Actually doing something.

I've been at college just over four months, and so far I've done a lot of reading, thinking, reflecting, praying, writing. Yesterday I did some doing. Our first ministerial placement began at one of the local hospitals. The idea is not to train in chaplaincy, but to have some exposure to what it is like being with people in hospital in a ministerial role, and gain some insights into pastoral care. We have six Sunday mornings at the hospital: fetching people from the wards for chapel, helping with the chapel service and then going back up to a ward and cold calling, wandering around and asking if anybody wants a chat.

This is the first time I have done anything like this and I was a bit apprehensive, especially about wandering around just chatting. I was encouraged at how full the chapel was for the service, there were about 20-25 patients there, and it was obviously important to many of them. The ward visit was good. The first guy I spoke to was a Christian and set me at ease and I found it reasonably easy to get talking to various other people on the ward. I really want to think through and explore the boundaries of what I can say to people about faith and relationship with Jesus in the context of their statements of what they believe Christianity is really about.