How to preach well in Private Schools

I always love going up each year to preach to the lads at Merchiston Castle School here in Edinburgh. Happily I’m going on a free transfer from here up to there for one night only tomorrow. And probably for the last time for a while.

To me there is always a very different feel about a boys’ school service when compared to my day and daily co-ed preaching experience. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is (probably the testosterone-fuelled singing is a big part of it). But in other ways it is different at Merchiston too.

Not only do the students wear casual clothes for their evening service, but the whole event has a remarkably relaxed feel about it. The Headmaster, in my experience, always lurks at the back of the Memorial Hall rather than sit at the front. The choir is a fine mixture of tenors and basses, of course, not an alto or soprano to be heard.

Preaching in these schools is always a challenge, however, and I do think it requires particular abilities in the art of communication which not everyone tends to have about them. So, just in case you are ever asked to darken the door of such a place as this, or any other, here are ten of Campbell’s handy tips:

• Long-windedness, in this context, as perhaps everywhere, is invariably a disaster.
• Knowing what you want to say and going for it without anything written down is usually best.
• Eye contact is everything.
• Having just one central theological point and reinforcing it with a cheerful or challenging illustration always makes sense.
• Humour is grand, but never for the sake of it – the troops remember the jokes and not the underlying message.
• Using too many biblical or even classical allusions is rarely successful – the troops just don’t know them and get it.
• Christian clichés such as ‘salvation’ and ‘redemption’ or other advanced technical terms are also best avoided in such a short homily.
• So is trying to be something that you are not – and so is patronising.
• If you’re middle-aged and greying (as I happily am now) please don’t pretend to be cool and trendy – it is, as the kids say, “awkward” or worse than this in the scale of teenage crimes, “cringe.”
• Be sincere.

So, now that I have reminded myself of all these pertinent points, I can finally get on and actually get down to thinking of something apposite to say to the assembled Merchistonian masses.

Mud, mud, glorious mud

It’s not all glitz and glamour here – just in case you thought from recent pictures that I always wear a bow tie and tartan trews as my standard couture.

Far from it in fact. Sadly.

Three afternoons a week this term you are far more likely to catch me in a pair of muddy Ulster Rugby (well, you’ve got to support the lads, haven’t you?) tracksuit bottoms and a delightful collection of thermal tops. Yes indeed, as you may have guesseed, once more the beloved lacrosse season is in full swing and just as our acres upon acres of lovely pitches are pretty much in their worst condition of the entire year.

Nothing, I guess, can make any difference to this – except of course if it got massively drier in Edinburgh. That is hardly likely to happen of course - even if those who believe in global warming are correct, it is still going to get wetter.

So, being with the not-so-lowly 3rd XII, (there are only 3 teams at that senior level so you get the precise idea of where I am in the coaching pecking order) means that we have probably the worst pitch which is currently flooded out of all reasonable existence. Today therefore we set off on what is dauntingly called ‘fitness’. Immediately the girls know what is ahead of them and a sense of dread comes over them.

For ‘fitness’ read ‘running for 5kms and more’ and you can imagine how really joyous the troops were. To make things a bit better I ran with them, or rather at some remote distance behind them – so as not to show any of them up, you understand.

I have to say, two hours later and I am only now recovering from the endeavour.

The Ploughman Poet

From my address in Chapel today to recall the life and influence of the great man:

On this day, 25 January in the year 1759 there was born in a small village called Alloway, which is still a small village, in the South West of Scotland on the main road to Ireland, one Robert Burns. He had little formal schooling that you or I would recognise as such, but was taught instead largely by his father – William Burns – who himself was a self-educated tenant farmer who worked the land.

From such lowly beginnings Burns went on to a life that was less ordinary. He used the gifts and talents he had to the point of over-flowing. He wrote a collection of poems in the Scots language which have endured. He revitalised the song tradition of this land – bringing from obscurity the music of the people back to the people.

His themes in his poems were common enough and well-known – the beauty of the countryside in which he was born and bred, the struggles of life and love in the hardest of circumstances. The essential equality of all humanity. The love of women, sometimes reciprocated. The power of friendship. The hypocrisy and abuses of organised religion. The enduring quality of life-enhancing brotherhood among people. The unquenchable desire of the human spirit for freedom.

These are themes not just for his time, but for our time and for all time. They are values which need to be explored, to be understood more clearly and worked hard on even in this century.

