A New Ecumenical Instrument

I got very excited about the "New Ecumenical Instrument" that Msgr  Andrew Burnham referred to in his article about the Ordinariate.  I was dying to find out whether it was some kind of organ, or maybe a guitar?

But then I was side-tracked by one of his sentences:

"Not everything is fully accepted — there are no signs of married laymen being presented for ordination — but there are interesting aspects to governance that have clear Anglican precedents."

So if the Catholic church is not ordaining "married laymen" - then what does he think it is doing when ordaining people who are priests in the Church of England?

Anyway, back to the ecumenical instrument.  There's no mention of it in the article, which is a bit dispiriting. But I suspect it's an ocarina. That's a truly ecumenical instrument. Nobody likes it.

Service Guide for Cold Days

Ah, the changing seasons!  As we head into winter, you may find the following advice useful.

If you find the minister has frosted over, resist the urge to pour hot water on them. The sudden temperature change could cause their specs to crack.

Check the tyres on the ministers' bikes and cars. If they're not worn out, you may need to consider getting them a couple more churches to look after.

If you find the baptism water is freezing in the font, avoid adding antifreeze or salt. A drop of left-over Malibu from last Christmas will lower the freezing point, and leave baby with a pleasant coconut smell.

If the congregation is starting slowly in bad weather, do not use jump leads. Call the RAC.*

If the church door has frozen up, do not be tempted to think "oh, it'll be jolly outside here." God is telling you to go back to bed.

In strict Anglo-Catholic circles, if the temperature is under -7C, you may contemplate wearing pants under the cassock. Just contemplate, mind. Doesnt that feel warm?

In Methodist chapels with radiant heaters in the ceiling, you may want to consider relaxing the "no hats" rule for balding men. St Paul was writing in a culture that had no concept of electricity, cold chapels and badly designed heating methods.

If you clear the snow from the Church, you may or may not be responsible for people slipping over. But if the 97-year-old Church Warden ends up with hypothermia from clearing it, check the insurance. Quick.

Anglicans may need a faculty to clear snow from the churchyard. The Chancellor of the Diocese of Gloucester is always happy to advise on these matters.

If the congregation is huddling too closely together, you may consider lighting a second tea light.

* Other organisations available for restarting broken down congregations. Eg AA, Green Flag, Holy Trinity Brompton.

Dawkins Honey Day

In the Beaker Religion, the Sun is a tortoise
tea-light holder, flying on a honey jar.
A Solar Eclipse is when the honey gets confiscated
by a cosmic airport official.

It is, I am delighted to discover from Twitter, Dawkins Honey Day.

A day when we can reflect that, twelve months on, we are still not allowed to take small pots of honey on planes.

A day to remember that a brave airport security guard didn't know who, and how important, Richard Dawkins was.

A day to remember that the late Osama Bin Laden has won. Although I'm not sure what he's won really. Or what an atheist could ever have imagined a dead man could have won. But still. Well done, Osama. All have won, and all will have prizes. Except if the prizes are small, air-freighted jars of honey. In which case all will have to make do with handwriten bits of card with "well done" written on them.

To mark Dawkins Honey Day, we are issuing special "busy bee" badges. They represent a bee in an airport security outfit, demanding a pot of honey from an innocent author.

We will be eating honey on toast tonight, remembering that, if the EU's pesticide control regulations don't reverse the current outbreaks of hive collapse and varroa, Osama will have won. Forever.

---

A Liturgy for Honey Night

Archdruid: O honey

All: Oh, sugar, sugar.

Archdruid: Sweets for my sweet

All: Sugar for my honey.

Archdruid; Honey, I miss you.

All: And I'm being good.

Archdruid: Can I have that honey, please sir?

RD: Don't you know who I am? I'm the world's greatest atheist. Why don't I have a knighthood?

All: Tell him about the honey, Mummy!

Archdruid: Go into the world, and spread the good news.

Regulations for the Season of Little Bling

Now that Samhain is over, and we're halfway through The Octave of Fireworks, it's the Beaker tradition to celebrate the season of Little Bling.

We're aware that presents and Christmas food are now filling the shops like poor PR photos in Ed Miliband's scrapbook. But we know that we can't just go wild in an orgy of lights and "Eat Me" figs and partying. No, Paul the Apostle was most clear about where people who spend their time carousing are headed, and it's not good.

So we save all the really energetic celebrating for Advent. That is, after all, what that season of goodwill and merriment is all about.  But no. As we count down the days to Advent Sunday and the Grand Parade of Loveless Packaged Bling, we do so soberly, sensibly, calmly. Aware that the nights are drawing in really quite fast - a reminder of the dark place that awaits us all - we consider the four Great Themes of Little Bling - Expectation, Education, Sensation and Condensation.

And so we've just put the one Father Christmas on the roof of the Moot House. It's for the children, really.

A Welcoming Church

I am confused, I must admit, by this blog post on the Top 10 Ways Churches Drive Away First-Time Guests.

I had never realised that some churches saw it as a good idea to drive away visitors, however ungodly. However, if you want advice on how to do it, that web page is as good a way to get suggestions as any.

