Canticles, charisma and chat (Religion thread number 2)

[BaroqueAroundTheClock]

the first one is nearly full.

Anyone welcome, it's basically a "what happened in church/spiritual life/anything else you want to chat about that's vaguely related (or not) to churchy stuff.

here
you can also have a free one if you're okay with adverts - they try their best to make them appropriate to the site - like here on my WI site

that's pretty deep, essence
but sounds good - it's totally right, we should help wherever we can, and not judge.

thanks nickel, that was just what i needed to find out. it's for my business, as a speech and language therapist, it's a bit quiet atm, and a website would probably help.

just tried to do the website, but not sure that I've done it properly, can't find it on a general google search anyway. i'll try to sort it out later i think.

it takes about 72 hours to get onto a google search - i'm not sure if you can google it if it's a free one, though....

let me try to google my WI site and see what happens.

yeah, just tried the WI one on google - I think you have to have at least the lite one if you want to be googleable.

but you can get a free listing on a listings site, such as "thisiskent" (or equivalent for where you live!!) or "freeindex" and you can put the website details on there.

Hiya, was wondering if anyone could advise me on this, but what should a parish pay a parish administrator, particularly if at the moment there is no decent parish administration in place? We'd be looking at a single church, working 3-4 hours a week, some of that at home, some at a parish office (15 mins drive away), but flexible to allow for children, initially on a 3 month contract? Am in Cambridgeshire, if that helps (wages generally lower than other parts of the country)

TIA for any help on this.

It would depend on the state of finances in the parish, but minimum wage is £5,93 for over-21s.

Last time I was in admin, I was paid £6.00, but that was about 6 years ago.

I think your best bet would be look at what admin people are paid generally in your area (job centre's the best place to look)

Parish finances are good, and they certainly seem to expect to pay me more than the minimum wage. Will check out the job centre, but there was an admin assistant's vacancy recently in the diocesan office that was paying £15,500 prorata, to take care of the resource centre, I am wondering if that would be a fair comparison, although that position also comes with a pension! That would be higher than your average admin assistant's salary, I would have thought though...

that one's about £7.60 an hour.
that's a lot for anormal parish administrator.
plus, the position in the diocesan office was probably more specialized.

Found 2 jobs in the town where the church is. One is £8 per hour, P/T office administrator. The other is minimum wage, admin assistant.

admin assistant is a general dogsbody, who assists in the office.

office administrator is a more senior position - one who prob has other people working below (or admin assistants)

If you're just working in an office, doing the admin, you're more likely to be partway between the two.
what about £6.75 an hour?

Hi Mary, I am an office administrator for 2 charities and our church. I get paid between £7.00 an hour and £8.00 an hour for each job, if thats any use.

Sorry, posted too quick.

I would be concerned that 3 - 4 hours a week may not be enough. I do 10 hours at our church (paid), but inevitably take stuff home to finish and do bits and pieces at the weekend/evenings etc.

you're right PA - our admin lady does 3 mornings a week (3 hours each) and has been asked to do more because she ended up doing lots of work and not being paid for it.

Definitely!! On paper it may not seem like a lot of work, but all the little "bits" add up and take a lot of time. I consider myself to be very efficient, but some mornings I just seem to be chasing my tail with people popping in the office every 5 minutes asking me to "just do...", or the phone call that results in me trying to contact 20 people for a simple job. I do love my jobs though!!

Thats a good point about the amount of work I'd be expected to do! The Office Admin job I saw seemed pretty basic in terms of what was expected. No mention of junior staff.

PA thats useful, thanks for sharing what you get.

Can I admit to having a stoopid moment? I went on the church times vacancies section online, and filtered on "clerical" . And got lots of vicar vacancies

Mary - sorry I don't know what our Parish Admin gets paid. I do know however that she works p/t (approx 20hrs per week) and always seems to be busy whenever I pop into the office and forever answering the phone.

Lyra - Ahhh...What is SES?! V simple really, I have a very common name (Sarah) and one lot of my friends where there is more than one Sarah in the group, calls me Ses. It's knod of stuck so I thought I'd have it as my MN name. It was already taken though so I started off with various names starting SESis... but got fed up of continually changing. I asked on my AN thread what name they could come up with for me as I wanted to be essentially SES, and they suggested essenceofSES!

Last night's discussion on Moral Theology was v deep and v interesting. We covered off all sorts of difficult issues in the 2hrs - war, third wold debt, abortion, homosexuality, what is it that "identifies" a Christian and how to stick to our beliefs with non-Christian friends/colleagues without coming across as judging!
For the majority of issues, we decided there is no easy answer but to keep questioning and seeking God's will is the best thing to do. Also, as I said earlier, to get the balance between not judging people but not just accepting any actions which our concsience tells us is wrong.

We then also talked about the theory of "The Fundamental Option" which I'd not come across before. Definition: "A theory of morals that each person gradually develops in a basic orientation of his or her life, either for or against God. This fundamental direction is said to be for God if one's life is fundamentally devoted to the love and service of others, and against God if one's life is essentially devoted to self-love and self-service."

All v thought provoking!

Wow sounds really interesting SES (is that what you like to be shortened too?). I've not come across that theory either but it's an interesting one - I'll be thinking about it today now!

I'm having a catch-my-breath day as we dropped our last visitor off in the city yesterday, and the next one comes on Saturday. Bedding is in the wash, bathroom is next to be cleaned!

Tomorrow DD1 is doing a concert at school for 8th March which is a big celebration here. It's really a (pagan) springtime celebration but it's now more linked to International Women's day and is also Mother's day. You give little red and white handmade pins like this for your women friends to wear and there are all kinds of celebrations. We're doing a special service at church on Sunday evening too. It's really nice

beautiful pins thanksamillion (how would you like your name shortened?), what a good idea to link it to church as well.

your catch up day sounds a bit hectic! hope you get some rest too. x

where's nickel today i wonder?

I'm here!

I've been doing Graham Kendrick messing around!

the version of thorns in the straw that we've been given is very hard to follow the music! (and in one part, it's totally wrong - tells you to go to verse 5 when you go to verse 4....)
So i've been going through it (after scanning it in), and adding little directions here and there.

Bloody words, though, I had to type them all out, cos they were all over the place, and i was sobbing!

come out to play on the word game thread, that'll cheer you up. here's a link, i've just learned to do them and i'm so proud! here it is!

ooh, thank you for the link!
there wasn't one on the lastthread, and I didn't get round to finding it!

Afternoon, just popping by, been out all day. nickel I only caught the first bit of your post when glancing and saw 'I've been doing Graham Kendrick' oh my mind, my mind.

Got to finish off a power point presentation for the women's world day of prayer tomorrow, but just want to lie on the sofa and sleeeeep now