Rejoice Rejoice Immanuel shall come to thee

Sorry it's been a bit quiet here recently. Facebook is rather taking over my online life.
Today we had a wonderful time at Church for Advent Sunday because:
1)We had a guest preacher, Canon Andy Knowles from Chelmsford Cathedral, who is excellent. His reflections on the prophetic function of the fig tree were stimulating relevant and at times funny. ( I know you'll find that hard to believe if you weren't there, but there you go).
2) The chalice is back (though of course we got a bit caught off guard by the large turnout (it was a benefice service)and nearly ran out of bread and wine).
3) We had a Blue Peter style Advent wreath which was fab.
4) We had 2 ordinands ("home and away") in the congregation (and to ours for lunch).

Only one thing took me by surprise today - the map of Israel behind the words for "O Come O Come Immannuel" on the screen ...

5 deeply de Christian doctrines

So many people have been responding to this tag recently its hard to come up wuth anything original, but I did say i would respond to Phil's tag so here goes. They're not really tuaght doctrines as much as doctrinal assumptions from what we sing or say in Church.

1. "The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high or lowly
and ordered their estate."
NO - HE DIDN'T ORDER IT, WE DID! Fortunately we don't sing this any more unless the funeral director is particularly inept (which mine aren't), but sometimes I feel the sentiment is there in conversations, for example, about travellers or why no one from the estate comes to church.

2. "The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes".
OK so he was breastfed, but even those babies cry sometimes!

3. "Christian Children all must be mild obedient good as he."
This is an interesting one; it is not un-Christian to aim for a situation in which children are focussed on Christ as their moral and ethical role model. What is de-Christian about this hymn is that i'm not sure that singing those words with gustio are the best way of going about that aim.

4. "The young people are the church of tomorrow". I get so angry about this that I will just let it stand.

5.All-age worship isn't really church though is it (see no,4)

So she woke up

There'll be a few bleary eyed clerics on Sunday morning, with the news that a U2 gig will be streamed live on Sunday at 3.30am UK time

Ch ch ch ch changes ...

Phil won't like it, but I really don't like Man U. At all ...

And this was my first conversion.

As a youngster in the late 1970's I was a keen follower of "The Red Devils", with bobble hat, scarf and posters, panini stickers etc. The Greenhof Brothers, Martin Buchan, Alec Stepney, Butch Wilkins etc were the bread and butter of school bus and playground conversations. we watched FA cup triumph and disaster and I can even remember something about the 20th anniversary of Munich '58. But I was not living anywhere near Manchester; my parents supported Liverpool and West Ham because that's where they were from (or near enough). I followed Man U in the same way I followed TV or film or pop stars - from afar.



Then, a few years on, I came to understand the real meaning of football supporting when a friend took me to Vicarage Road to watch Watford, our nearest first division team and I was soon converted from the Red Devils to the Hornets. This was more like it. The pre-Hillsborough terraces were charged with a great atmosphere; the ground was (?is) small enough to mean you felt really close to the action. I remember they beat Southampton 7-1 and at the next home game you could buy a pen with that score printed on it! We'd cheer the names on the team sheet as they were read out and appeared on the electronic scoreboard - Ray Train was always accompanied by a graphic of a steam loco. Being there, being almost close enough to touch your heroes, made for a much more authentic and exhilarating experience.



Of course this was the early 80's and that meant your colours were firmly nailed to the mast. Woe betide you therefore to come upon a crowd of away supporters on the way home - a bunch of Gooners (i.e. Arsenal fans) did for me one wet Saturday. The only time I have ever been physically attacked.



But that was enough. From the commitment of every home game I stopped going, and went back to armchair football. I've been to 1 FA cup game (Millwall vs Oxford Utd, mid 90's, with Graham Tomlin and a bunch of spotty ordinands) and a couple of Pickering Town home games since. So I became a supporter of "anyone but Man U".



And they make it easier for me almost every week, with their designer arrogance and their manager's blotchy-nosed strops at the referee or the groundsman or anyone else who's fault it might be other than his or the team's that they didn't win. I think it's great now that Quieroz has left, Sir Alex has to talk to the TV and press again. There is an air of assumed invincibility about the whole industry that is Manchester Utd, which my Christ-inspired tendency to support the underdog really rails against, so like 'King Kev [sic] I love it love it love it when they lose.

Just like someone who's stopped going to church and turned against Christianity, I've turned against Manchester Utd.

Mind you, should anyone from the Monotheistic faiths put their name behind a team called The Red Devils? I did once meet their chaplain though.

Baby don't change your mind

Papers and blogs full today of the "revelation" that Rowan Williams has two opinions about homosexuality, one private (theological) and another public (leader's).



He's certainly getting it in the neck but I think we probably knew throughout Lambeth and all that came before that he had either changed his mind or had decided to go with his perception of the right flow as leader of the church.



I still rate the bloke as a first class leader. In fact any (OK any mainstream Anglican) church leader who lets all their own theological convictions rule the way they lead a church would probably have to:-

• sack the Sunday school teachers for teaching fundamentalist approaches to Genesis 1-11


• sack the organist because they don't have the same approach to music in worship


• have a radically different baptism policy to the one currently in place.


• find a new job!

Now of course you'd have to be mad to go through those bullet points as a to do list for the week, but that's the kind of thing Rowan's critics seem to be asking of him. We all have to make compromises because (IMHO) church leadership is not a solo craft; we sail as a team and we have to take the approaches and opinions and feelings of other team members into account, even when we are the captain. That's why I say, don't knock teh bloke, pray for him - go on, right now