Over-inflated clerical egos and a sense of proportion

I have just had an educational and - in some ways - entertaining time reading the pamphlet I was given by the female vicar at Frisby-on-the-Soar one day when we were having a chat. I say "having a chat". She was trying to use her feminine wiles to seduce me into the belief that  she had some kind of divine mandate to be the so-called "priest". Not that anyone could ever call themselves a "priest" - what are we? Some kind of Hebrew cult?

But "A History of St Cuthbert, Frisby-on-the-Soar" is still a fascinating read. Not least because it describes how the successive vicars made changes to the church, only to have them reversed when they left.

"Father"  Aloysius Chigwell-Station, for example, a so-called "modernising" vicar in the late 19th Century. He put in altar rails, a reredos – whatever that is – and an aumbry for holding the reserved sacrament. I shudder at the details, or at least those I understand. But the Patron died, and the new one appointed a successor after Chigwell-Station’s death, who removed the rails again. Revd Gervais Gilhooly also introduced a new hymn book, “Hymns Ancient and Modern”, which the congregation hid in the crypt when he left so they could go back to the old one.

“Father” Patrick John brought back the altar rails. He also relocated the organ into the chancel and pushed the altar against the wall so he could face the other way when leading the Communion service.  When he in turn died (exhausted from moving church furniture around), the congregation promptly dragged the altar back where it came from and told the new minister that it had always been like that.

Not thinking they had gone far enough, this new minister obtained a new altar and put it in front of the choir (Hnaef tells me this is a “nave” altar) so everyone could be more “gathered round” in worship. This minister also introduced a music group and the use of Sounds of Living Water. When he was called elsewhere, the congregation used the songbooks to light the bonfire of guitars and tambourines, and put the nave altar back in the side chapel. The next minister promptly moved it back – but the congregation insisted on mounting it on wheels “so we can shift it back easier when you’re gone”. When he left, within fifteen minutes of the farewell service the notice board was changed as the words “10.30 Folk Eucharist” were painted out and replaced with “9 am – Holy Communion (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd Sundays only). The “worship group” were a robed choir again by the following Sunday.

What a strange story of vainglory it all is. As a succession of pastors, each forgetting that all flesh is as grass, believed they were leaving changes of lasting worth to the church. And the congregation, each time they were freed of clerical control, reverted to what they had preferred in the first place.

Now I must be off on God's work. I’m getting the Clavinova and the new PA system installed today. A much more suitable sound in my opinion than that old, Anglican-sounding harmonium. And much less likely to bring on old Mrs Grimsey’s chest complain when she’s playing it. But I’ve had to agree with the congregation’s request that we move the harmonium into the vestry – “just in case”, whatever that means.