Burns was writing, as you may quickly imagine, in the age of revolution. A rebellion in Ireland during his life only presaged the greater one in France which followed quickly after his premature death at the age of only 37 in 1796. People of his age, inspired by the revelations and insights of the intellectual and cultural movement known as the Enlightenment or The Age of Reason wanted to look at the world and see it through their own eyes, in their own rational minds and not through the prisms of the traditional authority figures who had long since stopped having the respect of the people.

His influence was huge and enduring. It extended to the great writers in the English language – to Wordsworth, to Coleridge and to Shelley. His legacy secure, not just in this small nation, but in the US and in Russia, and wherever the Scots have settled in this world.

And all around this planet, wherever they are to be found, on this night the haggis, neeps and tatties are brought out for a simple dinner, his simple Selkirk Grace is prayed, the great poems are recited, the stunning songs sung and above all else the memory of the ploughman poet from Alloway is immortalised. Immortalised as it has been at such dinners, such suppers, for more than 200 years now.

There is surely nothing like it in the whole world? Nothing like it because there has been no one quite like Burns.

Guided Tours

Over the next week I have four potential candidates for my post coming to have a look at the job and the premises (less leafy-looking than in the photo obviously) close up and personal. It will, no doubt, be fascinating to meet them all and to hear and see their reactions to this old place and to what the job actually involves within and beyond any black and white job description.

I think I have really been taken aback by how much interest there has been in succeeding me, just I imagine, as there was when I succeeded my gracious predecessor and by how much of it has come from people in the ‘rank and file’ of the parish clergy. Taken aback mainly because there are still two weeks until the closing date for applications comes around. But also taken aback because the life of a parish priest or minister is fundamentally different from this life. I always thought they were the same, but actually the nature of the role and the working environment are chalk and cheese. The accountability is less, the flexibility much greater, the hierarchy more pervasive.

Yes, there have been those who could do in their sleep what I do each day and do it better because they are experienced school chaplains in boarding environments, but to me it says a lot that there are men and women coming from the coal-face of congregational ministry who want, for their own reasons, to find out more and then possibly give it a go.

Yesterday in this regard I had my first experience of good old Skype working on our network and having an excellent and fluent conversation involving minimal delays with another potential candidate from across the Pond in North America. Love technology – we should have had this years ago.

For me though, entirely inexperienced as I was in independent education, I still think of the persistent feelings of dread when by bottom first landed on the leather chair in my study that August morning in 2007 and I was somewhat paralysed by it all and pondered the classical clerical question and dilemma, “So what shall I do now?” I think I asked that question a lot for the first term I was here, but then it got easier – familiarity with routines, knowing one’s place, knowing the names, knowing how it all fits together, all helped – and of course the kindness of strangers.

Despite this inevitable challenge for those looking at this from a parish context, equally, there is something about the freshness of never having done a job before to make a person see new things and dream new possibilities – even if many of them because of the restrictions of time and context never come to pass.

Captain on Deck

It’s one of our twice-a-term weekends off here this bright and sunny January weekend.

So, instead of the full complement of Saturday morning lessons, treading the sports pitches and then duty until Sunday night chapel, we are having a lovely break right through until Tuesday morning when it all kicks off once again.

Most of the troops who can have very happily headed for the hills: some to see their parents or guardians and others to stay with friends who live more locally.

I’m on duty with another colleague here in the boarding house where I am living and working this year and I am glad to report that it has been a very sedate kind of life indeed. No dramas, just the way we like it.

I think there are nearly twenty of us in total staying the weekend and for us all it is proving a good time to re-charge the old batteries and get ready for the final run-up to the next set of holidays! They can only be a matter of weeks away now.

Meantime, Titanic fan that I am, I am watching with studied interest all the events surrounding the running aground of the cruise liner the SS Costa Concordia a week ago now.

The good captain of the Concordia seems to have become a figure of international fun and scapegoating although I see that his claim that he simply ‘slipped and fell into’ one of the lifeboats seems to be gathering more credence than I was initially prepared to give it.

All a far cry from a century ago when the legendary Captain Edward John Smith of the White Star Line’s SS Titanic went down with the 1500 other poor souls as the leviathan (similar length and height to the Costa Concordia interestingly enough although much lighter) slipped into the icy North Atlantic off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland never to see the light of day again.

Cough…

Well, as a matter of policy and what must be regarded as a deeply-held personal conviction, I avoid visiting the doctor and the hospital as a patient at all costs. Well, I reason to myself, they might find there is something wrong with me and I certainly wouldn’t want to live with that kind of depressing news.

Sadly for such a person as myself, today I had no choice as I had to report to the local GP for a ‘routine medical examination’ as the concluding part of the appointment process for my new post.

