I also heard several people comment that there is something worrying about the bloodlust with which people set about someone who becomes a scapegoat for the ills of a system. The villification of one person may make people feel a little better but it doesn't tackle the root of the problem; it doesn't attend to the cracks in a culture that makes such behaviour seem normal. A broader critique comes from HSBC chairman Stephen Green, who is also an ordained Church of England minister. In his book Serving God? Serving Mammon?  he explores the ethics of banking, and argued that the banking industry largely lost its moral compass in the last few years, resulting in a  "major breakdown in trust". 

There's a piece by Russell Lynch published today, in which he quotes Green:

"It is as if, too often, people had given up asking whether something was the right thing to do, and focused only whether it was legal and complied with the rules. The industry needs to recover a sense of what is right and suitable as a key impulse for doing business" [Green] said. He warns that while many bankers did well by their customers, "we must also recognise that there have been too many who have profoundly damaged the industry's reputation". 

The boom in complex mortgage-backed securities and an entire alphabet soup of toxic investments – as well as sub-prime loans to those who could never afford them – were driven by a compensation culture which "ran out of control", he said. "Inappropriate products were sold inappropriately by many. Compensation practices ran out of control and perverse incentives led to dangerous outcomes. "There is genuine and widespread anger that the contributors to the crisis were in some cases amongst the biggest beneficiaries of the system."  He added: "Underlying all these events is a question about the culture and ethics of the industry." Mr Green is quick to point out that HSBC has "not always been perfect" in this regard, but the bank was ready to play its part in rebuilding public trust with a "more sober and reasonable" approach to compensation. A complete overhaul of rules and regulations is inevitable to improve financial stability in the future, but a more ethical stance is required to have a real impact, he added. "We should remember that no amount of rules and regulation will be sufficient if the culture does not encourage people to do the right thing."

There is some great stuff on her site, including this really good post on Forgiveness - in a few short paragraphs she sums up some of the most profound truths about forgiving wrongdoing, what forgiveness is, what it isn’t, what are the limits and its freedoms.

Bitterness is more than just a negative outlook on life. It’s a very destructive and self-destructive power. It’s just like a dangerous, poisonous mould or spore because it thrives in the dark recesses of the heart and feeds on every new thought of spite or hatred that comes our way…

…On the other hand, forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. It is a small, narrow, hard-to-find door, and can’t be entered without stooping humbly. But no matter how long the search, it can be found and it has the potential to lead to the most amazing freedom.

Forgiving has absolutely nothing to do with human fairness…

But it does mean making a conscious decision to stop hating, because hating can never help…

She also has a recommendation for further reading, always good. Go read!

I stick to 3 jobs as defined by the Ordinal. Preside, teach, visit. I got rid of all jobs outside of the parish, including at deanery level and never attend meetings or courses unless my people will definitely benefit from my attendance. I got rid of my need to be in charge, even if I thought I could do a better job. There is no reason why the local church leadership should not come from members of the laity. This even includes PCCs. Certainly people can be found to do most of the admin jobs and do it far better than someone trained mainly in the niceties of Biblical hermeneutics and church history. I stopped worrying about the Protestant work ethic. I don’t care if I’m not busy. Nobody acknowledges the fact when you work all hours anyway.

All this leaves me with plenty of time to do do my pastoral work properly. Visiting, arranging funerals as if each one is a major society wedding, walking round the parish, talking to people in the street. And you know what Sam, everything still gets done and people believe I am the only priest in the neighbourhood who does his job, even though I am the laziest sod in the priesthood.

I aspire to be lazy but haven’t achieved it yet. But like MadPriest I too have re-aligned a lot of what I do over the last year or so. Even in a Chaplaincy (where the popular myth is that we only work in term time) it’s entirely possible to take on more and more and more things, not only beyond the call of duty but beyond the limit of human capacity. I chopped out a large number of things that weren’t necessary, stopped doing other people’s jobs for them, and found that not only did I have enough time left over at work to do the important things, but was less tired when I got home, and managed to write a book in my spare time.

Wait – Books? Writing? – where does that come in the Ordinal? (unless you include it in teaching, I suppose…) But because of that, I also like Rev Sam’s response to MadPriest, which includes this:

"…in the end I did come to a resolution and a sense of peace: that a) I was called to parish ministry, but b) I had to work out for myself what it meant for ME to be a parish priest – not what being a parish priest was in general, but what sort of ministry is God specifically calling ME to – and that the model of ministry that I had been trained and formed for was not appropriate; that in fact, if I allowed that model to dominate who I was, that I would simply be repeatedly broken."

I like MadPriest’s comment because it takes you back to the starting blocks – why am I in this job? What am I supposed to be doing? And what did I just accidentally get talked into along the way? But I like RevSam’s development because it recognises there is more than one way to skin a cat.  MadPriest’s conversation with RevSam is serious food for thought for anyone in ministry whose work load has got out of control.

designer Christopher Williams tells a story about an architect who built a cluster of large office buildings that were set on a central green. When construction was completed, the landscape crew asked him where he wanted the pathways between the buildings.

"Not yet," the architect said. "Just plant the grass solidly between the buildings."

This was done, and by late summer pedestrians had worn paths across the lawn, connecting building to building. The paths turned in easy curves rather than right angles, and were sized according to traffic.

