Comment
Dorothy and David McMillan

From the Director
David Porter

Good Living in Bad Circumstances
Glenn Jordan

Readers Survey Report
Ruth Hutchinson

The Local Church and The Local Community
Norman Hamilton

Hospitality for Ministers
Graham Cheesman

Too Many Partnerships...not enough partners?
Maurice Kinkead

Community and Conflict...a Restorative Approach
Debbie Watters

Letters page

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PROCESS AND PRODUCT

This is 'red' month in Karl's nursery school, so today he was working on making a red picture. First Karl chose a magazine page with a girl in black and white holding a collapsed, red umbrella. The teacher and Karl talked about the umbrella - what colour it was, how it got broken, what the girl might do with it ... Next he discussed with his teacher how he was going to cut all the way around the picture to remove the white edging. Then he did it - he took a pair of scissors and trimmed expertly around the girl with the red umbrella. Lovely! Now to stick it onto a red page with Karl's name on it and the job would be complete - ready to take home to admiring parents. Karl picked up the white trimmings, glued each one carefully to the red page and proudly declared the job complete. He moved away to play with the sand, ignoring the beautifully trimmed umbrella picture and leaving the teacher to ponder the reason why. Simple, really: for the three year old, process is more important than product. The job itself was fulfilling and rewarding, an end-product unnecessary. The prospect of a tasteful, red umbrella picture hanging on the living room wall does not feature in Karl's mindset. His priorities are involved with the here and now.

Dorothy McMillan - Playgroup Leader

This is a critical month in Northern Ireland and still the politicians are working to find a way of creating a new comprehensive and inclusive arrangement (well, some of them are anyway). The talks and negotiations seem interminable and many are left wondering how politicians and Government can sustain the investment of time, money and effort. The answer lies in the playgroup observation. No, it's not because our politicians are a crowd of three year olds. Northern Ireland is served by many very dedicated politicians on all sides. Part of our commitment in ECONI over the years has been to challenge the Evangelical community to recognise that fact and stop anathematising the world of politics and politicians, whatever their views. The lesson is this - and it applies to us all - we are happy to live for the 'here' and 'now' provided the 'now' is peaceful and doesn't disrupt our selfish way of life. We are in fact happy enough with process because we have no capacity to envisage a finished product. The Belfast Agreement was a statement of intended accommodation between competing aspirations not a shared vision for the future. Each political party continues to articulate its supporters' vision of the future - we as a community have still adequately to articulate a vision of the future, a finished product for us all. Until we do we will continue to appear to the wider world like three year olds in a Playgroup, content to live with process because we lack the capacity to envision product.

David McMillan - Playgroup member