Summer
The choice of a summer placement was mine so how was I to know that the majority of people did a church based placement.
Was there some unwritten code which stated that you had to have a placement in a parish? Something to do with preparation for ministry.
So I chose not to choose a parish placement, I chose to go to Amelia Farm!
Well it is a church in some sense of the word, there is no chapel like building, yet people come, people go, they receive, they give and the farm lives on. But more that that, so far on my short visit there it seems to be a place of wholeness. A place where prejudice is laid aside and everyone arrives with a clean slate, ex cons or not.
This is my idea of church, it also fits with what I have been reading lately, ( see about section ) it may also be closer to the type of ministry that most of the ordinands now training will be involved in in the future, a work based placement, on the style of a chaplaincy to industry or commerce rather than detached buildings where a few go on a Sunday to offer benign ( all be it heart felt ) worship to an out of date theistic God.
