Starting afresh

Well, the decision is now made.

I'm going to be a primary school teacher! And Jane is going to have to get up earlier in the morning! I have accepted the offer of a place on the Somerset Graduate Teacher Programme and a place at a school.

Even after all that has happened over the last two years, in which I have seen enough of the darker side of the church to last me a life time, it was still a surprisingly hard decision to leave full time ministry and do something different.

How is it that the church can almost simultaneously be so loving and so destructive and sometimes flip from one to the other without logic or reason? Don't worry, I'm not seriously expecting an answer to that question.
As an update: I have only received one response to this question which was 'because of frail human beings like you and me' which is entirely true. Yet it is perhaps interesting that there has only been one response. There is a reluctance to talk about bullying within the church and yet, tragically, it does exist at almost every level and without obsessing about it we do need to address the problem.

Having made the decision it feels really good. I am incredibly grateful to God for this new opportunity in an exciting school, to the kindness of family and friends and the welcome of the local churches here where I will continue to lead services and other projects.

I wrote to a friend three years ago that I couldn't paint when it was dark, and she correctly understood me to mean not just the lack of the sun in the depths of winter but also the darkness in too much of my working life. It has been one of the great joys of moving down here, that there has been enough light to paint and create and live.