In the fall, the architect simply paved the pathways. Not only did the new pathways have a design beauty, they responded directly to user needs.

go read the rest of the post here: Creative Think: Pause for a Bit.

I gave up quite a few pleasant but unnecesary commitments. I also learned to put my foot down with some people who insisted that unnecessary commitments were actually obligations. I got enough help to do what I needed to do, and I learned to buck the system here and there. Saying "yes" to the right things necessitates the skill of saying "no" to other things. Sometimes it means saying "no" to other people’s agendas too.

Life itself is much the same.  Sure, we all have things to celebrate, things to be thankful for, things to be proud of.  But only in the privacy of your own soul do you know the huge discrepancy between what is and what might have been; the ragged remains and the false starts and the failures to complete and the unfulfilled hopes that, for the most part, no-one else is aware of.  George Eliot once said, "It is never too late to become what you might have been." That’s hopeful, and offers the inspiration never to give up. But in a way, I think Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy got closer to the mark with this mixture of hope and resignation: 

I cannot read the writing of the years,

My eyes are full of tears,

It gets all blurred and won’t make sense;

It’s full of contradictions

Like the scribblings of a child.

I can but hand it in, and hope

That Thy great mind, which reads

The writings of so many lives,

Will understand this scrawl

And what it strives to say – but leaves unsaid.

read the rest of the poem here

While the man on the radio was learning to say "yes", I was learning to say "no" . And that, I have discovered, is not simply learning the habit of not saying "yes", but of developing a clear idea of how much time and energy a particular commitment will require, not just on the day iself, but in terms of preparation of material, travel, and recovery time. It’s not enough to look in the diary and say "yes, I’m free on that date", you also have to judge whether you can build in the time and enrgy before and after the event. Here’s three things I do if I’m not sure whether to say yes or no to a really interesting sounding project:

1. Don’t say anything right away – say "that sounds fantastic, but I’ll need to read through the diary carefully before I commit to it. Can I call you back tomorrow?"

2. Ask myself whether this opportunity will squeeze my existing commitments too much – time with my son, good performance in my primary place of work, time for friends and family, "down" time…

3. Ask myself whether this is an opportunity that someone else I know is absolutely gasping for. Once you are known for something you are constantly swamped with invitiations. Talented unknowns need to be put in the spotlight. say, "I can’t do that date, but if you’re interested I know someone else who I think might be very good."

4. Bear in mind that if I say yes in good faith and then circumstances dictate otherwise, it won’t be the end of the world. Recently I’ve had to pull out of several dates due to family illness. It goes against the grain to let people down, but it’s essential to one’s sanity to know that you are never indispensible.

The latest research by the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University
in Wellington has found that a workplace nap is one of the most
effective strategies to greater productivity. Up to forty minutes of
sleep, they say, can make a world of difference to the well-being of
workers, to the health of workplace relationships and, ultimately, to
the financial bottom line. Even a ten-minute doze sharpens the fatigued
mind far more effectively that copious cups of coffee.

There’s more to delegating than just lightening your own load.  Delegating means managing a large number of tasks for a team of people; the team gain a sense of ownership and responsibility for the tasks, the team leader ensures that she has the time and space to lead properly; the junior members of the team get the chance to take on some more of the "senior" responsibilities and therefore grow into the role.

Creative and co-operative delegating is even more exciting. Once you’ve built a sufficiently good team dynamic to work out the delegation together, the team can make major decisions together -Which of these opp0rtunities and ideas do we have the time, enthusiasm and resources to take on?  Who is under-or overworked, under-or over-challenged, how can the rest of us pull togheter? who would like to lead on this or that task? Whose skills are most appropriate for it? Who would like to try but has never done it before? Who would like to shadow me this time and take on the responsibility next time?

Take the time to teach and instruct clearly. Then take your hands off and trust your team to get it right. And give them a few dummy runs before you jump in and take it off them again – no-one gets everything right first time.

I’vebeen at the helm of liturgical installations and events for years and years. My natural instinct was to design and lead on whole projects, wanting to have a close hand on the sense and concept of the whole. But liturgy, by its very nature, is not the same thing as a work of art by an individual artist. Learning to create liturgical events is an therefore an interesting exercise in delegation, becuase it involves not simply giving people tasks to do, but giving people who have the capacity for it enough space to create beyond the scope of what you might do yourself. It’s taken me some years to work on this balance – of keeping a good level of creative design over liturgy, while at the same time nurturing the creative gifts of others. You identify as you go along what the skills and gifts are that people have. Some people don’t flourish with an open-ended creative brief; they need specific, clear instructions to do a job to order. Others lose interest if there is no creative space, but lack the experience to pull it off without considerable help. Others come into their own and amaze you with their hidden skills. The trick, I think, is to pace the planning according to the size and signfiicance of the event, leave allowances for people to emerge as more or less creative, more or less in need of help than you thought they were, and keep talking. The person at the helm would ideally have a lot of time to walk around and watch others’ tasks evolving, finding out whether they are "on a roll" and leaving them to it, or really stuck and needing some help. There’s been alot of talk around the Alt*worship conversation about allowing for creativity, and rightly so. But moving forward with that vision needs to involve the inclusion of people who aren’t very "creative" in a visionary, design sense, but do want to contribute all the same. To co-ordinate this kind of worship, you need to be able to encourage, delegate, instruct and take your hands off as appropriate, not just to be creative yourself.