Defining moments

I don’t often listen to Radio 4, but while travelling home recently one evening there was nothing much of any substance on any of the radio stations in the car, so Radio 4 it was. Whenever I do tune in to this station, I find myself wondering why I haven’t listened to more of it.

I stumbled on a topical panel discussion which passed the time for the last fifteen miles or so of my journey, but one of the questions has stayed with me longer than that. It was something like, ‘what, for you, has been the most significant development of the last twenty-five years?’.

Now that I am fast approaching my half century, that has become a very meaningful question. I have already spent more than half my life in the gospel ministry, and hardly recognise the young ordinand of twenty five years ago. Far less can I make sense of some of the experiences and issues which the last quarter century has thrown up; few could have been predicted, and had you asked me then where I could imagine myself in twenty-five years time, I doubt that my answer then would correspond much to the reality of my experience now.

That is by the way, of course; the question still remains. The most significant development of the last twenty-five years? I suppose we would all answer that question differently, as the panel members, indeed, did. One of the panellists had spent time dealing with some aspect of foreign government; for him the most important event in the last quarter century was the fall of the Berlin wall. For another, it was her marriage late in life.

Someone else suggested the development of the internet. Undoubtedly that has revolutionised our whole approach to communication and study, writing and publication, social networking and sermon preparation. As a young student in Glasgow, the purchase of my first Amstrad word processor was a major breakthrough, yet it was little more than an electronic typewriter.

Now I can type my column on my mobile phone, correct it, email it, post it to my blog and draw attention to it throughout the world in the blink of an eye. The internet revolution has had massive implications for the way we go about our daily business, as well as the way in which we relate to others. Facebook emboldens the most reluctant communicator to publish the trivial details of his or her life; twitter constrains the dissemination of thoughts and aphorisms; email demands instant responses and attention.

The potential for good in the internet is enormous; the potential for harm even more so. Friends are made and friends fall out over the publication of photographs and comments; cyber bullying can make people’s lives a misery; there is little privacy any more. Just ask Prince Harry.

But the reality is that none of us could manage now without the internet in some form or another. I doubt that there are many Luddites left, and for those of us who started our ministries carefully cataloguing sermon notes and collecting hardcopy books, a piece of electronic hardware is now all that is required.

Yet, when it comes down to it, none of these developments, significant as they might be, is the real stuff on which our lives hinge. For at last, there is no substitute for the real-life relationships we form, through circumstances that force us to connect with people.

The last twenty-five years, for example, made a father of me, and that has been an adventure all its own. I’m still learning the tricks of the trade, and just when I feel I have it nailed, something comes along to make me unlearn and re-learn things I thought I had mastered.

And I cannot begin to assess the impact of incidents with which I have had to deal in a professional capacity, and the things I have learned from watching others cope with crises in their lives. Some did it well, others did it badly. How some of them did it at all I have no idea.

Nor could I have envisaged the significance and ramifications of the decisions and behaviour of some of my colleagues in Christian ministry throughout the various church alignments of the last twenty years. These relationships - or the breaches of them - cannot but leave a mark that will last, in some cases, a lifetime.

I am not a nostalgist; well, not all the time anyway. But we are all shaped by the forces of our past, and by the strands of providence and life experience that enter into our history. Some of these have been unforgettable, and they continue to exert their own influence. It would be impossible to say what the most significant of them has been.

All I do know is that goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life. Of that, I have no doubt.