Outside the Box: Interested?

After some conversation, including my suggestion of "thinking outside the box", this blog entry is an example of "thinking outside the box" and this has been discussed. It is addressed in particular to anyone who is a liberal minister or knows a liberal minister who is really fed up with double speak in his or her own ministry that reflects the double speak going on in the hierarchy. This concerns any sexuality.

On the other hand this is not likely to appeal to those who have a dedicated Anglo-Catholic presentational approach to religion (however liberal your reasoning) or to those for whom repetition is an important part of spirituality. So anyone interested ought to be somewhere about the low end liberal wise at the least, or can reinterpret the role and function of symbolism with its modest use. This is especially for someone who may have been undergoing a crisis of belief and double talk but would carry on being a minister and taking up a new challenge; alternatively, you might be a religious humanist but have managed to carry on in your role observing all those promises, but have gone stale in the process.

Some might have been asking why can't they do a reading from a different faith or a secular source; well here is an opportunity to minister and build services from whatever sources you wish (including Christianity, of course, as reinterpreted).

The money is there, and sustainable. Indeed, not only is the money there, but there are plans to install a minister and then spend hefty amounts on marketing. So here is the task, where your input is vital. There is a lot of historical money for the job.

It is nothing less but to relaunch a long-standing and continuous congregation. There is one, but it is one that needs the influx of new life from new people on their own spiritual searches. The congregation is an ideologically liberal congregation that gathers, rather than a community one (that's because of the location: but even that isn't fixed). So you get full time pay, and you start the job, and you do all the ministry things you did do but additionally you get into the relaunching activities too - many of which you decide in collaboration with others. Oh, and please don't take services every week, but train others to take services in many of the weeks. Being a minister, though, comes with a status so that what you do is really up to you, but this congregation wants someone who wants a challenge.

If a reader of this blog in Britain knows someone who might be interested, then point their noses to this entry here. Anyone themselves who would be interested can drop me a message, and I will pass it on with full discretion assured. You will then get contacted by those on the money buttons who are the decision makers and it is a case of providing your details to them in a process of selection.

Nothing is promised, but then nothing ventured and nothing gained. I know well of one late minister who resigned: he did his last Eucharist service, he preached, he observed all his promises, and at the end he informed his congregation as he had informed others before, and then the next day on the Monday moved into his new office and took up his new duties. I recalled this during the conversation I heard, and that's why I am writing this now. Thinking outside the box, as that London congregation did, would be part of the role.

Remember that this move would be raw, different, a risk, but might be something different. But I would say this: if you are really Anglican, or Methodist, or URC, and really you have deep commitments to your place, your tasks, your beliefs (however liberal) then it probably would not work. It is for those who, really, have arrived at something different even if they don't have the opportunity to do anything about it.

By the way, you might think 'God is calling me to this change.' You might think like this, but the language won't make any difference to any selection process. After all, you might have arrived at an entirely different concept of God or indeed some difficulty with using the word God, but you value the spiritual and depth, and such among those that gather together, and you want to build something on those terms.

Now I'm a free-floating hanger-on on the wrong side of the river, but you would not be!