I'm adjusting to a new routine, and to be honest it's a bit of a challenge. Now I love routine, and I've predominantly been in the same one for around 9 years. It's all to do with school you see - all that drop off and pick up stuff. But two of our family have now changed school and that's in the nearby main town - a 15 minute drive, and now two out of the three can get to school at 8am. So for the first time in about 9 years all children and mum are out of the house on the school run by 7.50am. This means the two of my feet hitting the floor at 6.01am - having listened to Radio 4 headlines, and not returning to a horizontal position to somewhere about 7.30am! Gone are our days of sitting in bed with a cup of tea listening to the news and everntually stirring - oh no! And all of this leaves all of us, and me, suddenly, with a new routine! And it's a shock to the system.
Now I love routine. I love knowing where I need to be when and kind of getting into the groove with it. I'm not sure where if at all I learnt routine, or whether I was divinely programmed for it. Was it at boarding school when as a 10year old the bell would always go to wake us, and we were drilled in doing exactly the same each day? Don't know! Or was it when I first took up gainful employment as an Apprentice Engineer at Wellworthy's Weymouth, and needed to cycle everyday the 7 miles or so, leaving the house at 6.30am (we began work at 7.30am), and thus drilling myself to be up at the same time everyday, fed, watered, red my bible and out the door, come whatever the weather through at me down the Weymouth beach road? Don't know! Or was it, as I probably guess can also be the case, the routine of my mum passed to baby in womb? Or was it years and years of hearing my parents teasmade go off at 6.30am with a kind of machine gun alarm - which I'm sure dad appreciated from an army tradition point of view! Don't know!
But I do remember in the first few years of ministry in my first church going to a conference by Christian Research, entitled "Priorities, Planning and Paperwork" led by Peter Brierely, and finding the self awareness and skill personality tests a total revelation, and finding for the first time in my entire life that I had discovered the real me. This was my personality type, and it was ok. This was how I fitted into team and these were my skills, and it was ok. And most freeing of all - this was how God had made me, and that was ok too! That then fast turned to be cross and wondering why we hadn't done such awareness courses at Spurgeon's and thinking - "if only"!
So I love routine, and to be honest there are time when I think I would be at home in a monastery with the regular times around the clock to pray and read the offices of that hour. In fact I prefer routine as a good basis for my prayer life, and really appreciate the Northumbrian Community Offices. I'd enjoy the routines of the work pattern I'm sure. But I'd be very lonely in a Munkery and soon find that that it didn't fit my outlook to be a techy as well as my love of home and family life.
And Ministry I find is more often than not the complete antithesis of routine - it is so often completely varied, one day being totally different with unique challenges. One day I might be preping a talk or the like, another day leading a funeral, another -a pastoral visit, another - prepping a meeting, another - repairing and doing maintenance, and another - maintaining the church office computer network or the like, as well as updatng the website. I could go on! I could mention strategy, vision, worship, prayer etc.
But the personality profiles remind us that actually no one of us is the same. And I love the verse that says in the scriptures that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are truly rainbow in variety (of personality and character) and as a Christian I see entirely the handiwork of the creator behind all of this who "knit us together in our mother's womb" and which reminds us that we are not accidents, but wonderfully made for purpose in love by Yahweh our creator. And all that means that whilst I love routine, others don't. Others are more creative and adventurous and love the unplanned and the new experience etc etc.
And there are downsides to the routine and mundane of course, just as there are downsides to the creative. The Popular Sanguine type who organises, needs to cheer up the Perfect Melancholy type, who needs to tone down the Powerful Choleric type, whilst the Peaceful Phlegmatic type needs motivating! (see Personality Plus - how to undestand others by understanding yourself, by Florence Littauer).
And truly, it is only when we understand who we are in Christ, that can ever hope to understand anyone else, let alone listen or minister to them.
So, its back to my routine, and like John Cleese in the film "Clockwork", as its now 9.32am, I need to be drinking my coffee! Enjoy discovering who you are.
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