Category: random thoughts

Unlikely combinations…

christingle, christmas, church resources, random thoughts

Many of you will have read my ‘Sparkly Christingle Talk‘ suggestion – and by the sounds of it, many of you have tried it and enjoyed it in your own parishes. How do we know you actually tried it rather than just liked the idea?  Because it turns out that now, when you order iron powder from Amazon.co.uk, you are automatically prompted also to purchase a 2014-15 lectionary,a book on women bishops, a Lent book, Emma Percy’s book on ministry and motherhood, and half a dozen creative worship books!

So now I have a new challenge: find another very ordinary but also somewhat ‘niche’ product and use it in a way to share the gospel so that it become forever associated on Amazon with church supplies and Christian books.  Watch this space…

The solution to the votive candle problem you’ve all been worrying about

church resources, Other cool stuff, random thoughts

Actually, this solves two problems:
1. After All Souls you have a whole pile of half-used tea lights – you don’t feel right keeping them for next year because you want to give people a ‘fresh’ one, so what do you do with them all?
2. You want to give out those 10cm by 1cm votive candles at a service (let’s not go into why – maybe it’s Easter, or a baptism) but they just don’t stand up on their own, and you have to provide everyone with those little card circles to catch the drips, and it’s a bit of a faff.
So, what do you do?
Simple!
1. Re-light your tea-light, and wait for a small puddle of wax to form, approximately 1cm in diameter.
2. Stick the bottom of your 10cm votive candle into the puddle of hot wax (this will extinguish the flame as it squashes it) and hold it steady for a few seconds as the wax begins to harden.
3. Leave for 10 minutes to harden completely, and hey presto, you have a 10cm candle that stands up on its own, catches its own drips, and makes those old tea-lights feel as if they still have something to offer.
You don’t have to do one at a time, you can do large batches at once, and you can do it while you’re doing something else, such as talking on the phone.

The BCP: the Bus of Common Prayer

random thoughts

Warning: I am not absolutely sure myself about how much of this is a genuine suggestion and how much of it is a very silly piece of fantasy satire.

How many clergy (and indeed others) who are involved in rural parish ministry have lamented the Sunday morning rush between multiple tiny congregations, and the reluctance on the part of many parishioners to travel within a benefice in order to have fewer, more populous services?

The solution may be here!  All a benefice needs is an old bus, preferably one with a toilet, and a wheelchair friendly ramp.  Buses are already equipped with what basically amount to pews (and they’re an awful lot more comfortable than most church pews!), a heating system that works, an an area at the front where one could install a drop-down altar (rather like a caravan’s dining table).

And here’s the clever bit: You could devise a liturgy that begins and ends with hymns, which could be sung as the bus drives round the various villages picking people up and then dropping them off afterwards (you could even order the hymns and time them according to the legs of the journey so that everyone heard each one once).  Do most buses these days have a means to play music? They must do, surely – even an old cassette player would work for the hymn accompaniments.

Then, the main bit of your liturgy would take place once everyone has been picked up – it could be anywhere, to be honest, it doesn’t need to be anywhere near a church, it could be in a field, somewhere with a nice view, just somewhere convenient. It could even be in a different place each week…. So, you park up, stop singing hymns and get on with Matins, or Holy Communion, or whatever it is you’re doing, you put the collection in the bit where the bus fares would normally go, and then once you’re had the final blessing, you drive back round the villages dropping people off, and singing the hymns as you go.

Is this a mad idea?  Probably.

Is it more mad than the alternative?  Maybe not….

Is there anything that can enable rural communities to experience and enjoy worshipping together, give them confidence to stray beyond their usual boundaries, and think out of the box?

Everyone agrees the bus services to rural communities leaves a lot to be desired. But maybe that’s because they haven’t tried this kind of Bus Service.

Addendum: since posting I have been told about the phenomenon of spontaneous ‘churching’ of public buses in Jamaica, and you can read a bit about it here.

Letter from America (1)

random thoughts

I think we experienced a pretty broad range of church today.

This morning we were at St Mark’s, the church we have made our home while we are here in Columbus.  God was there in the serenity of the building, the echo of the music, in the depth and unfussiness of the liturgy, and in the warmth of the people.  This morning was more special than usual because Joanna and Daniel sang in a robed choir for the first time (and in parts, too!).  I had a proud parent moment at how grown up they are getting (even though Daniel looked tiny in his cassock!).  I saw them take their place as ministers not just as children but as musicians and worship leaders, and I rejoiced at how their music brought heaven and earth closer. 

Then this afternoon we went to our neighbours’ garden to witness their teenage daughter baptise one of her friends in the swimming pool, alongside five other baptism candidates from their church, each of whom had chosen who would baptise them – often the people who had been most instrumental in bringing them to faith. It was an occasion full of joy, completely informal, completely humane, and completely full of God. 

I was moved by both events: I saw my own children take a step in their journey of life and faith this morning, and then as I heard the testimonies this afternoon I found myself hoping that my children will grow up to speak and sing of God and life so fearlessly and with such love.  The words and gestures that we use and the ways that we express our faith are so richly diverse, yet it is the same love, the same life, the same grace that animates all praise. 

The mustard seed

random thoughts, sermons

How should one measure the stature of a tree? Its girth in centimetres? Its height in metres?  Jesus rarely measured anything quantitively, for him it was all about the quality. The stature of a mustard tree, quite clearly in Jesus’ mind, is measured by its ability to host nesting birds – to give them a place to be safe, to raise their young, and to fly home to.

If that is what the kingdom of God is like, and the church is in some way a sign of it, then can we be the kind of church whose stature is measured not by the number who attend, nor by the amount of money in the collection plate (good and helpful though these things are) but by our ability to provide an environment that is safe, that is nurturing, in which people can feel at home. In essence, for Jesus the kingdom of God is about hospitality.  That’s maybe why after the mustard seed he goes on to talk about yeast – the stature of which is measured by its ability to raise a whole loaf, a loaf which can then be broken and shared with friends and strangers.

Our stature, then, as churches, might be best measured by our generosity – our ability to give, to share, to be given, and to be shared. We practice this each week as we share in Holy Communion, and seek to become what we eat – the Body of Christ, Christ who lived a life of hospitality, and enjoyed the hospitality of others, and who spoke of heaven as a sum of many dwelling places and as a great feast.  May we embody the life of heaven here on earth and may our churches be more like the mustard seed and its tree, the yeast and its bread.