Some friends of mine in the USA sent this photo to me a few months ago and I’ve only just got around to sharing it with the world.
I presume this is well-known in the USA, but it certainly brings a new slant on the phrase ‘Fresh Expressions’ for those of us in the UK.
(and no, this is not a comment on what I think of the ‘Fresh Expressions’ church movement in the Church of England.)
The media has been full of the reports from General Synod recently as women bishops took another step towards a (potential) successful conclusion. I don’t want to reflect on the decision particularly or, indeed, the process as it continues or, indeed, how uninformed and wrong the media managed to look throughout the whole thing.
What I’m interested in is the Archbishops’ Rowan and John and their (failed) attempt to amend the plans to provide more protection to traditionalists.
Our two Archbishops’ were given quite a lot of stick for their proposed amendments. Some of the stick came because they suggested their amendments after the Revision Committee had completed their work and so it felt ‘anti-Synodical’. Others gave them stick because they felt they were giving too much ground to traditionalists and/or because they felt the Archbishops’ were being anti-women. Some people gave them stick because it felt like they were throwing Arch-episcopal weight around (which is most unAnglican). Some people gave them stick just because they always do and seem to be keen Archbishop-baiters (or should that be Archbishop-haters?).
As I reflect on what happened and how the Archbishops’ subsequently lost their amendments and watched the plans move on unchanged, the following thoughts occur to me: More…
Cap available for purchase at zazzle.co.uk. Proceeds to charity.
There’s a great deal being written on the subject of priesthood at the moment. I guess ordination season will do that for you. Anyway, I just thought I’d gather together just some of my favourites.
I know some of these link lists tend to be massively long. When I see a list like that on other blogs, I instantly switch off and don’t read any of the suggested articles. So, here’s just a small handful from some of my favourite bloggers for your interest as and when you get your own chance to ‘take a deep breath’ and reflect.
All these pieces spoke to me. I hope they speak to you too if you decide to follow them up.
Cap available for purchase at zazzle.co.uk.
All profits from the sale of this particular cap go to Stephanie Butler to help with her lung transplant expenses.
It was my great privilege to be present last Saturday in St Edmundsbury Cathedral as my former theological college colleague, good friend, and occasional commenter on this blog, Christopher (Tiffer) Robinson was ordained priest. Many congratulations to him and his wife Amy – it was good to see him finally make it to his own big day.
Given this blog occasionally includes some of my own reflections on priesthood and to celebrate this occasion for my good friend, I’ve invited Tiffer to be my very first ever guest blogger on this website and to do some reflecting of his own now that he too is a ‘wannabepriest’ no more.
So over to Tiffer…!
Last night saw the debut of BBC2′s new comedy drama ‘Rev’ with Tom Hollander. Tom plays Rev Adam Smallbone, a new Vicar in an inner-city parish, with a standard array of peculiar characters orbiting Hollander’s star. In rev-iewing it now (oho, see what I did there?), I guess I give it a cautious thumbs-up. 6.5 to 7 out of 10.
To deal with the criticisms first, it kind of annoyed me that they had to start the series off by him waking up with a hangover, then proceeding to swear regularly and smoke at every opportunity. It’s too easy and too fatuous a laugh to portray the sort of Father Jack (from Father Ted) school of priesthood, burnt-out and only able to smoke, drink and swear. On another level, however, I am not sure if my annoyance is with the programme or with my fellow clergy who I know behave just like that. Long before Rev Smallbone was seen on my screen, I’ve felt my hackles rising More…
With all the kerfuffle about the election in this country and the new ‘progressive’ alliance at the heart of Government, I guess it was unsurprising that the nomination for the Bishop of Rochester sank to the bottom of the respective in-trays for David Cameron and Her Majesty the Queen. It has, apparently, been sorted for some time but awaiting their sign-off. Anyway, yesterday Downing Street finally announced that The Queen has approved the nomination of Bishop James Langstaff for election as Bishop of Rochester.
It’s good to finally know who my Diocesan Bishop is going to be going forward from this point and it’s great to be able to welcome Bishop James to the Diocese of Rochester. Now all I need is a Vicar!
It has got to be a hard thing to be newsworthy on a day when the country is being given an extremely harsh, ‘wake-up and smell the prune juice’ budget from the Chancellor and the nation’s ability to digest such financial news is diluted and diverted by a do-or-die World Cup game for England in the offing (now thankfully over, and thankfully game won).
