Category Archives: church

the hidden side

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I had a kind of taster day and started my induction at the cathedral today.

I joined others at Morning Prayer at 8.00am in the Quire.
I then joined others for Eucharist in the Crypt at 8.30am.
By 9.10am I was sat in a cafe with a coffee thinking I could get used to this life.
I joined staff meeting at 10am and then met with the Dean for a couple of hours at 11 top have a tour around the cathedral and meet some people.

This was quite an exciting time for me. As we wandered I became more and more aware of not only how privileged I am to have this role, but also how many others have walked around this building in the many centuries that have gone before.

There were not many people at the services, but that is not really what it is about. As I chatted with the dean we were looking at some of the statues around the cathedral. This statues have been carefully crafted hundreds of years ago by stone masons who took every bit of care with the back of the statue that lies against the wall and is never seen as they did with the front of statues that is continually on display.

Why make so much effort on something that will never be seen? The only answer is that it was done for the glory of God, not for the praise or notice of man.

I think there is something in that about daily cathedral worship – it is not about numbers, nor is it about style – it is about God.

another era ends

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Well … I have now done my ‘last Sunday’ at St Marks. It was an odd feeling and I was very moved when people prayed for us as a family and said kind words afterwards.

My time at St marks ended in style with a few of us going up the road to out local curry house where we had lunch, laughed, and enjoyed each others company. I am very privileged to have great friends and a great family.

Tomorrow I join my new community at the cathedral for morning prayer at 8.00am before attending staff meeting and other induction type stuff. I’m quite looking forward to it.

Archbishop Rowan’s letter

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has written an open letter today, summing up his reflections on the Lambeth Conference.

I was encouraged to see this mission perspective given with voice to the stuff of real urgency of our time:

First, there was an overwhelming unity around the need for the Church to play its full part in the worldwide struggle against poverty ignorance and disease.

You can read the whole letter here.

Survivors

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It’s great to have Sarah and Tom back with the family from Soul Survivor. They have both been missed by the rest of us, and we have been very conscious of how incomplete we have been over the last 5 days.

Despite the wind and daily rain they have had an excellent time and they are both buzzing with stories of God’s actions in peoples lives – as you can see from Tom’s account here which both excited me and brought a tear to my eye.

GAFCON primate never saw Covenant response

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I find this intersting … and also feel that we have been here before not so long ago with people believing they have excluisve rights to the truth …

Pat Ashworth interviewed Bishop Greg Venables.

Her report at the Church Times blog is headlined Greg Venables had not seen or agreed the GAFCON Covenant response:

HE WAS diplomatic about it, but it was clearly vexing to the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, Greg Venables, that he had neither seen nor agreed the published response to the St Andrew’s draft Covenant , issued by GAFCON on Friday in his name and those of the Primates of Nigeria, West Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. None of the other six is present at the conference…

you can read more at Thinking Anglicans.

Cove worship

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For those of you visiting here from The Cove the links to the activities you are looking for are at the end of this post.

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of spending some time with The Cove, which is one of the clusters from St Mary Bredin in Canterbury. I was invited to lead some creative worship by one of the cluster leaders who just happens to be the Principal of SEITE.

We tried a few things that I had used before, such as the journey, and things I have wanted to try such as the Bittersweet Ritual from Jonny Baker’s Alternative Worship and Psalm Consequences which I picked up from somewhere but can’t remember where.

The Bittersweet Ritual was a response to reflecting on our life journey. As we considered that life is made up of bitter and sweet experiences I invited people to either dip bread sticks in honey and eat as a symbolic action of thanking God for the good things in life, or eat a slice of lemon to acknowledge before God that actually life is pretty tough at the moment. This was quite a powerful experience as people did this with the Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony playing as a background track.

The most powerful part of the morning was when we ‘played’ Psalm Consequences. I think it is pretty self explanatory what this is, if you know the consequences game, and at the clusters request I have posted the instructions here. In quite a jovial atmosphere people added their lines to the psalms. When we read them the creativity and sheer beauty of what we were hearing was amazing. It moved some of us to tears and amazement as we focused in on the evidence that God was creating with us. The Psalms were stunning and moving and my only regret is that I did not take photos of them before I left.

I enjoyed lunch with the group afterwards which was a good chance to get to chat with some people and learn more about them. This is a great group of creative people who it was a real pleasure to spend some time with – thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Links to stuff I used
The running order – you will see the stuff I never used
The PowerPoint
The Psalm Consequences instructions
The Journey

Useful sites I use
Jonny Baker worship tricks – an excellent resource for tried ideas
Proost – you should definitely subscribe to this
The Work of the People – great for video loops and stuff
Blessed – a sacramental alt worship group in Gosport
Hold this space – some amazing wonderful inspiring liturgy

Lambeth Conference

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The Lambeth Conference starts today.
Pray for those bishops involved and particularly for Archbishop Rowan as he, with others, seeks the guidance and wisdom of God.
Archbishop Rowan is a great godly man and he needs to know the love and support of us at this time.

at last

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Maybe I have a simplistic attitude to this, but I am glad this vote has happened and that this decision has been made. We’ve waited 18 years in the Church of England for this equality for women.

I pray that this will help the church to give a fuller representation of a God who loves and cares for the whole of creation. Surely a priesthood of equality is a better image of god to present to a world in need of reconciliation.

baptism

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We had a great time in church this morning.

Sarah led an excellent service in which 3 of our young people were baptised by full immersion.

As is our custom the 3 young people shared with the congregation why they wanted to be baptised and I always find this an incredibly exciting and personally challenging event at St. Mark’s.

Today, as always, all the reasons were different; one wanting to acknowledge the difference that Jesus has made to her life, one as a response to a message that an angel had given him and one because he wanted to publicly state that he now owned his own faith as he had grown in a Christian family.

Three completely different reasons and 3 completely valid reasons.

gracious

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Lots of stuff has been said about GAFCON.

I am so glad John Sentamu is the President of YFC and I’ll be sad to lose that link with maturity, graciousness, love, wisdom and integrity when I leave.

I am pleased to be part of a church that is led by two archbishops that want to stay open to dialogue and preserve our tradition of unity in diversity, rather than believing that they have exclusive rights to orthodox Christian truth.

May God continue to bless them.