Where does this quotation come from?

We were in a seminar today about God's work in mission and this quotation was thrown into the discussion. It doesn't feature (yet) on Google, so I am putting it here for Google to find!

"If the impossible is not part of our plans, then God is not one of our partners".

What does that have to do with O.R.? Not much, but it is a reminder that O.R. cannot be applied to Christian work because of God's role in it!

The Bishop and Wartime O.R.

Earlier this year, Bishop Graham Leonard died. He had been Bishop of Truro (next door to Devon) and then a very distinguished Bishop of London. In his obituary in the "Church Times" there was a one-sentence reference to the fact that during 1944-1945 he had been seconded to the Army O.R. group. No further explanation, and I wondered how many of the readers of the paper would know what O.R. was. A further search led to a national newspaper recording that he had worked on fuses. That led to yet another search using the keywords "Operational Research" and "fuses" which didn't turn up any more about the late bishop.

However, the search turned up a reference that in 1944-45 the Army O.R. group had been working on fuses used against the V2 "flying bombs". And that reference was also fascinating, as Dorothy Hughes one of the first four lady "Chelsea Pensioners" had been involved with that section.

Operational Research and Christianity

I recently read that the educational background of the Bishop Sarah Frances Davis in the African Methodist Episcopal church has a degree in Management Science. Can O.R./M.S. help in such a role? In IAOR, there are several papers recorded which refer to applications of O.R. in the life of the church. In the 1970's and 80's, Malcolm King, Alan Mercer and I published some papers about the place of modelling in the deployment of clergy in the U.K.

[Malcolm King, David K. Smith and Alan Mercer "Towards Diocesan Planning" Journal of the Operational Research Society 29 p856-866 (1978); Malcolm King and David K. Smith "Are the Clergy Being Deployed Fairly?" The Churchman 5 p54-60 (1980); Malcolm King and David K. Smith "Planning the Deployment of Clergy" Long Range Planning 5 p104-111 (1982)]

Earlier, Alan had published "The Churching of Urban England" in the proceedings of the 1969 IFORS conference, which looked at the location of places of worship.

So there are two possible areas for fruitful O.R.; manpower planning, and location models.

I wonder if Bishop Davis knows about this work.