About Me

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I was commissioned as a Church Army Officer in 2000, and spent 9 years working in parishes, mainly with children and families. In 2009, I began ordination training at Ripon College Cuddesdon. I married Clare in July 2000, and our first child, Nathan, arrived on September 22nd 2010.

Sunday, 15 November 2009

Steppin' Stone

So much for writing at least once a week on the Blog! Ordination training really is incredibly tense!

Much as I love the theological study, it can get quite intense, so I'm very grateful for the two very different placements I have each week. I've mentioned before my Sunday placement at St. Barnabas; today I'll say a little about my midweek one.

Thursday evenings, I'm a volunteer at the Steppin' Stone project for homeless and vulnerably housed people. I won't go into all the details of it here - follow the link to find out more about what it does. My role is to work as part of a team, chatting with the members, serving food and washing up, and helping to clean up afterwards.

I've only had two weeks there so far, but I've already had a number of good conversations with people, and am learning a great deal about the issues facing homeless people today. It's also a valuable experience for me to be a volunteer - having spent the last 9 years working with volunteers, and, of course, moving into the same situation at the end of training! It's very useful to see what it's like from the other side of things! And, personally, it's very fulfilling, and it's helping to keep everything I'm doing at college grounded in the real world - something which could easily be forgotten in a community like RCC, as wonderful as it is!