Greater Churches Conference 1

An afternoon with English Heritage and a Places of Worship Support Officer. Doesn't sound like the most dynamic event, but in fact it was excellent and even inspiring.

This week is the biennial conference of the Greater Churches Group (a name that all-too-easily suggests that there are lesser churches out there somewhere, but shouldn't). The Wikipedia entry for the group describes it as a 'self-help organisation within the CofE', which is rather good. We're at a retreat house in Somerset (although I'm writing this at my kitchen table in Bristol).

So this afternoon I've seen a pro-active and important side to English Heritage that showed them taking seriously the living nature of church buildings and been treated to a visionary account of how church buildings should be seen as an asset to the mission of the Church. What was advocated was a return to the medieval sense of the church building as a mixed economy space, for worship and also for selling, meeting, even brewing. The Reformation and then the 19th Century specialisation of the church have moved us too far away from this.

The key message was that the church building belongs to the whole community and not just those who worship there. It should serve people's real needs (not what the church thinks those needs should be) and allow folk in on their terms, as they are.

Much food for thought here, and tomorrow they all visit St Mary Redcliffe (hence I'm at home having just put the finishing touches to my contribution).

September 29th

Things to do on the penultimate day of September:

1. unwrap the last Christmas present (prolonging the pleasure, or just disorganised? You decide)
2. make an application for the boy to go to school next year (aka parental-not-really-much-choice-at-all)
3. finish summer holiday

A Tale of Three Arks

It was the Sunday School picnic today, and one of the things we did was to make an ark out of junk. It revealed a great deal of talent (not least amongst the adults present!) and was a lot of fun. On our ark at least, elephants were classified as clean animals - there were nearly seven pairs of them!

But the fun with our junk ark threw light onto two other arks. The first was this, which appears to claim that the Biblical story was originally in miniature:


And the second was this, the ark in our Family Worship Area (ne Children's Corner). It would perhaps be at home in the Diocese of New Hampshire:


Two by two indeed.

Doors Open

Today was Open Doors Day - a day when normally closed buildings across Bristol are opened to the public. We qualify by opening parts of the church that are not normally accessible, like the roof and the bell tower. We also make displays of our vestments and silver and so on. Oh, and we serve tea ...


It was a great day, with a lot of hard work put in by all concerned.

I had to go out at lunch time to dedicate a cross in the churchyard of St John's, Bedminster. St John's was destroyed in the war, and was then absorbed into my parish. There had been a church on the site since before the Domesday Book, and it was the Mother Church of St Mary Redcliffe. So we owe it our ecclesial life, so to speak. So it was with gratitude that I went to dedicate the cross, and to pray in the site of ancient prayers.



All in all a good day.

Breakfast challenge

"Make an elephant" said the boy, dumping a load of the most un-elephantine stuff on the breakfast table in front of me.

So one lolly stick, one pipecleaner, two cardboard squares and a fluffy ball later, we had an elephant.

And all before morning has any right to begin.