A South African diary 2014

South Africa 2014

I go to Johannesburg every year at around this time for two reasons. The main one is to act as visiting academic for the College where Jill and I taught for 6 years from 1999-2005. The secondary one is to catch up with the Diocese of Christ the King, which runs from the Southern part of Johannesburg through Sharpeville, Vereeniging and Vanderbijl Park to the Vaal River. I am the Diocesan Commissary in England for Bishop Peter Lee, who is a Johnian and Ridleian.

The College offers a distance-learning degree, which Jill and I set up with a South African colleague in the deregulation of tertiary education, along with a Diploma, a Higher Certificate and various lower-level programmes for nearly 3000 students around Southern Africa. They provide ministerial formation and theological training for people from every denomination from Anglican, through Roman Catholic, Baptist and Pentecostal to Africa Independent Churches, many of whom have been running churches for years without any formal background. Politically, it’s one of the most effective ways of empowering marginalized Christian leaders; practically, it’s the largest provider of such training in Southern Africa, maybe in the whole continent. It was also a method of challenging apartheid when mixed-race theological education was banned.

The bridge with my diocesan work is that we were also DDOs, and all of our students, many of whom are now the clergy of the diocese, trained through us. One of the blessings each year is to see again those whom we supported working as leaders in a very deprived part of Gauteng. This year, I returned to a church we took from garage to tent to zozo [shack] to the building in the pictures you see, in the Archdeaconry of Sharpeville. Averaging a congregation of 40 when we were there, it has since our departure doubled in size. One of the young girls of that era is now a practising adult Christian, and it’s the little stories of Christian growth that I see over and over again, which bless me and remind me what Christian ministry is all about for me. Lindiwe is the woman in the picture; the weird garment I’m wearing is a Trinidad chasuble, tie-died and made for me in 1983 by a friend. The garden is a community vegetable garden, part of the Diocesan strategy for tackling HIV/AIDS health care with improved nutrition.

My task at the College is to ask as a quality control person, to train South African external examiners, which I’ve done several times, to ensure that there is no drop in standards in a country where education has deteriorated badly since 1994, despite huge efforts, to propose academic and educational changes [e.g. in the ethos and educational philosophy of biblical courses] and to help the college to keep its spiritual focus central. I sometimes write courses for them still, most recently one on church history, and they want me to write one on ‘church growth’, interesting in the light of yesterday’s college lecture.

Let me end with a story which says it all. Last year Huddleston Thonga graduated with a BTh after three years of trying to pass his dissertation. On the third attempt he got it, and as one of my former ordinands, now vicar of the church we were vicars of, it makes me and Jill [and the bishop] weep with joy to think of how far he has come. He started with a Certificate programme back in the 1990s as a fulltime clerk in some industry or the other. Every course he sweated over, sometimes repeating after failure. While we were there, he completed it and was ordained deacon, but the Diploma seemed beyond him. He persevered, completed it and was ordained priest, eventually converting the Diploma into a degree in a process that took about 15 years. Faithful, a slogger, a godly man and devoted husband, Huddleston is now one of the diocese’s most reliable and committed clergy, and TEE was part of his journey, theology for the Kingdom of God.

So yes, I get in some warm weather, a bit of birding [the picture is of a brown-hooded kingfisher], a couple of runs in the bush, the odd sighting of a buck, but it’s gloriously Kingdom work of the kind that makes me want to keep on keeping on – yes, in grey old autumnal Ridley too! – because you too have these stories, and you forget them at your peril.

© Adrian Chatfield

December 2014

Chatfields' Christmas Letter 2014

It is so hard to begin our Christmas letter this year as so much that was true then, continues to be true now. We are grateful to God for good health, for work that satisfies, (at least most of the time!), and for enough space in Ridley Hall’s breaks between busy terms to enjoy some wonderful time away.

Jill continues to enjoy retirement and is probably fitter now than she has ever been in her life. She is a member of the local gym and although she has no desire whatever to use the gym equipment, she loves the classes and goes every morning for a wide range of different activities: Fitball, Cardio Power, Sculpt and Tone, Zumba, Aquafit and Pilates. She contributes in a small way to the ministry of the Lordsbridge Team and has particularly enjoyed working with the small team that have launched a more contemporary and contemplative service at quarterly intervlas throughout the year.

Adrian has had a busy year. Ridley’s chaplain, Jane Keiller, left in February, leaving Adrian to handle Chapel things alone. Rosemary Kew, who did some administrative work for the Simeon Centre, also left leaving him with some extra things to manage. A new Simeon Centre intern, Rachel Holdforth, has helped with some of this and has brought some fresh perspectives to the Centre and to College life, particularly in the areas of disability and inclusion.

Running continues to be a significant part of Adrian’s life. He runs regularly to work, books into as many of the local half marathons as he can and, this year, ran his first full marathon. He chose the Yorkshireman, an off-road marathon that entailed running through some bog, using a map and GPS and climbing around three thousand feet - all through magnificent countryside in Calderdale.

We have spent a lot of time in the caravan this year. At the New Year we spent a few days in Bruges, enjoyed walking the picturesque streets and visiting several museums. Highlights were a Dali exhibition, the Beguinage, wonderful walks along the canals and real drinking chocolate.

At Easter we went to Slovenia to stay in Bohinjska Bistrica in an apartment of a good friend of Adrian’s. We fell in love with the country. We arrived and were out of the airport in fifteen minutes in a hired car. Lovely walking amidst snowcapped mountains, around the Lakes Bohinj and Bled and through beautiful unspoilt villages, where there still seemed to be evidence of communal activity on common land.

We had planned to go to the Alps in the summer of 2014, but the marriage of two students meant that we needed to change plans. Instead we stayed on the Pembrokeshire coast, explored the coastal path and then headed to the Brecon Beacons for some more challenging walking. After the wedding we had a week in the Hope Valley in Derbyshire. Jill had an extra two weeks with Rachel and the girls, also in Derbyshire. While Dave is doing his re-training, he uses his leave for completing the practical part of his training. It will be a relief when he finishes and the family can go on holiday together again.

Rachel and Dave are happy and settled despite a lack of good holiday time together. Charlotte is in the last year of primary school and Lucy is still a very delightful, pert and sometimes noisy seven year old.

Michael and Helen continue to live at RAF Honington near Bury St Edmunds and we are delighted that we see more of them now, although we see less of Naomi as she joined her sister at school in Plymouth In September. She seems to have settled well and loves to try her hand at almost any sport that is going.

The end of the academic year will bring more change for us. It will be Adrian’s final year at Ridley and he feels that the timing is good. While he still enjoys his work both for Ridley and the Simeon Centre, he is ready for a different pace of life. We suspect it will be a busier year for Jill, too, as the house we own is in need of an awful lot of TLC. She will be up and down to Nottingham managing the work that needs to be done and preparing for our move back to the place which has deep roots for both of us. Having been in Derbyshire this summer we are so looking forward to being in reach of good walking country, although we are feeling somewhat daunted at the amount of ‘stuff’ that we will need to ditch.

If you are ever anywhere near Cambridge, we would love to see you, for coffee, for a meal, for a sleepover, as our grandchildren would say!

It feels grossly unfair to be well fed and housed and content in a world in which the lives of so many people are disrupted and destroyed by the evil we see around us. We thank God that he is not a distant God who stands aloof from the world but a God who took flesh and came to dwell among us in Jesus and who dwells amongst us still. He is the light of the world and no darkness can quench his light. There lies our hope.

May God bless you and your families at this Christmas time and fill you with all joy and peace in believing as you look to the coming year.

Adrian and Jill