- why you are who you are
- why you do what you do
- why you do it in the way you do it.
That's tougher than it sounds - I think most of my manifesto reveals itself in actions, and sitting on a sofa thinking hard isn't my most natural setting. But I can see much of my ministry and life shaped by two people, one fictional and one factual, one for the first sixteen years of life, one for the second sixteen and then the two of them together for the last ten.
If - like all the children in all my assemblies ever - you guessed that one is Jesus, you're right.
If - like some of my friends - you guessed the other one is the Doctor (him off Doctor Who), then you're twice as right.
And in case you didn't know, the Doctor is fictional and Jesus is factual, actual and historical. Just in case.
Growing up watching Doctor Who provides quite an interesting template for life. Let's be clear, I'm not the Doctor, I don't want to be the Doctor, I never dress up as the Doctor, there's no role-playing going on! And he's not my role model. If any of them asked me to travel with them, I'd turn down about half of them on the basis that they're too grumpy (Hartnell, Baker T., Capaldi), too garish (Baker C), too patronising (Pertwee) or too likely to engage in a clash of personalities with me (McCoy, Eccleston, Smith). That still leaves four and John Hurt.
I suspect what the Doctor represents is possibility. Growing up in the 80s offered role models like the A-Team, Han Solo, Indiana Jones… lots of guns and spaceships and swagger. That's not for me. My older brother was all about the guns and the horror and I wasn't impressed. But the Doctor… someone who thinks his way round things, who stands for peace, whose only mission is indefatigable curiosity and who tries to see the best in everybody… that sounds good. He's imperfect - Colin Baker was full of bluster and Peter Capaldi was briefly saddled with being rather unfeeling - but that's okay, because I'm so imperfect it's almost adorable.
The Doctor usually seeks out a third way of doing things, working not from a position of power but of weakness, instinctively seeking out the underdog and standing alongside them. He asks, "what's the point in being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes?" He claims to have some tools that eluded the astronomers of Chloris: "a teaspoon and an open mind." In 900 years of time travel he's never met anybody who wasn't important. He tries to be "never cruel and never cowardly, never give up, never give in." And yes, he can sulk; and yes, he can unintentionally hurt people; and yes, once or twice he gets a bit pompous. But he offers opportunities to get through life without just shooting people up or shooting people down. Might isn't right, and the eccentric and non-mainstream is celebrated. Doctor Who gives us permission to do things differently (and to learn some science and history on the way).
Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits: lots of us follow the Doctor. There's quite a phenomenon of people growing up different - gay, trans, bookish, unathletic - and finding in him someone worth emulating, finding in him the possibility to be true to themselves.
There's something marvellous about travelling not in a Millennium Falcon or Enterprise bristling with armaments but in a shabby wooden blue box that offers advice and assistance free to the public on the door.
There's something brilliant about someone who turns up not with Captain Kirk's shoot-to-kill phasers or a light sabre but a sonic screwdriver, ready to mend things.
And still today, when we need a friend, I'd rather have someone with a phone box and a screwdriver, someone whose name suggests healing. And that's the first sixteen years of life… next up: Jesus.
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