Men's Breakfast Talk 18th January 2014

Men's breakfast talk

I am a man of many lives.

Depending upon who you are, or when you see me, I could adopt any one of a variety of different guises.

If you were to ask my daughters, then I am daddy, dad or dada. I do boring things around the house, but also play, read stories and go on holiday with them. I give hugs and kisses and tickles and pretend to be a troll when walking over bridges bellowing 'who's trip-trapping over my bridge?' I actually did that once coming over the bridge on the river where the train line crosses over, and as I ran out the other side with my then 5yr old daughter running away and screaming, there was a little old lady on the other side who nearly had a heart attack. She jumped and yelled. Apparently she thought there was a train falling off the bridge. No, just a middle aged man pretending to be a troll.

If you ask the dog walkers around my home, then I am the man who walks or runs with the black Labrador called Monty. They won't know my name.

If you ask members of the 9.30 congregation at St Mary's, then I am the guitar playing worship leading Christian they see at the front. They will know me as Jon, but might not know my surname, or even that I am married to Rachael, the youth and children's worker.  

If you ask people in Winsford, a number will know me as Dr Griffiths. The GP from Swanlow surgery. They might not know my first name, they probably don't know that I am a Christian, or that I play the guitar, have a dog or like to go out running.

If you ask local GPs and healthcare managers, then I am Jon Griffiths. Chair of NHS Vale Royal CCG.

Twitter knows me a Dr Jon Griffiths, writer of blogs about healthcare issues.

And so it goes on.

Are we not all like that, with multiple lives and personas?

When talking about running a men's breakfast Stephen and I wondered what kind of theme to run with and decided on inviting men from St Mary's to talk about their 'other lives', our working title was 'on Monday I will be...' So for this first one you get me, talking about how on Monday I will be a doctor.

Let me tell you a little bit more about what I do.

I actually have two jobs, on Monday and Tuesday I work as a GP in Winsford. I get to work for about 8am and start seeing patients, one every 10 minutes at 8.30. Apart from a 20 min break part way through the morning, I carry on until about 11.50am. Then I have home visits. Maybe 1, maybe more, maybe none. I can be out for anything up to an hour or more. I have lunch at my desk and time to do 'paperwork' (actually almost all computer work) until afternoon surgery between 3 and 6pm. If I'm lucky I will be done about 6.30pm, and home by 7pm.the paperwork bit is worth mentioning again, this is not insignificant, and involves looking at blood results, letters from hospital and internal emails from the staff with queries from or about patients. There is no 'down time' during the day, and don't think that the paperwork is not as important as the consultations. We need to consider communication about your health as a key form of care. I cannot care for you without knowing what has taken place at your recent hospital visit.

So that's my job as a GP. Seeing patients both in the surgery and in their own homes, listening, examining, diagnosing and treating. During my first ever job as a newly qualified doctor in Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield, my Senior Registrar used to stir me into action by saying 'come on Jonathan, it's time to save lives and stamp out disease.' I still use that phrase a lot, but not so much when I've had a morning seeing runny noses and ingrowing toenails. The life of a GP isn't always glamorous, and when you have knelt down on a slightly grubby carpet to examine the rash on the buttocks of your elderly patient, only for them to then break wind in your face, you do start wondering if this is the right vocation for you.

But how many if you know what a CCG is, or what it means to be chair of the CCG?

Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) were set up as part of the health reforms. They are made up of groups of GP practices coming together as membership organisations to commission healthcare services for the local population. They are largely chaired by GPs, and I chair the Vale Royal CCG covering Winsford and Northwich. We have a budget of £120m to spend on buying services including drugs which GPs prescribe, most local hospital services, mental health services and community services such as district nurses or occupational therapists. I do this job on Wednesdays, Thursdays and on Friday mornings. It usually involves dealing with a huge in box of emails and meeting after meeting. As Chair I lead the organisation. I am, amongst other things the public face of the CCG. If you go to our website you will see my smiling face on the home page. When we have public meetings, I will almost certainly be speaking. I am involved in setting the strategy and the direction of travel for the CCG, and for helping to lead us there.

This week I have had meetings about how to better engage with our member GP practices, about how to look at better prescribing of medicines, about how to reduce mortality rates at the hospital, about how to better integrate care for patients both within the NHS and with social care and about how to spend our £120m next year on hospital, mental health and community services. I have also written a blog and been interviewed for Independent Living magazine for their podcast about the day I spent in a wheelchair last March.

