Several people have posted on the atheist bus slogan generator which is good fun to play around with.  For some of the best ones I've seen follow the links here here here and here

For what it's worth, and it's not remotely funny, here's one I generated this afternoon when I got back from lunch club.  We load up to 50 wrinklies onto a coach and bundle a few more into cars and have lots of fun - even if I do sometimes wonder why it took me four years of theology to train to do it.  The first line is a kind of slogan I've used for our church a fair bit in the last five years, the second reflects lunch club life.

On a journey with God

Climb aboard and join the fun

The snow is going here - at least on the main roads, my street still bears more than a passing resemblance to a toboggan run - but once darkness falls the residual slush and water will turn to ice.  Almost all the schools have been closed today and lots of evening meetings have been cancelled.  Tomorrow is Lunch Club day - and the phone calls today have been along the lines of 'you won't cancel will you?'

I suspect that for many of our members, especially the more frail among them, this is an outing to which they look forward all month and who are probably quite stir crazy having been cooped up for a few days.  We'll have to be extra careful - really don't want any broken bones - but barring blizzards or pestilence we'll be there.

Interesting!

Here in Dibley it has snowed fairly steadily all day. Not as heavily as in Kent or London, but enough to build up about 6 inches on top of my wheelie bin and at least 4 on the garden.  My road resembles a toboggan run and there've been a few interesting bits of driving to observe though the main roads, until about 3 pm, were clear; thereafter they slowly covered over.

I needed to do a couple of visits today - one to the local Community Hospital where one of my long-term hospitalised folk is now undergoing intensive physio and one to my much-loved 90-something year-old crusty Gideon who was refusing to call out the doctor in the snow.

So, hospital visiting in Dibley = dog-collar, snow = hiking boots... hence a new ensemble of clerical shirt, woolly jumper, jeans and hiking boots (with waterproof and fleecy hat/gloves of course).  It's the look - the Dibley look!

I called into the corner shop on the way back to treat myself to some lemon-curd tarts and instant hot chocolate.  I got chatting (as usual) to the woman behind the counter who spotted the collar and asked about it - I told her I try to look normal (!) most of the time.  She then shared that she was baptised by the Archbishop of York and she said 'bless you' as I left the shop.  I'm not a great fan of dog-collars, though I do think they have there place, and every now and then I find these magical moments arise.

Tomorrow it may or may not snow here - we seem to be on the edge of every weather map/system going - but hopefully I won't need to reproduce 'the look' again in a hurry.

This morning's service was chugging along nicely and innocuously enough until we go to the Bible readings.  The first reading, scheduled to be Matt 7:24 - 27 (wise and foolish builders) began and clearly wasn't what was intended.  I let the reader read, after all it was probably me who had mistyped the reference - a quick flick through my Bible revealed she was reading Math 6:24 - 27 (serving two masters, God and mammon).  So, after the two Matthew readings, I read the correct parable and then did the reflection.  The same person was reading another passage later in the service and she said she'd switched Bibles because, seemingly, in her Bible the chapter numbers in Matthew differed and she had been reading allegedly the correct passage, and I had given the right reference.  I think she was using a New English Bible, but the only NEB New Testament I have is correctly labelled - so maybe someone can put me right?  Anyway, with the theme of folly and wisdom, and the current economic muddles I did find myself wondering if  divine mischief was at work here?

One person took me to task over the use of the 'Wisdom's Table' hymn, not liking the use of the word 'fool' to refer to Christ (at least that's what I think it means) even though this theme was picked up from the 1 Corinthians 1 reading and God's folly being wiser than human wisdom.  Ah well, can't please them all.

This week I have glanced at some stuff on natural church growth.  It all sounds very fine and lovely but it doens't quite connect for me.

The true fruit of apple trees, it says, is not apples, it's more apple trees: the raison d'etre of apple trees is to make more apple trees.  Hence, it claims, by analogy, churches exist to make more churches.  Well, hmm.

In the wild, apple trees don't produce all that much fruit, enough presumably to ensure that there will be more apple trees, though most of the 'offspring' clearly won't survive, otherwise the planet would be overrun by apple trees.  Further, the point of reproduction is that apple trees don't live forever - they die, so if they don't pass on their genes there will be no more apple trees.

Also, apple trees, as we tend to think of them, are grown and tended for the specific purpose of producing apples.  They are pruned and grafted to generate the desired product.  And this has biblical precedent in the analogy of John 15 - I AM the vine.  These aren't 'natural' vines, they are subject to vineculture.  Vines and apple trees have a productive life after which, unless they are wild, they are cut down and mulched or burned; even in the wild they will sooner or later die of old age.  Maybe the natural church growth models recognise this life-cycle issue, that churches have a finite span, but I didn't spot it (they talk of leaves forming compost but not dead trees).  Maybe because churches are often seen as more like oak trees or redwoods which live for centuries we just never quite face this reality.

I think churches do eventually die, not because they have failed to reproduce (though they may have done) but because they are old, sick or tired.  One of our difficulties is our reluctance to accept this - we inject the latest bought-in package for evangelism, discipleship or outreach, we pour in money or personnel in a desperate attempt to keep to keep an old, frail body alive when what it really needs is to rest in peace.  Sometimes it is possible to resuscitate or even resurrect a church, but sometimes it isn't.  If we claim to be 'natural' in our approach, might there be a time to quietly annotate the metaphorical medical file of a church with the letters DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)?

None of us want to be esslesiastical undertakers or palliative care nurses, but it is a valid ministry.  Just as the hospice movement recognises that success is a good death rather than prolonging life, so we in church life need to learn when to intervene, when to stand back and how to make endings as healthy and hopeful as we can.

PS As I typed this I recalled ths story of the fig tree that Jesus 'zapped' at the start of holy week.  Sometimes this leads us to make an unhealthy association of death with punishment for unfruitfulness (in the case of this poor tree when it wasn't even fruit season).  Lack of doing/being what churches are meant to do/be will have its consequences, but that isn't the same as dying 'old and full of years.'