PART 2 KINGSTON URC/ROEHAMPTON: [August 2007 to November 2008]

A new job, a different context and an academic hill to climb all part of the challenge I have here at Kingston URC. My jobs main roles are to a) support Emily the church’s senior youth worker in running and managing the church’s youth work programme and b) establish a church worship band and offer contemporary styles of worship for services at the church. This post takes up 18 hours per week of my time with the rest of my time going into my studies at Roehampton.

At Roehampton I study “Ministerial Theology” this compromises of studying theology in an academic setting and studying ministry in all its contexts in an academic and work based setting. This in turn means that my job at Kingston URC counts towards my degree. (So no pressure there then!)

Whilst at Roehampton I have become a member of Southlands Chapel, the Methodist based chapel for the university. There I am currently Vice Chairman and look after various aspects of the chapels life including preparing and running powerpoint presentations for services, leading services, leading morning prayers, organising chapel socials and doing lots of administration for the chapel.  

This has become a great part of my university life having had great experiences with them. There are two in particular. The first being last Christmas when we all went busking (legally) in the underground including Waterloo station at Christmas in aid of NCH, it was a bit like a scene from a Christmas film, it was very surreal. Then secondly helping run the “Armagh venture”. The Armagh venture is a programme that takes 30 lower sixth form students from Armagh in Northern Ireland, 15 from the local Catholic School and 15 from the Local Protestant School. Then gives them the chance to come to us at Roehampton in the summer term and spend a week in London. Then use London as a safe place to discuss their differences and similarities, and for us to encourage them to live their lives in harmony with one another. So that they can play a part in furthering the peace process by been an example of living in harmony to all their schools and communities.

As part of this venture myself and six other students flew from London to Northern Ireland in the spring term before the event to meet the students and grasp an idea of what it was like to live in the area. I was in for a shock as things weren’t as good as I’d imagined them to be. As despite the peace agreement and the politicians saying all is well the fact was it wasn’t. There was still and still is an underground scene of violence between Catholics and Protestants. We heard stories of family homes been torched for moving to a wrong area of town from just the week before. The continued need for having what is almost two separate towns due to the fact there had to be two of each facility. The church was also very much divided as we met a local minister who was trying to bring the denominations together to help solve the problems. He explained to us that he had been trying for over 5 years and had what he had managed to achieve was for them to meet in the same room to discuss issues. But they refused to pray or worship together due to stigmas and strong opposing viewpoints in their theologies. As what we learnt was that a lot of the theologies in Northern Ireland are not wholly biblically based, due to the church’s historical context there. They are based more in the advancements and cultures of either Ireland in the case of the Catholics and Britain in the case of the Protestants. This in itself has been a great aid to my studies in realising that not all theology is as straight forward as we see it here on the mainland in the UK but is in fact very much culture based and dependant.

Chris' Blog Homepage

PART 1 OXYGEN: [Sept 06 – July 07]

PART 3 CURRENT ACTIVITIES + ISSUES: [November 2008]

PART 4 POINTS FOR PRAYER

UPDATE - Christmas 2008 - March 2009 (.pdf document format)