An Island Parish - update

My small band of regular readers may be a bit surprised at the amount of attention that I have paid to this story this week.

The fact is that there is a great deal of interest out there in the very sad conclusion to last week's episode.

I predicted that the Methodist Recorder, our denominational newspaper, would almost certainly miss out on the story. Such has been the public interest that even they have carried the story this week.

For those of you who don't read the Recorder this is what I have learnt today.

David Easton

There has been a lot of interest in the subsequent posting of the Reverend David Easton. He is now going to go to Aberystwyth in Wales. He will arrive during August and take up his post in September, as do all Methodist Ministers who are changing stations. I think he is going to have a bit of a tough job handling this new stationing given the publicity. But who knows? It may be that having become (almost) a household name, his Ministry will flourish in an unexpected way. Never underestimate God.

The "Bishop's" priority

The Chair of the Cornwall District (the equivalent of a Bishop) the Rev Steve Wild tells the Recorder that it has now treating it with a "high priority". He will be joining the island Methodists for their annual Covenant Service, cancelling other appointments to be there.

Changing Ministers can sometimes be very traumatic for a Church, especially in these circumstances, and I suspect that were the episode not televised several weeks later by now things would have settled down. It would be interesting to know how the procedure for finding a replacement for David Easton is going. The next Minister is also going to have a tough job and be asked some difficult questions.

Lessons for Methodist leaders

I trust that no other District Chair or Circuit Superintendent will ever make the patronising assumption that a re stationing will "just swim through" as did Mr Wild in his interview on Radio Scilly, as mentioned in a previous post.

Should we have allowed the cameras in?

One writer in the Recorder says "The church in general should reflect on whether it is appropriate to admit cameras at such a sensitive moment in a circuit's life".

For a brief few months I was the press officer for the Methodist Church. Handling the media is my profession. TV firms make all sorts of offers to get a "good story" and the producers of "An Island Story" certainly got one courtesy of the arrogance and naivety of the Methodist Church.

A professional approach needed in future

Internally we need to examine how this opportunity went so badly wrong. I really hope that no one had asked in advance the advice of the Media Department team at Church House about how the request for filming should be handled. However in future any requests such as this should first be referred to them for appraisal and advice

A media professional would have made sure they were aware of the possible story lines and worked out a primitive risk assessment. If it is was felt the risk was high, facilities should have been withdrawn. Leaving a clearly distraught Minister with a TV crew was asking for trouble.

Somebody from the denominational media team should have been down there. Alternatively they should have got a hard nosed interim or freelance in on the job, we do have this expertise within Methodism.

The one thing I do hope is that we don't now become camera shy. Whilst I don't touch reality TV offers such as "An Island Parish" I do know that from time to time we do have opportunities to highlight the work of the Methodist Church and the Gospel that we proclaim.

As technology changes more of these opportunities will be offered. We need to take those opportunities, but in doing so, ensure we understand how the media operates. This is one area where we must be thoroughly professional. On this occasion we clearly weren't.

If you want to read other articles by Methodist Preacher on the An Island Parish series just click the label "An Island Parish" below.