It’s possibly even harder to be newsworthy when the appointment seems to have come out of left-field. Various names were mentioned, various favourites were being named openly around the Diocese in the last twelve months since Bishop Michael resigned, and not once can I remember hearing of James Langstaff. I quite like that, I think. It spikes the guns of all the factions for a time while they all try and work out if they won or not!
One of the favourites that I heard mentioned (Bishop Nick Baines) has blogged about the appointment. It is certainly good and interesting to hear what Bishop Nick has to say as someone who More…
This month at our Café Church, I have to confess that I wasn’t much involved and so don’t have much to share.
HOWEVER!! I do have one idea to share which went down very well.
The service as a whole was looking at the subject of the church with one definite thread looking at how we contribute together as a body and all need to be using our gifts to benefit one another.
For one of the prayer stations, I did a Jobs Board. Ahead of time, I asked all the different groups in the church if they had any jobs that needed doing. We got all sorts of responses from the usual need for more children’s workers to very specific things like wanting a Bass player for one of the worship groups!
To set-up the jobs board, I used some very simple Word-style templates straight out of my Mac Pages template section (see this image for example) that picked up the idea, very familiar from universities, of a pull-tab flyer poster where you can rip off one of the contact slips at the bottom. We did a whole bunch of ‘jobs’ in this way and put them up on the wall.
It worked really well and we had a nice double effect going on. On one hand, people ripped off the tabs and so had something to take away with them and to act upon. The other effect was that people following them could see which ‘jobs’ were popular and which had yet to receive interest. Worked really nicely, recommended.
On a personal level, I am about to embark on my once-every-four-years month-long trial of both tortuous nervousness, mixed with moments of sheer joy and hope, culminating in bleak disappointment and despair. Yes, the FIFA World Cup is here again.
As regular readers will know, I’m a football fan. In fact, for once, I have more reason to be cheerful about football than usual given that my beloved Tottenham Hotspur have actually managed to achieve something and qualified for the Champions League next season.
Even more important to me, however, than Spurs’ impending European adventure is the hope that I will one day live to see England win their second World Cup. I wasn’t around for the first one and the thought that I might never see my compatriots lift the most-hallowed trophy in football fills me with dread. So I will be watching the games, an anxious knot in my stomach, knowing that the chances of failure are more real than the chances of success. I’ll be watching knowing that if we foul it up, it’s another four years until we get another chance. However, I will also be watching hoping and praying that England actually play to their potential and beyond and conquer the world.
All that aside, however, this World Cup represents the first opportunity for me to actually influence church activity during the tournament. I’m intrigued and fascinated by the way our nation changes once every couple of years for a month or so. England flags appear everywhere, people actually talk to each other in the street, enormous crowds gather to share good-natured community, the stock-market goes up and generally the feel-good factor is enormous. It’s also, I think, a great opportunity for the Church to engage with our nation, to share a common passion and to show that some of us at least are actually normal people… just people who happen to believe and trust in God. More…
For the last week or two, I’ve been tracking a developing story in Scotland where yet another company that publishes Christian material is facing the axe.
The first I heard was when the Bookseller magazine covered stories north of the border where the Scotsman was reporting that The Saint Andrew Press was under threat from the Church of Scotland’s mission and discipleship council, which is trying to address a £1.2 million budget deficit.
Hmm, that sounds familiar, where have I heard a story like this before where a publishing arm of a central church organisation was an easy target in cost-cutting measures?
What I find particularly interesting is the differing reaction north of the border to this news, when one compares it to the situation that faced the Church of England recently with Church House Publishing. More…
This month at our Café Church service, we were looking at the theme of ‘living it out’. As we continued with our series on the basics of the Christian faith, the entire evening examined how we are called upon to take this faith that we believe and proclaim and live it out in the context of our everyday lives.
I was involved in two stations this month. You can download the details as a pdf file.
The first one used a video clip called ‘The March of the Unqualified’ which highlighted the fact that nobody is perfect and we are called to follow God regardless of our imperfections and weaknesses. Indeed, it is often in our weaknesses that God is able to work.
The second station talked about needing to be a ‘Living Sacrifice’ and how we can sit back in church and not participate, even if we’re there and present and even doing things. The station called upon people to examine their situation from a different perspective and then recommit themselves to getting back onto the altar, being a sacrifice to God.
Both were essentially fairly simple stations. The only complicating factor was the need to download the video clip and I was fortunate enough that a team member had it already, downloaded and paid for. You also have to put up with an American accent on the video, but otherwise it’s very good!
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