It has been two days of turmoil and all-night working, and I am afraid it is still going on. There may be no rest for the wicked, but there is even less for the godly - or at least this would-be godly if God will only show his grace.
I refer, of course, to the need to rewrite the Holiday Club material for next week. I had had the rather brilliant idea of basing the Holiday Club on the Olympic Games. I reckoned I had really come up with a real advantage in the all-important job of trying to persuade children to come to our Holiday Club, rather than the Beaker Folk's "Little Pebbles by the Sea", or one of the thousands of other Holiday Clubs springing up in Bedford and Milton Keynes. After all, who else could have come up with the idea? The whole Olympic thing has been very low-key. I only realised they were on the other week, when I noticed my shares in G4S had fallen in value.
So on Friday night I turned on the black-and-white television in the spare room - we have an aquarium of fish in our lounge where other people would have a television. We would rather look at the wonders of God's creation than the filth and horror that pours from the television. Although, to ensure we do not become too enamoured of God's creation and worship it instead of him, we have just a few, rather dull brown fish in it. But what did I see from the Televisual Cathode Tube?
Depravity. Socialism. A song by Queen - whose lead singer was a notorious Zoroastrian. A lesbian kiss. The S** P*****s ( I cannot even type the word, for shame). Something called "Dizzy Rascal". Huw Edwards. A song by a young beat musician called Mike Oldfield, which was apparently used in the film "The Exorcist". A film, I need hardly remind you, in which Roman Catholics are made out to be on the good side. A song called "Enola Gay" - how much more blatantly in favour of Same-Sex marriage could they be? Openly using the word like that. And that great seducer of our young, Paul McCartney. Not to mention music from Pink Floyd - the group that created that most insidiously evil of all lines, "I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like." Need I say more?
Needless to say, I cannot associate the good name of the Bogwulf Funambulist Baptist Chapel with this slide into perdition. And so I am writing a new Holiday Club. The toil has been great. My sermon this morning was barely of its normal quality, as I had to break off writing it after only 50 hours' work. But the new programme - entitled "Sinful People Come to Sticky Ends" is now nearly complete. Just Thursday and Friday to write, so with divine help I should be able to get some sleep before tomorrow morning.
Your holiday club sounds so much fun NOT!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you might take a suggestion?
In stead of providing a holiday club, why not take the young people away on an Adventure Expedition?
A trek across the Cairngorns, or Dartmoor or Exmoor. Climbing in the Lake District. Sailing at the Olympic Venue at Weymouth? Canoeing at the Drake Island Adventure Centre in Plymouth.
So many choices and all you have to do is to lead them for each activity!!
I'm sure that you as a pastor of so much experience have all of the necessary qualifications and health and safety knowledge could manage to lose most of the little ones on-route.
With such depletions there would not be a need for a holiday club in the next few years until your congregation manage procreation (if they are allowed this past time) enough to produce a new generation.