Gizza Job (The David Beckham Edition)

Picture courtesy of  The Guardian

It warms my heart to read pure-gold evidence that David Beckham, Lord of Los Angeles, might be a card carrying, fee-paying church-going Christian. Well, he must be - and let me tell you why. 

When he was tiny weeny, he was identified by an older person as being a child with a gift in the form of a God-given skill at something. He worked hard, went to the right places, was seen and did lots - and in the end got the chance to do what he was good at for a living. He undertook this work with aplomb and even earned a little to provide for the three cities he keeps at home (I know one is Brooklyn, but the other two escape me). He has himself a nice wife, quiet and un-assuming (well, you never see her in photos) and has made a nice life for himself and his family. My wife informs me that he is a good man, a nice role-model - an example to the children who look to him for inspiration and their Guiding Light, like what Vicars used to do and be until they became the characters of parody and idiocy on soap-operas. 

Well, night followed day. The First Season. Many more passed until the day when the nice man with the camera and fluffy pompom microphone to his home and mentioned TeemGeeBee to him. "It would be nice", said David (never to be called Dave, and rightly so). 

Then that nice Mr Pearce from off the telly said he had built his committee for the Limpicks. Our David was very sad because he wasn't asked on the committee of footballists. So (through the clever medium of everyone else's voice and not his own), he complained heartily, saying that he had been part of the group for like ever and that - surely there by right. "Football Reasons" they said - which would suggest that "Football Reasons" means "Get some Dignity Man, you are Far Too Old". Just ask that other city, Rio - he was "Football Reasoned" out of the committee he was part of. So many changes, so much grief. 

So, a man who can't seem to let go, possibly a tad past his very best, not taking the view that there are many others who might like a go at the job who would benefit from the experience rather more and who, now, might just be better - a man already involved but in another capacity. A man who fears the change born of the passage of change, much whimpering in private so that everyone else does the complaining in public. DB just has to go to church. Where else would he learn this stuff?

Killing the Old PCC

Kum Ba Ya, M'lud

Fret not, I am not about to emerge as the next headline after One Direction have moved aside. I have not strolled into church with my Ouzi Nine Millimeetah and popped caps into asses. No, none of that.

But ... the Old Order is no more. A new dawn breaks over Whitton.

Those of you familiar with the Parochial Church Council as an entity will know that it is a gathering of the willing who gather periodically to be talked at, either by the Vicar or else the Treasurer, or else the wind-bag who always has an argument for every occasion. They are normally constituted by the faithful and willing who, when they are elected are bright-eyes and fluffy-tailed. By the end of their tenure, they are The Haunted - characterised my sallow-eyes and rictus grin. They will have given up many hours of useful life and devoted it to sitting in and among the Windbags (see above), then dutifully getting on with the task in hand - or put another way, everything that needs doing around the place. 

The level of work covered is very distinctive at such meetings. The wattage of the bulb for use over the Decani choir stalls, so that Old Mrs Miggins cataract isn't scorched; the pile gauge and weight of the carpet sample for the littlies to sit on so that their fragile derrieres are not assaulted by the curvature of medieval stone; the correct  brand of nasty powered-coffee for use after parish events with and without liturgy; the colour of the door knob to the parish office up the stairs that no-one can climb without crampons and a rope; oh, and the pre-payment and accrual basis of the accounts in the fiscal year to date (that only a graduate accountant can fathom). Get the idea?

Well, things they are a-changing. I have never enjoyed sit-in-circles PCCs where every minute detail of every irrelevancy is discussed to the Nth degree (by three people while the remaining fourteen lose the will to live). There is much to be learned by the models established by many school Governing Bodies. 

From now on, the members of my next PCC will all belong to a committee. There will be six committees that range across all of parish life (comms, finance, pastoral, hall, buildings and fabric, children and young people). They needn't run those committees, but be critical friends and communicators (in both directions of that). They will submit reports prior to PCC meetings so that we can read them and come armed to fewer meetings, not more. There will be no such person as a PCC member who does not exist on a committee. What would be the point? In the end, it won't be the onerous duty of a dozen or so press-ganged people to run the entire show; with smaller groups working in this way, half the parish will share the fun.