It was my intention to post during my Ministerial Training. However, once I fully engaged with that process, I realized that I lacked both the time and the mental energy to do so. So it is only now, qualified (excepting some academic i dotting and t crossing of the sort I was once very familiar with) and (joyfully and gratefully!) appointed as the Minister of Upper Chapel in the centre of Sheffield, that I can contemplate using this blog as I originally intended. Too much has happened in that training period for me to make a captivating blog post that in any real sense captures it so I’ll cut to 18th November 2017 and my Induction Service in my new role. It is perhaps the first time I have surprised a large congregation with (relative) brevity but, partly to give the flavour of the event, I would like to share with you the words I shared with that congregation towards the end of the service:

I feel truly blessed to have been welcomed as the Minister of such a lovely congregation. I am both honoured and humbled to join that band of individuals who have been Ministers of Upper Chapel. While I hope I prove to be even fractionally worthy of the role and of my illustrious predecessors, many of whom faced challenges different – and arguably sharper – than those that confront us today, my truer hope is that the Chapel flourishes in my time and I will count myself further blessed if I am but a catalyst in that process.

The reading from Gibran’s The Prophet On Reason and Passion is particularly important to me. It represents an integration within myself that will likely be a work in progress throughout my life and that is a process that underpins much of my faith and spirituality. It is the same reading that I used when first conducting Sunday worship over sixteen years ago in Cross Street Chapel Manchester under the close scrutiny of a certain Rev. John Midgley. The image of the rudder and sails of the boat on the ocean has stuck with me through that time, as has another maritime quote that John used as a wayside pulpit at Cross Street: the late Ralph Helverson, an American Unitarian Universalist who said “A ship is safe in harbour but that is not what a ship is for”. And going back even earlier in the process the early twentieth century French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint Exupery, said “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”.

Individually and collectively, in all our varied endeavours, at Upper Chapel and in the Unitarian movement and beyond, we are all at different points in this process of longing, of building, of leaving harbour for the open seas, of steering towards and, with the wind of the Spirit in our sails, of passionately heading for the goal. A goal that was expressed in the ministry of Jesus as the Kingdom of God, and which, despite the undeniable horrors of his time, he undoubtedly if seemingly paradoxically implied was so close you could almost touch it.

And the prayers which followed those words…

Let us approach that Mysterious Presence that many of us name as God in the fellowship of prayer…

And so, on this occasion, we pray that this Chapel, through both the hearts and minds, and ministries of all its members and leaders, designated and otherwise, and how they interrelate in cooperation within the whole, fully recognises its potential and consistently takes those steps it can to be a vibrant and loving presence within both this Sheffield city community and within our national Unitarian movement.

We pray further for the local life of this great city and of our nation. We pray for those public servants in office and for the difficult decisions that often need to be made on our behalf. May love, wisdom and integrity be ever their watchwords. And may each of us be a light wherever we find ourselves in our communities, may each of us contribute to their good functioning and witness, whether religious or secular, a witness that there is often something higher, deeper, broader and more worthy in our togetherness than there is in our insular concerns, however much we still must inhabit our specific roles and life situations with engagement and even gusto.

We pray for our bruised and hurting world. We know that prayer from our lips whilst sitting on our hands is often futile but the global system is so complex, with both its social and physical aspects, that it is easy to despair at the apparent difficulty of an individual making a difference. Help us instead to take heart and to do what we know does need to be done, and to know that it shall be done, because we will do it together.

And yet in praying all the foregoing…

Universal Presence, Source of Being, both in us and around us always,

We know that our hearts are known

Even before our hopes and fears,

Our prayers and meditations, have found mental voice.

We know that we have been given the freedom

To choose our path towards the light, or to run and hide

To align our will with the Divine will for all creation, or to act selfishly

And that our choosing has consequences.

Today we have prayed “Thy Kingdom Come, thy Will Be Done”

May this not only spring from our lips, in chapel, in ritual unison

But may our hearts truly desire it, our wills truly choose it

As our eyes witness its, and our, gradual, eternal, unfolding.

Amen

Finally, after the service I offered the following during the buffet reception in Upper Chapel’s Channing Hall:

Along with the Upper Chapel Congregation I am extremely grateful to you all for being here, Lord Mayor and Consort, representatives from other churches and other faiths, Friends of the Congregation and of neighbouring congregations, my family and my friends, Unitarian and otherwise. And I make a particular mention to those from the Belper Unitarian Chapel where I long had the freedom to experiment as a lay person before finally embarking on ministerial training. We are particularly grateful to those that have travelled significant distances or who have put considerable effort into making this event happen, and to all involved with the planning, catering and the service itself.

It would take some time to name everyone who has been of assistance organisationally – of course significantly from the Trustees Steering Group and Congregational Committee and the staff of this Chapel – and everyone who spoke in the service – but I really must express my gratitude to Rev. Ernest Baker for taking the service and to Revs. John Midgley and Sue Woolley for their splendid Charges, and to Phil Croft for his consummate musicianship.

This is my first ministry and it follows immediately after a period of intense preparation. I have a wider gratitude to many individuals, to Harris Manchester College Oxford, and ministry tutor Rev Dr Arthur Stewart, and to the Unitarian movement as a whole, for my successful emergence from that process. But I must, last but most definitely not least, particularly thank my wife Gill, and our children Daniel and Joshua, for their patience and understanding during the diminution of, and unpredictability of, my domestic time and energy over the last couple of years.