This is a secondhand story, so the finer details may be incorrect, but it's inspiring and encouraging.

Apparently there is a little Methodist church whose members are more mature in years.  Recently, their much-loved women's meeting voted to close - in order that the ladies could set up and run an after school provision at their local primary school.

WOW!  That excites me.  Vision and courage; hope for a future they may never see.  Getting out of their four walls to meet a real community need.  Being gospel.

I wonder what might happen if all the tiny women's meetings up and down the country had the courage and vision of these sisters in Christ?  Revival might just happen!

I regularly get asked to speak to women's meetings (aaaaaargh); I think I might start sharing this story with them...

Today I was reading a short article by a well known minister on prayer.  I liked a lot of what he had to say - prayer is not just a shopping list we give to God and expect God to do for us, we need to act as well.  However, one bit was cringingly awful!

Citing Matthew 7, he observed that the intial letters of the three-fold command, Ask, Seek and Knock spell out... ASK, as if by divine guidance to re-enforce what he was saying.  Well, yes, in English they do, but they certainly don't spell out "aiteite" (though of course the Greek intial letters spell out AZK, so clearly God was speaking almost in English that day too.... not).  And of course it doesn't work with French or German (or any other language I suspect - is this demonstration that God is, in fact, English? ;-O )

Given this person trained at one of the colleges that has only relatively recently stopped expecting its students to arrive reasonably 'proficient' in Greek, this is all the more naff, methinks.

So this weekend you can be at the 'Aurora Borealis' Christian Festival, the 'Do Not Build On my Judo Grade' Christian Festival or the 'Village in the Wye Valley' flower and Christian festival.  Others will be recovering after the 'Front Side of an Aeroplane Wing' Christian Festival for Dunked Persons and probably others after the fairly recent 'As Yet Only Partially Fermented Grape Juice' Christian Festival.  Small wonder our congregations are going to be small.

It is good that there are so many, and such diverse, festivals.  It is good that people get so much from them.  Just my cynical head that says 'why can't we put the same energy into supporting our local, (small) churches in mission?'

So, to all those Bappy bloggers at whatever festival you're at, have a great time.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

(PS can any one tell me why Greenbelt is so called?  I'm sure it's neither a judo grade or a piece of house-proof land)

Thus said the teacher!

On Saturday I am conducting the wedding of a nominal Baptist to a nominal Hindu.  I am excited by this, and it has been great fun working with the couple to prepare a litrugy that embraces that which is good in each faith without compromising my own beliefs.

In each of the other (a whole two!) weddings I've 'done,' the couples have chosen to read their vows from cards, something I encourage as it feels more personal and authentic than the 'repeat after me' approach.  This had been the plan for Saturday until the groom decided he didn't want to wear his glasses and he wouldn't be able to read without them - vanity, vanity, all is vanity!

I leave you with the wedding blessing I'll be using; it's for you to decide whether its origins are Christian, Hindu or both!

May God be your guide as you nourish and sustain each other

May God be your guide as your loves grows stronger

May God be your guide as you grow in grace and maturity

May God be your guide through the joys and sorrows of life

May God be your guide as you cherish and care for children

May God be your guide so that your friendship lasts forever.

 

A propos of nothing much really - just a thought that flitted across my brain and provided five minutes distraction from a backlog of admin.

As part of my research into Habakkuk, I looked him up in the Revised Common Lectionary - he doesn't feature much.  I recalled a work colleague telling me about a nun he knew who set out to list, and then read, those parts of scripture not covered by the Lectionary.  They tend to be the tricky bits - the odd rape or murder, insightment to violence against babies, and accusations of satanic parentage by none other than JC himself - and the boring & puzzling bits - long lists of names, numbers or objects and obscure rules about vomit, excrement and other bodily emissions.  But what if we did engage with these 'texts of terror' (as Phyllis Tribble titled her work) or texts of boredom or puzzlement.  How might that impact our thinking?  Hmm.