Managing change - could do better

I was pleasantly surprised to see Father Roy, retired Vicar of St German's in church when I arrived this morning to say Mass in honour of our Lady of Walsingham on the anniversary of the beginning of the restoration of the shrine of the Holy House. He'd come in search of keys to the Vicarage, his former home, but found the locks had been changed by builders working on the property, so he was unable to retrieve surplus items of furniture belonging to him which he'd arranged to be transported elsewhere that morning. 

Last Sunday, Angela, the church administrator was complaining that she'd been unable to retrieve mail because the locks had been changed without notice and copies of keys not handed over. Later this morning enquiries revealed that keys had been delivered to her at 7.00am that day, but Father Roy was not aware of this, just taken aback at being locked out and his plans for the day thrown into disarray. Problems like this arise because the management of church housing is done remotely, and building work done by an agency which has little contact with those who might be affected. As I discovered during this week's exercise in upgrading a communications network, keeping all who need to know in the information loop is an activity everyone involved benefits from doing better. 

Following a quiet afternoon of catching up after a demanding week, Clare and I joined two of her school colleagues at the Millennium Centre for the WNO's English language rendition of Rossini's 'Barber of Seville'. We saw and enjoyed it last time around, but when? For an aide-memoire I checked my old blog 'EdgeoftheCentre' when we got home, and found that it was three years ago minus five days since we last saw this superb comic performance. We went on Clare's birthday and loved it. 

That was the day Ben Rabjohns came to us on ministry placement at St John's. He'll be ordained deacon at the Cathedral next Friday, Michaelmas Day, a term later than his contemporaries, since he did an extra placement in Jerusalem once he finished at St Michael's College. In my mischievous way, I wonder - which will have greater impact on him in the long term - three months in the 21st century Holy Land, or ordination in the Cathedral of the diocese where his father was priest of the same parish for thirty years?