Lucky escape

I trekked through snow and slush to St Mikes this morning. The place was buzzing with an in-service session for clergy today, also several Bishops and others were in for a ministry review session. Deployment of ordinands and filling key diocesan posts are both difficult and complex affairs now that resources and personnel for full time ministry are under increasing constraint. The pressures of church decline are a cause of anxiety for many in responsibility. It can't be easy to stay serene and confident, let alone in touch with signs of hope wherever these are to be found. Thankfully, this College is a place where there are signs of hope in  people, staff and students, both realistic and eager to address the challenges facing them

I'd like to think that in the long run there'll be a re-valuation of the role of non-stipendiary clerics, that the same training for mission and ministry applies to those supporting themselves in secular employment as in paid posts. People today are used not just to changing jobs, but also training to acquire new appropriate skills, possibly several times in working life. Adjustments need to be made to permit clerics to move back of forth between secular employment and the role of full time parish incumbent. In the realm of housing, pay and conditions this is a considerable challenge to supporting agencies at diocesan and provincial level. It's also a challenge to the individual man or woman also, shifting focus from one working culture to another. It seems to me it's one of the best ways the church can respond to the call to mission in this ultra mobile era.

I was pleased to receive from one of my tutorial group students a lengthy account of her vacation placement observing the work of hospital chaplains. It was a good read, well observed, material to reflect on and work with in coming months. Term starts Monday next.

In the afternoon I spent a couple of hours in the CBS office adding data that I couldn't import into a new Sage accounts package which will look after our finances in the years to come. It's a boring but necessary task, but it'll at least oblige me to review the accuracy of our entire data set. There's a huge amount to learn, as the way of working is more structured and also focussed differently from the somewhat ramshackle information system I put together. I just hope the new system will make it possible us all to work effectively on company business.

Finally, late in the evening I caught up with my sister June, triumphant at having succeeded in stopping her bank card before any payment for duff software could be extracted from it. he'd started to suspect she was begin scammed just before I rang, so my call propelled her into immediate positive action. Her survival of this potential misfortune may well be due to the payment collectors being based in the USA. It would take them time to process the details and transmit internationally, and for once, because of prompt action, time was on her side. I had a peek at her email account and there was evidence of a security breach, so the password had to be changed. Her machine will remain switched off until I can go up to London and go over it thoroughly to find out if anything was done to her machine by stealth. Meanwhile she is ringing around telling all her friends, and warning them against self styled IT expert con-men.

I'm not publishing the name of the fraudulent sales company on-line, just in case their scouts are on the lookout for negative mentions in the media, and decide to retaliate. But if anyone wants to know, just get in touch with me.

  

Beware scammers about

Hmmm, more snowy weather than expected. It was funny looking at Cardiff weather websites predicting light rain, and watching snow flurries out of the window. The temperature must be just hovering around zero. It's slushy wet walking everywhere, but that's preferable to car hassles.

My sister June sent me an email as I was going out, which immediately set of alarm bells telling me that someone calling themselves an IT expert had called to warn her of a dangerous virus on her computer (which wasn't even switched on at the time). I rang immediately to warn her of a scam, but her phone was occupied for the next three hours, but which time, it was too late. I found out from the scamware database within seconds of enquiry the reputation of the company. She'd been sold software she didn't need for a non-existent problem (she runs up do date anti-virus software at my insistence). If only she'd phoned me instead of emailing. For once I was glad of the early warning of trouble from a message notification on my Blackberry. Figuring out what sort of damage has been done by this kind of fraudulent cold calling is going to take a little time. It worries me.

I went up to College lunchtime for a couple of brief meetings, and then took the bus (thankfully they're running OK) into town to tackle a small technical request to provide voice traffic data for police evidence purposes from our RadioNet database. The system is pretty solid now and we're all learning how to work it. Occasionally, procedures have to be run a couple of times to ensure we get exactly what we need, but practice makes perfect.

Because of the snow, the evening's Chi Gung class wasn't as full as usual, but I was very glad it was still running, having walked to St Mary's Hall in the snow. It was just what I needed at the end of a stressful day.