I love it, but I get accused of only being a proper doctor on Monday and Tuesday. People sometimes think that managerial NHS work is not as important as clinical NHS work, but I disagree. As a GP I see patients face to face. I make a difference to them individually, one patient at a time. When I work with my GP colleagues in the practice we can look to make a difference to the whole of our practice population, which is 10,000 patients. As CCG chair I hope to make a positive difference to the patients in our whole CCGS area. That's 100,000 patients.

So that's me during the week. That's the Jon Griffiths you don't get to see.

How does me being a Christian fit in with that?

I want to talk about a couple of things, using examples from what we know of the life of Jesus. I want to talk about compassion and leadership.

Who knows the shortest verse in the Bible? John 11:35 'Jesus wept'. This is part of the story of the death of Lazarus and his subsequent resurrection by Jesus. Lazarus is ill, and his sisters send for Jesus, who takes his time, then arrives too late. Lazarus has died. When Jesus sees the grieving relatives and friends, he also cries.

I find this passage perplexing in some ways. Jesus knew he was about to raise Lazarus to life. He knew how this will end, and if you read the whole passage starting at the beginning of chapter 11 it is clear he knew this from when the sisters first sent for him. So, why does he cry? Why doesn't he just say, 'hey, come on guys, watch this, you can stop crying now!'?

I think the answer is compassion. The dictionary definition is 'sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others'. Even though he knew he was about to out it right, Jesus had compassion. He saw the suffering, he felt the pain. He responded as a human would. He wept.

I see suffering and misfortune all the time. Sometimes I can put it right. Sometimes I cannot. I can always have compassion. As a Christian, this is a lesson I understand. This is something I can learn from Jesus. He has compassion for those around him, he shows care to friends and strangers alike. You find him treating all equally and at home in the houses of all classes of society.

He is the perfect role model.

Which brings me nicely onto leadership. Jesus provides us with an example of leadership which is radical and transformative. Above all he leads by example. 'Follow me', he says, and people do. He does not ask us to do anything he has not already done himself. And he serves. His model of leadership is not a top down management hierarchy. How many leaders in your work place can often be found on their knees, washing feet?

If I want an example of someone who can keep me grounded, and make me a better doctor, and a better healthcare manager, keep in the patient at the centre of what I am trying to do, leading by example, being prepared to get involved and get my hands dirty, then surely I need look no further than the example of Jesus. So, I try to lead by example as well. That's why I try to keep fit and have been trying to lose weight. That's why I did Movember. That's why I got involved with NHS ChangeDay and spent a day in a wheelchair last year. When one of our CCG managers recently left for another job he said on his final day that one thing he had learned about me was that I was basically 'up for anything'. If it will help to improve healthcare for the people of Vale Royal, then I hope that he is right.

I have one final thing to say. I talked at the start about having multiple lives. There is another thing here I can learn from Jesus. Jesus didn't have multiple lives. He wasn't divine one minute, and human the next. He was, at all times fully human, and fully divine.

I am not really Dr Griffiths one minute, and Jon the Christian the next. I am both of those things all of the time, as well as all of my other personas as well. Being a Christian should govern my life at all times, whether in Church, in the consulting room, or in a meeting about hospital services. I am constantly looking to do that.





 

Movember

This blog is a short one. It is, in fact, a piece I have written for our Parish Magazine. I thought I would also share it here...

Movember

One of my favourite Milton Jones jokes is this:

"Now Jesus had a beard and sandals and long hair, although we don't know for sure about the long hair or the beard. Or the sandals."

I would like to think, however, is that if Jesus was living on Earth right now he would have grown a moustache.

 Movember is a global movement which seeks to raise awareness of and funds for men's health issues. Essentially this means prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health. They also encourage men to live healthy lives. They do this by asking men to grow a moustache over the course of November to promote their cause. This year a team from St Mary's has taken this challenge on. There are 15 of us including the Rector, Assistant Priest, Curate, most of the men on the PCC and one of the church wardens (the other warden struggles to grow a moustache...) I think this is a great cause and am really pleased that the church has taken it on. As Christians we are called to be salt and light to the world. We cannot be insular and isolated. We should be showing people what we believe and what we believe in. I am glad that raising awareness of and money to help people with cancers and mental health problems is one of those things.

 If you would like to support the Mary's Hairies Team, then please go to http://moteam.co/mary-s-hairies.

Planning songs...3rd November 2013

Sunday 3rd November All Age Communion Service

Planning the songs for the service this week was a bit last minute. Usually we prepare the songs a month at a time, so all is ready well in advance. For a few reasons, November had not been done. This left me sending out emails to the worship band on Saturday morning confirming the rehearsal would be at 4pm that afternoon, and that the songs would be chosen 'at some point before then'!

