people’s lives. A space has been ‘accidentally’ created which leads to conversations that might not otherwise have come up.
The random nature seems to work very well. It rather goes against the way I like things in an orderly fashion, but the more I minister the more I recognise that untidiness is a frequent context for grace. For example, temperamentally I don’t like interruptions to what I’m doing, but I have had to learn that usually these are not interruptions to ministry, rather the interruptions are the ministry. I would rather they booked an appointment, but it doesn’t work that way!
To broaden this out: in a culture that prizes efficiency, I am more than ever learning the value of inefficiency. I do not mean poor stewardship (I can do that well enough). Rather, most of my pastoral visits are unannounced, without arrangement. It means I risk not finding the person in. But even if they are not in, the fact that I leave my card has led to a sense of appreciation that I made the effort (and I’m not the world’s most natural pastoral visitor). Some would say that is not an efficient use of time. It may not be a good use of petrol. But I know too well that with many people, if I were to ring and make an appointment they would resist. “I’m OK, you don’t need to bother with me.”
Floating, random and inefficient: these are starting to be key values in pastoral ministry for me, fourteen years in.
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