Storyteller's World

Something about Going To London always makes me feel like a deep country cousin, a straw-chewing yokel. Doesn't matter that I was born at University College Hospital - I don't know if you call that Bloomsbury, or just plain Euston - and was a London suburbanite and sometimes commuter for the first quarter century of my life. I've been away too long, it's all too changed.

Today I went to this training day run by the Ministry Division at Church House, the very nerve centre and beating heart that is the HQ of the Church of England !?! So whereas this country mouse usually travels to London on the coach, taking a good two hours, I felt important enough to put on a jacket and go by train from Haddenham Parkway to Marylebone and claimed travelling expenses. Is it more comfortable? Well, it's quicker.

And what are we to make of training? Sometimes I think the whole point of the sessions is to read through the literature with and for people who haven't bothered to read it themselves beforehand. Which I had done, as well as doing the preliminary exercise we were asked to do (oh, virtuous self!) and it took practically all of Monday, too. But then again, even though I had read it, it was good and reinforcing to go through it and discuss with others. So maybe even training has some purpose.

And now I know, for example, all about the Changes in Nomenclature. So that the national process for selecting candidates for ordination training is no longer called a Selection Conference, but the Bishops' Advisory Panel on Selection for Training for Ordained and Accredited Lay Ministry. And myself, who used to be just a Pastoral Selector, am now a Bishops' Selection Adviser (Pastoral). So please don't forget that, now. When you hear that this BSA(P) is going to attend a BAPSTOALM, you will know exactly what is meant and nod sagely over your Church Times and corn flakes. Thank you, friends.