I had the reading (Luke 6:20-31 - the Beatitudes), and just needed to sort the songs. With such a well known passage, should be easy, right?

Wrong.

When I read the passage with songs in mind, the first thing that struck me was all those 'Blessed be' phrases. This immediately brought songs such as 'Blessed be Your Name' to mind, but I quickly realised that the 'Blessed be' phrases in the passage were not referring to God at all. So which songs do you know that refer to us being Blessed - specifically the poor, the hungry, the bereaved? There are songs, of course, but it suddenly didn't seem quite as easy.

I sat quietly for a minute. I prayed.

I love this passage. I love the compassion, the theme of justice and of putting things right. I love the subversive nature of it, and it's worth taking a moment to think how the message can be received in a culture where being rich, well fed and content is seen as success.

I planned some songs, and sent the suggestions out. I had some suggestions in reply! One asked if we could do 'Hungry' by Kathryn Scott, which is new to our Church, but had been done 'before the service' last week. I incorporated it into the list.

When I lead the sung worship I always pay attention to the sermon and other things going on during the service, and am constantly thinking through how to introduce the next song. In the past I have carefully planned my song introductions, but have long stopped doing that, preferring to do it 'live'. This can be stressful, and I am sometimes left during the sermon wondering why I chose such and such a song, and how I can fit a suitable link in! On this occasion, however, when it came time to sing 'Hungry' after the sermon, we couldn't have chosen a more perfect fit. Barry preached about the poor in spirit, about those with questions about God, about those who may want to know more. I was able to pick up on that, and ask where people felt they were with God. Were people hungry, empty, broken or weary? The lyrics of the song then spoke for themselves:

Hungry, I come to You for I know,
You satisfy.
I am empty but I know Your love,
Does not run dry.
So I wait for You,
So I wait for You.

I'm falling on my knees,
Offering all of me,
Jesus, You're all this heart is living for

Broken I run to You, for Your arms
Are open wide.
I am weary but I know Your touch
Restores my life.
So I wait for You,
Oh I wait for You.

I'm falling on my knees,
Offering all of me,
Jesus, You're all this heart is living for.

So, the song I had not even thought to include was the one that worked best for me during the service. Sometimes, when you choose songs and they fit with the rest of the worship you feel pleased and a bit smug that you did such a good job. This week it was blatantly obvious that this was nothing to do with me. Thanks to Clare for the song suggestion, and thanks to God who clearly had it all planned anyway...

All-Age Harvest Festival 29th September

All-Age Harvest Festival 29th September

Writing this now, after the event, it is easy to feel pleased to have been part of such a great service. One week ago, however, I was feeling anything but happy. The song choices were still to do, and the format for the service only just finalised. This was a difficult service to plan for. It was the first time we had tried to do an all-age service in recent times, and adding in the fact this was harvest festival made things somewhat more challenging. We had received the 'suggestion' from the clergy and church staff that they would like a traditional harvest hymn ("how about We Plough the Fields and Scatter" they had said). We also had the uniformed organisations presenting their flags, the presenting of the 'non-perishable' food items, and the kids in for the whole service requiring something engaging for everyone. Gosh.

Here's the first email I sent to the band:


All,

The songs for next week's harvest all age service (kids in throughout the service, uniformed organisations carrying flags, un-perishable food being offered etc etc) is not going to be a normal service and there are only 4 song slots. Of those slots we have been told we have to have a traditional harvest hymn.

The songs are:

- We plough the fields and scatter (Flags paraded and presented)
- God You're Good to me (Food presented and if there is time we will also do...)
- Tiny Little me
- All Through History
- You are Holy (Flags returned, and if time we will also do...)
- Up Times, Down Times

So, we will defo do We Plough the Fields; God, You're Good to me; All Through History; You are Holy.

We may also do Tiny Little Me and Up Times, Down Times.

All clear??!!

Suggest do God You're Good to me and You are Holy before the service starts.

Hope that's all ok.

Will need midweek (or Friday night) rehearsal as I am not available on Saturday.

Thursday 8pm my house?

This was followed within 24 hours by this email:

All,

I've had second thoughts!

I've changed the songs to:

We plough the fields
O lord our God (played quickly)
Up Times, Down Times (if time)
All through history
He is exalted
Tiny Little me (if time)

Hope that makes sense

Jon

This perhaps gives you a flavour of what was going on in the week prior to the service!