And what an amazing business it all was – a full hour almost of careful and detailed examinations taking in almost every system the human body has to offer.

I was weighed, measured, poked at, hit with a reflex hammer, stripped, squeezed, alcohol-consumption assessed, prodded, somewhat humbled and all by a doctor who looked as if she could have been young enough to have been a very little sister to me. Instead she was a consummate professional who carried out all the requirements of the examination with a pleasant efficiency.

In the end I think everything went fine, and I have been left with a bit of necessary weight loss to work on, but on the whole I would still say that it was indeed a daunting and nervy procedure and one I certainly wouldn’t want to have to undergo every week – especially not when the bill for £155 was presented to me at the end of it all!

The Spine Race

Spare a thought and definitely a shilling or three for brave and hardy Andrew, the son of my dear chums Chris and Liz.

He is, as I write this, one of the survivors who is competing in what is rightly called Britain’s most brutal race – The Spine Race - the website of which can be accessed here so you can see it in all its gloom and deep gore. Over a space of 70 all-too-short and freezing cold and inhospitable hours the idea seems to be to walk and/or run the 268 miles of the Pennine Way from Edale up to Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish Borders. Yes, that’s well over 35 miles a day – enough to kill a man probably.

To me the whole thing sounds potentially horrific and the last thing I would ever want to do in the years I have left to me on this beautiful earth, but Andrew, good man that he is, is doing it all for charity – in this case the Regimental Association of the Royal Regiment of Scotland and you can support his valiant efforts here on the dedicated Justgiving site.

Go on, you know you want to!

Preparing for the sacraments

These last couple of nights I have been very happily working with some lovely families and friends doing a little bit of preparation for a forthcoming wedding and baptism.

When I was a Parish Priest (probably still the best, if hardest work in this particular game) the bits I used to enjoy most were often those meetings, generally with people who were complete strangers to me, who wanted to get married or have their children baptised or have one of their relations given a Christian funeral and burial.

What often amazed me, and still does when I do this kind of work, is the genuine sense of openness that people generally bring to the whole business. Often there are all kinds of formal and informal theological ideas and misconceptions floating around which people  are invariably glad to have put to bed once and for all in their own minds.

And so this week it was Mark and Julia planning to plight their troths in what already looks set to be Wedding of the Year and then, yesterday, another Mark and Victoria dealing with beautiful daughter Orla’s Baptism.

To me there is a greatness about this and a sense of awe and wonder at being able to play even a small part in such intimate and personal proceedings.

An Internet-free Weekend

We had some kind of highly technical and frankly incomprehensible fault with the web servers here this weekend, the precise nature of which completely passes most of my admittedly somewhat limited human understanding.

The outcome though was that we were an internet-free zone for what seemed like half a lifetime but was in reality probably only slightly more than a day. It just shows how dependent we have all become on this modern-day deity to manage every aspect of our lives.

Happily full connectivity is all restored to us now and our lives can return to what passes for some semblance of normality.

The weekend had many highlights as far as I was concerned. Perhaps none more so than a grand dinner on Friday night with the other two chaplains of boarding schools here in Edinburgh. Regardless of what anyone says, there is certainly nothing like someone doing the job you are doing for a depth of knowledge and understanding of what it is really all about as well as the joys and sorrows it can bring. Very therapeutic indeed.

Yet more damage was done to the waistline at our annual Burns’ Supper on Saturday. A grand affair, as you can see, with something approaching traditional fayre and a mixed bag of speeches and musical performances. At the end of it all the Bard of Scotland was fondly recalled and his memory immortalised once again and for another year.

All in all, a happy time – even if for a short time we were strangers to the virtual world.

Looking for a new job?

If so, then this ‘Black Friday’ really could be your lucky day.

My job here at Fettes College is being advertised in The Times Educational Supplement.

In case you are not familiar with that particularly august organ, the link to the ad and all the requisite paperwork is here. Why not click on it and have a wee look for yourself.

My chief reflection when I look at all that is written in the description of the post and the person specification and consider the reality of the job is that, like many other posts here to some extent, the reality of the situation is always rather more sophisticated and more highly involved than can ever be expressed in a couple of hundred words.

Everything the person has to be and do is there, in a sense, but really it only begins the process of scratching the surface.

Perhaps a private comment on this blog or an email to me might be the way to get the wider picture more secure in your mind.

As ever, it is best to have the best idea possible of what you might be letting yourself in for before going through the mountainous paperwork involved with such an application.

Tell me about it, from recent experience from the other side of the interview panel I should know!