For myself, I always insist that new visitors to Bogwulf Baptist Church stand up and give us a short overview of who they are and why they have come. Then they are invited to join in with the other members of the congregation in discussing "three ways I have been tempted to sin this week". Naturally, as guests, we let them go first. This all helps in making them feel welcomed and, of course, important.

Having read Tom Rainer's post, I am now thinking that the poor rate of returning on the part of first-time visitors may be because our Children's Corner may need a lick of paint.

Selling England by the Pound

Maybe only me who sees the irony in this tweet.....

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Mission Statement on Mission

Of the making of Mission Statements there is no end. And we had a great afternoon brainstorming the Mission Statement on Mission - one of our 45 Mission Statements that we committed to when we produced our new Mission Statement on Mission Statements, which you may remember was:

"To produce Mission Statements covering all 45 "arcs of action" as identified in the "Mission Statements Missional Mission Meeting".

Which, to be honest, wasn't a great Mission Statement, but we all agreed to it

Anyway. It got heated at times. Everybody agreed that we wanted to draw new people into the Beaker Folk, but we couldn't agree, at least in fine details, to why. Some saw it as expanding the Kingdom of God, while others talked about "salvation", and "eternal life", which many saw as irrelevant to the Mission of a church in the 21st Century.

And for some people, the concern was that if we put our energy into our Mission, and lots more people arrived - for whatever purpose - we'd have to do something about it. And would we by having these new people have carried out the Great Commission? Or would we have to develop a Mission Statement on the Great Commission to understand this?

And if these people arrived, obviously we wouldn't want them to detract from our core Missional activities, whatever they were. Oh no. Too many people with children might distract the Community from Mission to children's work. And we hadn't identified that as one of our 45 Arcs of Church Mission Statements. Except in a subsidiary way, in our Mission Statement on Worship, where we agreed we would be working for "godly", "peaceful", "meditative", and "ordered" worship - which just about covers it for kids, I reckon.

So the Mission Statement on Mission is as follows:

"To work out God's mission quietly, in a godly manner, hoping that by doing what we're doing, in the way we do it, we will attract into God's Kingdom [whatever that means] just the kind of low-maintenance people who'll want to do the things we do, in the way we do it, without too much encouragement, education or radical behaviour change, but will be unaccountably keen to part with their money."

I'm not saying it's terribly inspiring. And the bit in brackets is the subject of a minority report dissenting from its inclusion.

But at least everybody could sign up to it.

Pretending to See the Future

Our children will see Time Travel and Teleportation, the Telegraph tells us.

It's worth bearing in mind that, in the example using the Theory of Relativity to "time travel" into the future, it's a one-way trip. If you do what is described, quite apart from using immense amounts of energy, you'll never be able to get back to your own time. Why we'd want to realise this pointless achievement is frankly beyond me. But yes, it could be done.

Also in the "lame reality versus science fiction" bracket is that of commercial space travel - posted for 2015. The type of commercial space travel that Richard Branson is trying to achieve has tragically already been made unlikely to meet its target by recent events since the Telegraph article was written. But compared to what people think of as "space travel", it's like a rowing boat on the Serpentine compared to crossing the Atlantic. Real space travel isn't a nip out of the Earth's atmosphere and back. If you ask people what space travel means, it's a trip to Mars at least, and ideally one to Barnard's Star.

Then teleportation - here's the quote from the expert:

"Teleporting a person, atom by atom, will be very difficult and is of course a physicist's way, but perhaps developments in chemistry or molecular biology will allow us to do it more quickly. The good thing about teleportation is that there is no fundamental law telling us that it cannot be done and with technical advances I would estimate teleportation that we see in the films will be with us by 2080,” she said.

I'm gonna stick my neck out here, and call "drivel". If the argument is that physics won't work but biology will do....oh you, know, something biological, "perhaps".... nah, drivel. I can almost see the good Doctor's hands waving from here.

Anyway, must get on. Tonight's the night we're Beating the Bounds of the Community. Better fire up the old jet pack, put my silver suit on and leave the androids to cook tea.

The Thoughts of King Tutankhamun

"So here I am, dragged back from the afterlife.

Grave robbers I could have coped with. They would have taken the gold, taken the fancy stuff. But at least they'd have just chucked me on the floor.

But archaeologists - that's another matter. Eternity in a perspex box in a museum, looked at by spotty schoolkids. Neatly filed as an exhibit. That instead of the glories of Isis and Osiris, the welcome of Anubis, that's what they've sorted out for me.

Grave robbers would have been nice,"

Church Definitions - The Sheffield Formula

The Sheffield Formula (n)  - A scientific and mathematical method of assuring decline, while projecting a managerial image.

Letters to the Church Magazine

For those that maybe don't know - Revd Nathan at the Trim Valley Benefice publishes the letters to his church magazine every first day of the month. He seems to think it's safer than having a free-for-all with the congregations being able to comment on a more normal blog.

Judging by November's crop, he may not be as wise as one would hope in a Church of England clergy...