We went with the second list above. Despite my fluffing the timing of 'All Through History', it went really well. The Youth and Children's workers put together a great service based around the feeding of the Five Thousand. Although I am not a fan of 'traditional harvest hymns', I managed to find a version designed for keyboard rather than organ, and when played with guitar, it really went with a swing! Of all the songs this morning, this really encapsulated the service for me. A great mix of tradition, celebrating the harvest (my farmer-turned-banker friend was very pleased it was included!) combined with a modern contemporary rhythm. Sung by a full church with children in Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides uniforms parading with flags down the aisle.

We thanked God for the harvest this morning. As a church in a market town surrounded by farmland, this is important. We also thanked God for all other good gifts we have received, including each other. A year ago we were entering into an interregnum. Our previous excellent Rector was leaving, and we had several months while waiting for the appointment of the next. We are very grateful for the leadership of our equally excellent new Rector. In the first quarter of this year we were wondering how we would get a band together to lead the worship at the 9.30 service. We now have 2 guitars, a flute, 3-4 singers, our pick from 4-5 keyboard players and a team of great PA/projection guys. We have been blessed.

So, I would like to thank the clergy and staff of the church for their polite suggestion to include a harvest hymn this morning. Without 'We Plough the Fields', the service would not have been a harvest festival!

Thank you.

22nd September 2013

Welcome to my blog where I post musings following the 9.30am service at my church. This is the first of my blogs, and I detail in it a little of how our services are structured as well as the songs we sang.

22nd September 2013

So, first of all you should know that I lead the worship for the 9.30am 'all-age' service at our church. This is the first of my blogs where I thought I would talk about the songs chosen, and how I thought the service (and particularly the sung worship) went. We have a fairly well defined structure for the services, which essentially is as follows:

2 songs before the service starts
Welcome
Opening song
Children depart for their groups
Statement of Faith
Confession
Absolution
Song
Song
Sermon
Prayers
Song
Song
Children return and tell us what they have been doing
Final song
Blessing

This means we need to prepare a minimum of 6 songs, more if we sing totally different songs before the service than during it. We make an effort to ensure that the opening and closing songs are 'child-friendly', which is absolutely not the same as 'childish'. We are constantly looking for new songs appropriate for these slots, songs where the adults enjoy singing them as much as the children!

This week we sang:

So Glad
How can I be free from sin? (take me to the cross of Jesus)
My Jesus, My Saviour
The Stand
There is a Redeemer
God, You're Good to me

'So Glad' is a great lively opening song which gets everyone up, clapping and worshipping. Some of the kids know the actions, which always helps as well! We find that a song like this helps to set the tone for the service and lays out what we are trying to do, which is to provide a welcoming, relaxed service where people of any age can worship.

What better song to sing after confession than 'How can I be free from sin?'? We sang this prayerfully, and everyone remained seated. It was immediately followed by everyone standing to sing 'My Jesus, My Saviour'.

There is usually one song which stands out for me after each service. One that seemed to be received particularly well, or which perfectly fitted in with the sermon, prayers and/or Bible reading. This week it was the next two songs together. 'The Stand', which we merged into 'There is a Redeemer'. We had spent a long time in rehearsal working out how to play these two songs. The original plan had been to start with 'There is a Redeemer', and then slip into 'The Stand'. The first thing we did was change the key of 'Redeemer' from E major to E Flat major. We could then more easily move to B Flat major for 'The Stand'. Little changes like this can make all the difference, and can allow you to move from one song to another without a break. After running through a few times in rehearsal, we decided to switch the order round. This worked so much better (thanks Emma - this was your idea I think!). The sermon was about prayer, and was followed by the prayers. I was able to introduce the songs by referring to the offering, and mentioned us continuing in prayer as we sang, offering both our money and ourselves. It felt as though this linked into 'The Stand' perfectly. I had been anxious about how this song would be received. We have not tended to repeat songs over and over again, yet with this song there is little else you can do. I should not have worried. The sight of seeing worshipers with arms raised around the congregation as we sang told me all I needed to know! The transition to 'Redeemer' went exactly as rehearsed, with us seamlessly moving into the chorus of 'Thank You Oh My Father...' It's times like this when I wish we did not have another service starting 25 minutes after our finishes. With us all worshipping together, we could have easily carried on if not constrained by time.

The final song 'God, You're good to me' was energetic and upbeat, and the kids and adults alike loved it. Starting and finishing the service in this way was great. There was even a round of applause at the end of the song!

Once again despite my anxieties, and fairly last minute preparation (a last minute rehearsal the night before) we came to lead people in worship, and God showed up. He always does, of course, but I am reminded each and every time, and just as much this morning as usual, that the quality of the worship is nothing to do with me, and entirely to do with Him.