Away in a (bus shelter) manger..

After our local Christmas Market here on Mersea my son and I were 'walking' the crib back to the church when I thought I would quickly snap our local bus shelter with the manger inside... this links in with the bus stop ad that's running. Then today I read Ship of Fools co-editor Steve Goddard's tweet about the nativity cribs abandoned in London to draw attention to the plight of the 100,000 children that sleep rough each year. This is a campaign launched by the charity 'Railway Children' which champions the welfare of street children.

Encouraging yet deeply challenging stuff...

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Holy mischief...

This mag, Geez, is a bustling spot for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable. Hmmm, I'm liking it already!

Includes contributions from Shane Claiborne whom I blogged about recently.

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Living by numbers...

Honoured to have been Tagged by Archdruid Eileen of the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley megablog - here are the instructions:

Summarise the Bible in five statements, the first one word long, the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last five words long. Or possibly you could do this in descending order. Tag five people.

Here's my attempt:

1. One
2. Killing Field
3. The future revealed
4. The World changes forever
5. and not by faith alone

I hereby Tag: Rev Sam, Canon Phil, Pastor Joe, Youth Champion Tim and Entrepreneur Jim.

5 Deeply De-Christian Doctrines meme...

Thanks to Joe H for tagging me with 'List 5 doctrines that are taught within the Christian church that you believe to be deeply de-Christian'... I know only have a loose grasp of what the context of the word doctrine should be here ;-)

I think most folk have completed this so forgive repeats: Alice, Richard, Maggi and would love to know what Bishop Nick would write but Liverpool still have injury issues...!

Here are mine and must say it has taken me ages, have had to work so hard to get down to just 5(ish)!

1. That Worship is more (or less!) important than Mission and justice and, even more dangerous, that by solely worshipping you are being missional by default.


2. Judgementalism - seems we are trained to be experts! At a local home group when the question was posed 'why are Christians so judgemental?' a good mate piped up: 'practice'!


3. Consumerism - this claim that the church teaches consumerism should not be a surprise! The first definition of consumerism I found when googling is: 'the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically beneficial'. How many times do we hear that by buying this CD, book, service that we support the ministry of this individual or organisation? What happened to tentmaking?!


4. Sentimentality - includes the dumming down of art and music to wellmeaningless bibledygook (new words warning!) which we are told is fine because it has the word God/Jesus (but it looks like a squirrel) somewhere on/in it... (or something about setting captives free, exalting, lifting names up high, putting tongues in... sorry, I cannot go on, it is TOO upsetting!). Check out this entry from Stan the Man again which includes some language of the immortal bard!


5. Discrimination - anyone in the public sector, business or society would be in serious trouble and not get away with with what the wider church teaches about women, gays and minority groups including the physically disabled. The current stuff about flying bishops (still only male) to serve twitchy C of E communion celebrants so they can receive from a man is highly de-Christian.

Oh, and something extra: Apostolic Succession - well, that's all a bit Dan Brown DaVinci Bollocks stuff isn't it?!

Servant king...

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Matthew 25 v40: The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me...

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Never mind the bollocks...

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Last week was quite a tumultuous week with the Pope launching his surprise reclamation scheme and BBC's Question Time getting its highest ever audience. Although I have discovered this a little late I do think it is worth drawing attention to, an excellent blog from Jonathan Bartley on how the church needs to react:

Why the churches should listen to what Nick Griffin said on Question Time

Having listened to a bit of the Bishop of Chichester's keynote address on the Forward in Faith website I feel my opinions about FiF being primarily an inward looking initiative were reinforced. Frank Skinner articulates it much better than I ever could:

My Church is not a safe haven for bigots

And finally a heart warming story which was a kind of summary of last week. I found it touching and greatly encouraging (as a wishy-washy C of E liberal type who loves mainstream music!):

Dean Martin and a fitting send off for my Uncle Sid

Standing in The Long Now... GB09

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Now back from an incredible Greenbelt Festival, feels like one of the best ever! I have loads of notes, books, audio files and musings to absorb and ponder, so may well return to this topic again soon! Meanwhile check out this excellent blog post from Steve Lawson that I feel captures some of the essence of GB.

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Losing my religion....

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Go away for a couple of weeks and all sorts of things happen. Seems this is just like any other man decided Covenant, potentially exclusive and divisive. Bravo for all the sense talked in blogs here and here not forgetting Rector Sam's blog here.

Fellowship of Confessing Christians

A truly excellent post from Alice Smith, youth adviser for part of Chelmsford Diocese. I have responded with a fairly lengthy (for me) comment:

An Anglican at odds with herself...

I concur with her e-pistle!

The way we think...

I have been longing to photograph this ever since I saw it for the first time! So yesterday my camera and my body were in the same location. Of course it makes me smile and I know this is not a deliberate deterrent to potential worshippers! However, it is a subtle deterrent in that it illustrates how we often think as regular churchy peeps - how much more sensitive would it be to have a sign that says 'Stay safe, please use the next entrance' or similar. And I think this is more of a rural, traditional chuch phenomena.

A good article in the Guardian by Theo Hobson expanding this here

Lots more to say about this... soon!