If you keep an eye on the Church News, you probably will have seen that a select group of representatives of various Evangelical groups in the Church put forward a proposed covenant to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Not surprisingly the more liberal end of the Church didn’t much like it, but what is interesting is the reaction of some of the more Evangelical end. By far the most comprehensive, and in many ways damning analysis comes from the evangelical Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who as a friend of a number of people involved in the drafting of the document, is very apologetic before he starts.
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Finding the Right Era
One of the skills of a good DJ at a party, especially your average Christmas party with a diverse bunch of people is picking the right music to play, especially finding the right era for the group. Whilst you can never hope to get music that will appeal to everyone, quite often you can hit on almost a critical era, that brings a large enough number of people to the floor to get everyone else dancing.
Last night we had Beth’s Christmas Party at the school, and we had quite the most dramatic example of hitting the right era I’ve ever seen. One minute there were barely six people on the dance floor, then the DJ sticks on Boogie Wonderland and within seconds almost everybody was up dancing!
It was a bit of a different occasion from last years party, but conversely it was much better attended. The food was a pretty nice buffet, pretty similar to what we have at Harvest Supper at Church, with cold meat, salads and jacket potatoes, and a selection of tempting puddings too.
Unfortunately we weren’t able to stay to the end since our buyers were due round to measure up relatively early this morning, and that was quickly followed by a choir duty to sing at a wedding up at the Church (with all Christmas carols not surprisingly).
Anyway, I’ve added the pictures I took during the evening, to the selection from the parties last week, so you can see what a load of teachers look like when they let their hair down!
Wohoo, Got the Sparkle Back!
If like me you had Volume Logic installed into iTunes, despite the new toys in the recent iTunes 7 update, the biggest issue would have been the fact that the update broke Volume Logic.
If you’ve never heard the difference, you’re probably wondering what the issue is, but believe me, you can hear the difference between a track playing with and without the plug-in activated. Without, the sound is pretty flat, probably the best description I can think of to describe how it sounds with the plug-in turned on and the right set-up selected (there are multiple set-ups for different types of music) is that it just sparkles.
Anyway, I’ve been keeping an eye on the Volume Logic site, as they’ve gone through a private beta process trying to nail down and fix the problem. The annoyance is that although there has been generally positive response, there has been a significant group of beta testers who have hit problems, and the public beta is still on hold.
However, in an attempt to find out if there were any more details on what is going on, I did a search on Google, and came up with this page that includes a copy of the private beta, together with a link for reporting bugs, so I’ve given it a go, and so far it seems to be working fine, and suddenly all my music has got it’s sparkle back!
Are Evangelicals ‘Taking Over’?
One of the big fears amongst some members of certain congregations in the Church of England is that the ‘Evangelicals are taking over’. Equally I’ve heard members of other congregations complain that there are ‘too many Liberals’ in senior positions in the Church. However is either statement true, or is it all about perception?
Anglican Mainstream today published some interesting figures from the English Church Census of 2005, repeated on Thinking Anglicans counting up the number of churches and worshippers in the Church of England who classify themselves as either Mainstream Evangelical, Charismatic Evangelical or Evangelical Broad.
The figures make interesting reading, as they show that in terms of Churches, only 26% classify themselves as Evangelical. Looking at worshipers, the percentage goes up to 34% of worshipers. The reason for this can be found in the final statistic – of the 160 largest churches in the Church of England, who represent 1% of the total number of churches, and 10% of the worshipers, a staggering 83% are evangelical.
Ruth Gledhill uses the figures as a lead in to a discussion of the increasingly complex situation in North America, but predicts that despite much of the attention being focused across the pond, the Church of England will be the place where the first split will occur. Interestingly she does believe that it won’t be a full-bodied schism – as I have mentioned before I am also sure that the Church of England will never split up – property and pensions will be what will hold the Church together in name at least.
Having said that, looking at the figures, the actual proportion of Evangelicals in the church whilst sizeable, is definitely a minority. The reason perhaps for the ‘Evangelicals are taking over’ impression is pretty clear when you consider that final statistic, and what it means. To put it simply, the big Churches have the resources, both in terms of money and manpower, to be heard a lot louder than smaller churches. For example locally in the Jeffrey John arguments a few years back it was only a few big Churches in the Diocese who made a significant noise – that’s not to say that smaller Churches weren’t making comments both for and against the appointment, but it was the big churches that got the coverage. At the time, the threat of withholding parish share was mentioned, and the majority backed down, since as comparatively big Churches they were perceived as giving a large amount of money. As an aside, as with big corporations having the resources to avoid taxes, large Churches, also have the resources to do something similar with their share. For example take a look at this site, which is the Arborfield and Barkham Parish Churches Trust, note particularly the annual turnover of the independent trust.
Anyway, I digress. Looking at the number of people, in terms of representation in the Church councils and synods, the larger Churches will generally be allowed more representatives, so in theory their representation across the Church should be roughly in proportion to the number of worshipers. Having said that, that is only in the house of laity. Unlike the democracy in the Episcopal church, clergy and Bishops are appointed not elected – so whilst the laity may have a say in any appointment, it would certainly not be a surprise to me if equivalent figures looking at the number of Evangelical clergy showed a somewhat different proportion… Sadly I don’t have those figures to hand to make a comparison.
