Entries from June 2008
Hardly anything upsets the good people who use our premises as much as car parking. We have a great suite of rooms, and we are open as a church from about seven in the morning until ten at night. About 1000 people come through our doors each week – including nursery school, mums and tots, Jo Jingles, badminton clubs, bridge clubs, dance classes, and so much more. In addition, we have a coffee bar that’s open six mornings a week. So we are a busy place.
We have a reasonably large car park, but there are occasions when the capacity of the car park doesn’t match the capacity of the premises, and people struggle to get a parking place. The matter is made far worse by the fact that the local council, urged on by residents, put yellow lines on the roads close to the church, meaning that there is no parking allowed on the street between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon.
What annoys people most of all, though, is that it seems that to use our premises you have to be incapable of parking a car correctly. The car park is so often not used to capacity because people seem to find it impossible to park in the clearly marked spaces. Don’t they see the lines? Are they unable to park between the lines?
This morning was a case in question. On Saturday mornings our premises are used by a dance school. The place is packed, from 9.30 onwards for about three hours. Fortunately the road restrictions don’t apply at the weekends, so people can park in the road outside the church. I went up early this morning to collect a few things, before the dance lessons began. There were only three cars in the car park, but one of the dance school teachers had managed to park in the only place she could have parked to prevent anyone at all using our only disabled parking bay. I confess to thinking some very ungodly thoughts! She had twenty plus spaces to choose from, but decided not to use any of them. Why?
I know I’m supposed to show Christian love, but I’m so tempted to go and buy some wheelclamps for those who so blatantly misuse the car park facilities.
This is Mr Angry, signing off.
Categories: Church life
Tagged: car parking
We have a number of very competent musicians in our church, but owing to a variety of circumstances, including long-term health problems and holidays, it looks at the moment as though we will be without music in church for most of the months of July and August. We’ve asked around other churches, we’ve made appeals to our own congregation for closet-musicians to show themselves, but, for the time being, to no avail.
Hence the question: What happens when the music stops? I’m even considering suggesting that we buy a digital hymnal (that’s what they’re called).
I’ve got an antique pitch pipe that my father gave to me, used in the days when most churches didn’t have organs. I may have to use that!
Do you have any similar problems in your church? If you do, how do you overcome them?
Categories: Church life
Tagged: music, no musicians
Whilst perusing Tim’s blog I came across this great article about a project that ran in St Helens earlier this year where heaven came to St Helens. Check it out here. Now that’s the kind of project I’d love to get going in our community.
Categories: Evangelism
Tagged: art project, heaven, St Helens
Thanks to Tim for pointing out YouVersion. YouVersion is an online Bible project which enables engagement with the Bible in community, as well as giving you the opportunity to keep an online Bible journal and your own online commentary and sermon notes. Like Tim I would love the possibility of true collaboration. A few weeks back I found an article in Leadership Journal about group collaboration in sermon preparation, and I can imagine the possibility of YouVersion developing as a great tool for sermon preparation collaboration.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Bible, YouVersion
We’ve built up great links with one of our local primary schools, largely thanks to Chris, our Children’s and Youth Worker. He runs a football club in the school, does some mentoring there, and is involved in assemblies. As well as that we (largely Chris, though) teach the majority of the Christian RE syllabus. The link with the school is such a good one that their headteacher is becoming involved in the interview process for Chris’ replacement, when he moves on to Tonbridge Baptist Church at the end of this month.
This week, over the course of two days, classes from reception to year four came and spent a day with us. They looked around our church premises, and we shared with them on such subjects as baptism, communion, prayer, the Bible, and fair trade. Then, in the afternoon, we got them involved in some artwork, linking the church and the school.
But I can’t help feeling, no matter how well we handled the days, that we reinforced the stereotype of church as boring. Whilst the kids were brilliantly behaved, and we tried to engage with them, I found it incredibly difficult, for instance, to talk with five and six year olds about the concept of communion.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: school visit
David Byrne, former frontman for Talking Heads, has turned a huge warehouse into a musical instrument, ‘played’ by an old organ keyboard. See here for the full story. What a fun idea!
Categories: Entertainment · Funny story
Tagged: music
A big thank you to all those who made our weekend such a special time. It was great to see so many past members and friends who had come back to join us for this special occasion, many who had travelled a long way to be with us. We were also able to connect with many folk from our community who came along to our Open Church day on Saturday.
And it was good, too, to see the church full on both Sunday morning and Sunday evening. Many thanks to the members of Hutton and Shenfield Choral Society who took part in our evening ‘Songs of Praise’ and to the other churches in Hutton and Shenfield who closed down their Sunday evening services to join with us.
Categories: Church life · Events
Tagged: Anniversary weekend
Hutton and Shenfield Union Church was founded in 1913. We’re celebrating our 95th birthday this weekend. The church was very much a pioneer church, an LEP (Local Ecumenical Partnership) before the term LEP was even dreamt of. It began life as a joint Baptist/Congregation church, and now the partnership is between the Baptist and URC denominations.
The church was planted, and still exists, on a private housing estate (Hutton Mount) on the edge of Brentwood, in Essex, and we’ve served the community here for the last 95 years. So we’ve invited them to come and join us for our celebrations this weekend. Today, Saturday, we are holding Open Church. We’ve put a lot of our archive material in the sanctuary. The flower team have created some great displays. We’re showcasing the art and craft talents of many of our church members with a big display in the main hall. We’ve got activities for children. And we’re giving away refreshments – including burgers and sausages from the barbeque and a cream tea later on in the day.
This evening we have a concert in church. Cameo opera, a local singing group, are presenting music from the last 95 years.
And we’ve got special services this weekend, with Tony Coates, one of our previous ministers, preaching in the morning, and a Songs of Praise in the evening.
Categories: Church life
Tagged: anniversary, Open Church
I don’t know whether you are aware of Wikisource? Wikisource is an online library of free content publications. One of their latest projects is The Wiki Bible Project. As their website says
Wikiproject Wiki Bible is a wikiproject to create an original, open content translation of the source text of the Bible that will be in the Public Domain.
Everyone is invited to join in the project. Those who know Greek or Hebrew are invited to claim a chapter of the Bible to translate. Others are encouraged to proof-read or ‘tweak’ the text. And the following are provided as guidelines to those involved in the project.
- Stay faithful to the original source text and do not borrow from copyrighted modern versions. The text should be as literal as possible while still translating the correct meaning into good English.
- Keep the translation simple, non-technical, robust, and easy-to-understand.
- Avoid sectarian disputes, possibly by footnoting variant translations.
- Share your sources. (In the page talk put all details about which source text you used.–and any other such details about the translation.)
- Don’t hesitate to add footnotes. All kinds of footnotes are welcome, including if you’re really not sure about how something should be translated. Either another editor will see your footnote, and fix the text, or it is a place where translating well is really difficult, and this info is good to be passed on to the reader. (In case of ambiguity in the text, put the other possible renderings in the footnotes.)
The folk at Christianity Today have quite rightly highlighted some of the difficulties involved in the project. And the satirical news site Newsbiscuit has come up with their own spoof take on the project, claiming that Wikisource plans to have one on-line holy book for all world faiths, written and edited by the world-wide community.
It will be interesting to see how the project develops.
Categories: Technology
Tagged: Wiki Bible Project
