10th May - On the road again...

 As I write, I'm also packing - because the coming week will see me away until the weekend. I'm going to the West Midlands (where I will, as well as attending a family funeral, go and visit the place I first lived), then to Oxford for the Superintendent's Conference, and then to Epworth for a guided walk in the place that the Wesleys were born and raised.

Last weekend, as well as attending Bushy Parkrun, I was attending a concert at the Blackheath Halls. Not really knowing London, other than being South of the Thames, I needed to look at the map to work out where I would be, and what else might be around there. And I discovered that I would actually be within walking distance of somewhere that pretty much every Methodist Minister knows about: the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

So, off I went, across Blackheath itself, through Greenwich Park, down to the Cutty Sark and just beyond.

As I walked, I realised how many people there were around me. Now, yes, it was a nice sunny day on a Bank Holiday Weekend, but having not lived in a City for more than a dozen years, it was a little bit of a culture shock. It did make me wonder if that's one of the reasons Londoners don't greet each other as they pass - there's so many of them, that if you stopped to nod or smile at everyone that passed, you'd never get anywhere or do anything! 

I walked on, past people in their dozens, maybe hundreds, and as I got down towards the Cutty Sark maybe more than that. People whizzed past on the ubiquitous Lime Bikes. In all likelihood I had never seen any of them before, and may never see any of them again. Cities can be lonely places; had I walked the same distance around Great Ayton, or Whitchurch where I served before, I would have undoubtedly seen people I knew, who would quite possibly have stopped for a chat. How do you build community in a place as big as a city?

Eventually I reached my destination. When I say it's somewhere every Methodist Minister knows, I mean that it's a Metaphor that we're all familiar with. A few years ago now, the decision was made that all Ministers in the Active Work should have Supervision: not someone looking over your shoulder, but regular meetings with a trained Supervisor (these days usually a colleague in another Circuit), to talk through issues and move forward. It's a bit like how all Therapists are supposed to also visit a Therapist themselves. 

When this was coming in, all those receiving Supervision attended training so that we'd know what to expect. And one of the things was that the "Greenwich Foot Tunnel" model was explained to us. The idea is that you start at the top; then, you start to talk about the issue you've bought to Supervision, spiralling down the staircase until you reach the tunnel itself. The tunnel slopes down gradually until the centre point - the very heart of your issue - before gradually rising to the shaft at the far end, where, hopefully with a path forward, you spiral back up to the surface and go on your way.

As a result of this training, if you say "Greenwich Foot Tunnel" to any Methodist Minister, the chances are they are not thinking of a way under the Thames, but of Supervision! I don't think it's the rule that you have to physically visit it if you're close by, but I'm far from the first to have pictures like the above on my Camera Reel... And, while there was maybe a little scepticism at first, I've found Supervision to be a valuable and helpful part of my Ministry. Sadly, my current Supervisor is about to change appointments; but Vincent asking me, during Supervision, "And what is God saying to you now" will stay with me, and be a part of my own reflective practice whoever I end up with next.