So in terms of numbers, I don’t think the Evangelicals have taken over as such, but their voices often seem louder and clearer both on the outside, and within the Church. Perhaps the main way the apparently silent majority in the Church could redress the balance, is to learn from minority – for larger and growing mainstream Anglican churches such as ours, churches that, as we were reminded on Sunday when Rev Richard mentioned Richard Hooker in his sermon, demonstrate the breadth of Anglicanism, need to organise to speak out just as loudly and clearly as the Evanglical Churches. There is a myth in the Church that only Evangelical Churches grow – maybe growing churches like St James need to shout about it too.
Busy Christmas Weekends
So we’ve just got home from the end of a decidedly busy weekend, as the various Christmas engagements got into full swing.
We started off straight from work on Friday night with the school play at Beth’s school, preceded by a dinner with colleagues from the English department at the Blubeckers restaurant in Twyford – the Horse and Groom pub as was. If you’re wondering why the picture of a dog at this point, I should explain that one of Beth’s fellow teachers is blind, and so we were also joined by Yasmin her guide dog. I was sat at the same end of the table under which Yasmin was sitting, and had to contend with various pitiful looks from her as she waited for us to drop something tasty. Having said that, she did get waiter served too, as she got some dry dog food at the same time, so needed some water – and the waiter came back with a little jug and a cloth and prepared her food too! I’ve not had much experience of going to restaurants and the like with a Guide Dog, but it certainly seemed like they went out of their way to be helpful.
The choice of play this year was Peter Pan, and thinking about it, this is probably the first time we’ve seen the whole production on stage. Being a school production the flying didn’t involve wires, instead there were a number of actors dressed primarily in black who lifted various of the cast members as required. Perhaps the most surprising thing was the number of elements of the play that might be considered a bit strange. For example the play has a very clear idea of the role of women, with Wendy being made the mother for the Lost Boys, and subsequently Wendy, her daughter, and female descendants being taken back annually to Neverland to spring clean for Peter. The other point that produced a somewhat surprised reaction is the first time that Tinkerbell demonstrates her ill manners and behaviour by referring to Peter as “you silly assâ€? – not something people expect in a piece of classic children’s literature! All in all it was a pretty impressive production, and certainly there seems to be a good deal of acting talent in the school.
Last night we had our first experience of Christmas with my new company. Thinking about it, I haven’t been to a full blown office Christmas bash like this for a good few years. Hi-Q used to hold a company dinner that included spouses in the spring, apparently because most places tend to hike the prices around Christmas. At Christmas itself the employees used to be taken across the road to the local free house, who would lay on a Christmas lunch for everybody. SSE, being a somewhat larger organisation didn’t try and bring the entire company together for a party. Instead they gave each employee an allowance for a Christmas party, which in the case of my teams usually ended up being a meal of some kind – last years being a visit to a local curry house. The party organised by my new place was a private party at the nearby Bearwood Lakes Golf Course, complete with live music from ‘Deja Vu’ a covers band who did a range of music from the fifties to the present day.
Probably the best thing from my point of view was the food, which was excellent. On previous occasions with Beth’s school we’ve been along to similar Christmas parties at big hotels in Reading, and equivalent events at other local golf clubs, and quite often the standard of food has been pretty poor, with decidedly rubbery turkey and overdone vegetables. This one was definitely on a par with the great food we had last year at Cirque Noel. Typically various people in the company had been drinking in the local pub since early afternoon, so were decidedly merry before the free champagne and wine got going. The music was okay, but I’m thinking that I must be getting old, as my first thought was that it was too loud… It also didn’t help that since I’ve been keeping a cold at bay for the past couple of weeks that in the hot atmosphere, with the waft of cigarette smoke from the bar area didn’t exactly do much for my breathing, so we didn’t dance all that much, despite the increasingly annoying attempts at persuasion from my MD. It was interesting to note though that about half the company actually made their excuses pretty early on once dinner had finished, so that perhaps is why he was keen to get everybody that was there up and dancing. Personally, although I quite enjoyed the evening, I think that the Hi-Q idea worked better, and in terms of value for money probably wins out as well.
Taking it relatively carefully at the Christmas party ensured that I still had a reasonable voice left for Sunday. With Christmas Day being a Monday this year, we’re holding the Nine Lessons and Carols service a week early on the third Sunday of Advent, rather than the fourth, which gets combined with Christmas Eve. As a result in service terms this was our one quiet week, with only a normal Sunday morning schedule. However tonight the Choir had been invited along to sing for the Finchampstead Society – so in actual fact there wasn’t really that much opportunity to rest up!
Like many of the Choir Christmas engagements it’s a familiar repertoire that we sing through – stopping off at all the old favourite Christmas Carols. Although sometimes it gets a bit tedious doing the same stuff over and over again, it is always nice going and singing for other groups outside the normal Church events. Even better this time that aside from the usual mulled wine and mince pies, each of the choir members got given a box of chocolates as a thank-you for turning out and singing.
Anyway, next weekend we’ve got Beth’s school Christmas party to look forward to, after the spectacular Cirque Noel, they have had a total change of direction, and this year are holding a party at the School, complete with outside caterers. We’ve also then got the aforementioned Nine Lessons and Carols on the Sunday, which heralds the last frantic week of choir engagements before the annual marathon of six services in twenty-four hours at Christmas itself. Now I’ve just got to make sure that I keep the cold under control, and make sure my voice lasts!!!