Elections in view

We attended the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning along with thirty five adults and ten children. For the sermon sacristan Clive gave a superb address about mental health. He's lived successfully with bi-polar disorder and has been under treatment for over thirty years, so was speaking from personal experience. He gave us lots to think about, especially in terms of what churches in the ministry area may be able to offer to support sufferers positively.

Another siesta after lunch, then a few laps of Thompsons Park, until it started to drizzle and then rain, as it did yesterday. This evening, two series finales on BBC One. The Ulster dirty cop saga 'Bloodlands' and before it, the last episode in the latest series of Doctor Who aired with Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, and featured a selection of actors who had in the past forty years accompanied the Doctor in time travel, all at their current ages, of course. The Bloodlands ending was complex enough but intelligible. whereas the Doctor Who story was to my mind unfathomable with occasional self-referential jokes - a bit like UK politics at the moment. 

Boris Johnson has withdrawn from the Tory leadership contest, after declaring he had enough support to win but doing so in the interests of party unity at this critical time. Tomorrow we will learn if there will be an electoral contest or, as the media call an uncontested outcome 'a coronation'. What we won't get, despite opposition calls for one, is a general election.

In this week's diocesan newsletter, an announcement was about the procedure for electing a new Bishop. I know personally two of the clergy electors, and wonder if I should say anything to them about the criteria for candidacy rather than who would be worth taking seriously as our new spiritual leader. I suspect, however, that other people will voice the concern I feel about overlooking Church in Wales candidates and importing yet another CofE cleric unlikely to get preferment in the Province they serve. 

Someone who already speaks Welsh and has served in Wales is needed to boost morale and inspire the faithful remnant of church membership to reach out afresh to the nation at this exceedingly difficult time. It seems to me that pressure to undertake new missionary initiatives with all kinds of 'experts' has resulted in further reducing the spread of grass roots pastoral ministry, and fails to recognise that missionary initiative springs from and is fed by pastoral care owned by church people at grass roots level. That was the lesson learned by Roland Allen from church growth in China and Uganda a century ago; sadly, one which well educated and sophisticated institutional churches have been reluctant to learn ever since.