At last week's deacons meeting we were discussing our now 18 month old church-plant-emerging-church-cum-fresh-expression-cum-thing-in-a-pub and the fact that there are only two people whoever invite anyone along.  One person said, well the question is 'is what is organised suitable to invite people to?'  General grunts of agreement.  So I turned it round and said 'well, do you think what we offer is suitable to invite people to?'  The same person then said, "well you have to ask whether a person would want to walk into that group all sitting around the room?" - a fair question but not exactly an answer to the first question, and when I turned it round again, (so would they?) the questioner seemed to run out of questions!

The discussion concluded that the format is good and the venue, if limited, is not the big issue.  The reality is no one invites anyone.  One person said it was about the titles we use - none of their friends is interested in the relationship of faith and ... I did suggest they could simply say 'oh, we've got someone coming to talk to us about acupuncture' or policing or whatever it might be.  In the end they decided to put an advert in the local press (as well as the usual posters and small scale leaflet drop) for the next event to see if that attracted anyone.  I guess that's fairly safe - it's arm's length, we don't actually have to talk to anyone.

Outside of the meeting, one of them said to me that she actually doesn't know anyone locally (she works in the next town) who doesn't go to a church and so has no one to invite.  This is a fact for many churches I suspect, and why we end up in decline - our lives are so church-centric that there is no one to invite to anything and our invitation services become a farce.  On Sunday I casually asked my congregation who had invited someone to next Sunday's outreach songs of praise service - and received 30 very sheepish looks; the only person who has (and she's invited three) is someone right on the periphery of church life who still has a life outside of it.

I am beginning to think that next time one of my people says we need another prayer meeting I will reply, no, you need to get a life!  Go and meet people, enjoy their company, have some fun... and then you'l, learn the right to invite people along to things at church; only then the potential for drawing in others will begin.

I would not claim to be any better at this than my congregation, but for Sunday have professionally invited 70 people along and personally invited the school caretaker... it's a start.

Apparently some blogging platforms offer lots of clever widget thingies that render blogs inaccessible to some browsers.  This was demonstrably the case when Sean decided to add what he deemed a 'funky widget' to his blog, which succeeded in making Internet Explorer crash whenever anyone strayed onto his blog (power?!).  Being a kind soul, he has now removed said device but advised his readers to 'GET FIREFOX.'  So, if you happen to be one of the IE users who gave up reading Sean's stuff you can now view it again, and you could take his advice.

As I already had Safari as well as IE7 (IE8 may not have this wobble when it arrives in August) I decided I might as well download Firefox and play around a little with each.  I'm not overly keen on Safari, but I think that is largely a result of having used IE since time began: it's more about 'feel' than 'function'.  Firefox feels (and looks) a lot like IE, so is quicker to adapt to than Safari, but it does seem to run just a little slower than IE - maybe that's because it's doing lots of clever stuff I can't see?

Anyway, as this blog remains ultra low tech - nothing more complicated than the odd link - it should continue to run on steam driven machines with creaky old browsers for as long as anyone is daft enough to look at it.

I'm not very good at this 'take a break' stuff am I?  Essay still only 2/3 done and on hold for a day or two.  Midway through writing a 'talk' for this Sunday's outreach service I had a thought I wanted to record.

The hymns chosen consist of several creation-points-to-creator and a fair few cross-centric offerings.  The readings I'm using are Isaiah 49:16 (engraved on God's hands) as call to worship, parts of Pslam 19 (the heavens declare the glory of God etc) and John 10 (good shepherd).  The main thread of the 'talk' is along the lines that creation is amazing and can point us to God but can also make us feel very insignificant with God far away, but this is only part of the story.  The good shepherd gives a picture of God (or Jesus) who is close at hand, knows us intimately and is active in the very messiness of life - an immanent balance to the transcendent.

And this made my poor old grey cells go 'ping' and wonder whether the I AM sayings of Jesus are about immanence, a kind of earthing and earthyness of God?  If this is right, then undoubtedly some clever scholar has done it before.  And if it's heresy, well it's my heresy and I'll own it!  The shepherd is a very earthy, practical image; bread is very basic and tangible, as is water.  Granted images such as 'truth' are less tangible, but I quite like this kind of both-and of God (or Jesus as I AM) being utterly commonplace and earthy and mysterious and divine.  A God who is beyond my comprehension and yet at the same time as ordinary as the staples of life strikes me as worth contemplating.  I'm probably not expressing this too well, but it certainly made me go 'wow.'

Careful how you pronounce that, now!

I am sure you have all been deeply concerned for the plight for my fractured molar and have been praying hard for its restoration.  Well, a girl can dream!  Anyway, the answer to this particular maiden's prayer came in the form of a two-handed NHS practice hidden away in a back street staffed by two Polish dentists, and who not only had vacancies but could give me an immediate appointment.

So, it is quieter in Dibley as the novocaine is still effective, and I now have a repaired 'fang' ready to bite again in 3 hours when the new filling has set.  I was very impressed with this little dental practice... and relieved to have said tooth repaired rather than removed.

"If Father Quinn did carry out a blessing or some form of religious event, then it was wrong and it has absolutely no validity in the eyes of the Catholic Church and in the eyes of the Lord."  So says Father Ostigoni according to the Daily Record, when referring to the Rooney wedding at a deconsecrated monastery.   I can live with his views with respect to the catholic church or even civil law, afterall under UK law a marriage to be legally recognised has (at the moment) to take place in appropriately licenced premises and be conducted by, or in the presence of, a suitably authorised person.  But, having said that, I recall my horror when the RC priest I worked with recorded martial status of the parents of a baby he was about to baptise as 'unmarried' because they had been married in a registry office.  Maybe it's back to the 'irregular but not invalid' argument?

What really grates is the claim that God doesn't recognise the marriage.  Without wishing to start up the whole debate of what God does recognise as a marriage, never mind go near the area the Anglicans are embroiled with, I just wish we could all learn to be a little less keen to tell people what God won't like or acknowledge, then just maybe they might feel a little more inclined to give church a chance.  I know it's not easy, and the church should stand up for what it believes to be right, I just can't help feeling a little more humility might be helpful.  Somehow I can't imagine Jesus at Cana checking that the minutiae of local legal niceties had been followed before sending the servants off to fill those enormous water jars...