What is in Kelvin's Head?

Teaching for the Diocese

22/05/2012
Oh, what a jolly afternoon yesterday, teaching a development session for folks from the diocese on how to use WordPress in general and the new Scottish Episcopal web template in particular. I’m not sure what it was that made me agree to the foolishness of such a teaching session on my first day back from holiday – must have been the difficulty of several diaries needing to play off one another. However, I’m glad that I did it. I’ve not been in a computer lab for years and there was something rather fun about doing it. My best moment for the afternoon was getting people to learn how to use drop-down menus in less than five minutes and see their faces light up with joy.

The whole thing was very typical of the Scottish Episcopal Church, of course. I suspect that there are not many people in the Anglican world who run a Cathedral who would find themselves teaching webskills on a Monday afternoon to folk from the diocese. I actually like the fact that our church is a bit like that. Our church being like that makes for a very varied life and rewards the generalist who has a bit of skill in a lot of things rather than the specialist who is good only for a narrow range of skills.

I was very interested that the gender balance of the group was 10 to 1 in favour of women. I don’t know what conclusion to draw from this. Could it be for any of these reasons:
- Women do communication and men don’t
- Women think communication is important and men don’t
- Women are more ready to admit they don’t know something and go for training whilst men presume
- Men are more likely to tinker and get something going themselves
- Communication isn’t regarded as important and unimportant things are “women’s work”
- Women are communication positive, men are information positive
- Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus
Anyway, I’m very grateful to all those who were there. It was a very enjoyable afternoon and I got a lot out of it myself. Just like when I did the pilgrimage days in the Cathedral a few months ago, I find myself realising how much I enjoy teaching – something I would never have guessed about myself when I was younger.
teaching, web template, wordpress

9 responses to “Turning Up and Being Counted”

Lesley-Ann craddock

26/11/2022

Thank you Kelvin
What a read, I really enjoyed it, all of it. You have touched on the 3 things that I too have been wrestling with.
Liturgy , turning up to be counted, and being open and real with our peers and counterparts.
Hmmm I wonder if those aspects of being church in this post pandemic implosion of society will somehow be a catalyst to become braver clergy and have proper discussions about what matters to Gods church in its own context. Can we be diverse and not divided, can we lock into our heritage and yet be able to change too. Can Branson pickle save us. X

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Christine McIntosh

26/11/2022

Great stuff, Kelvin!

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Robert MacDonald

26/11/2022

Good points well made. We find some church members, who organise a community lunch on a Wednesday, then regularly say ‘we won’t make it on Sunday’. Seems the wrong way round – attendance on a Sunday should come first.

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Peggy Brewer

26/11/2022

Reading this made my day and contributes to my celebration of the season! Thank you!

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Calum Wyllie

27/11/2022

Reading this, I feel like it could have been written about me. I couldn’t have been more deeply involved with my church (felt deeply rooted in the weekly liturgy, sat on the PCC, led on diversity and inclusion, set up online streaming for the first time during lockdown), yet I haven’t been back in two years. There is definitely an element of that link of continuity having been broken, and it’s up to me to make the effort to reforge it again. But the anger is also real, and hard to pin down. When somewhere no longer feels like home, when you feel excluded (even when that person was responsible for leading on inclusion!), how do you find the courage to return? When the link with spirituality feels more present in other places (even when I used to absolutely value liturgy, the Eucharist, the community), how do you find a way forward? Too much thinking, and not enough getting on and doing, perhaps…

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Meg Rosenfeld

27/11/2022

Wow–this article is not only thought-provoking, and, to someone who’s a church-goer, extremely easy to identify with, but also entertaining and therefore all the more memorable. As one whose parish church (in San Francisco’s notorious Haight Ashbury neighborhood) nowadays gets about 15 people in the congregation on a “good” day, I do often wonder whether we’re ever going to bounce back from this expletive-deleted pandemic. Personally, I have no choice: I am, on the aforementioned good day, 50% of the alto section, and on other days, 100% thereof. All you folks out there don’t know what you’re missing–except, of course, those of you who are watching on your home computers.

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Father Ron Smith

27/11/2022

Well said, Kelvin Perhaps we clergy don’t stress enough the fact that the Host at our worship is not the clergy, but the Incarnate Son of God; who empowers us to the extent that we are willing to be empowered for daily life and work. I still think of that lovely phrase “Turn towards HIM and be radiant”. What a thrill!

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Kennedy fraser

28/11/2022

Yes,I still wonder if we have counted all those spiritual communions

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John Davies

01/12/2022

My church (suburban, evangelical Anglican in Birmingham, UK) took a long time to really recover from the lockdown and subsequent fears, but seems to be close to its pre-shutdown numbers again. What my wife and I noticed was that for quite some time the congregation was largely made up of its elderly members – ie those who are not perhaps so nifty with the electronic gadgetry of our age and, also, those who most wanted company. Younger families took a lot longer to return, but are now coming out of the woodwork again.
One interesting point is that my old church reported a big increase in deaf people watching their zoom or youtube services, because one of the congregation provided signage at the front. Their new found audience felt greatly enabled to join in when they may otherwise never have done so. Is this something worth thinking more about?

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