Tag Archives: St Mary

Church

Official

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So I’m now officially the Churchwarden for St James Finchampstead, and all the associated responsibilities that entails.

I was sworn in, along with my fellow Churchwarden at a service in St Mary Minster in Reading. Officially this wasn’t supposed to be our service, this was the service for Churchwardens in Bradfield, Newbury and Reading Deaneries – Sonning Deanery was allocated the Windsor service on Thursday, however quite apart from clashing with choir practice, Reading is a lot easier to get to after work than Windsor! We needn’t have worried though, as when they asked the Sonning Churchwardens to stand it seemed like a large number of other people had had the same idea. We spotted the wardens and clergy from California and Crowthorne, and were sat next to the group from Wargrave. Indeed we weren’t the only additions, there were wardens from Maidenhead, and we even had a lone representative from Witney Parish in the Oxford area. Interestingly the warden from Witney was Douglas Hurd – well Baron Hurd of Westwell now. He was MP for Witney until 1997 – a seat now held by David Cameron.

Anyway, the service itself was fairly straightforward consisting of two hymns, Taizé style prayers accompanied by the choir of St Mary’s Thatcham, and of course the admission of Churchwardens. The formal part of the admission consists of repeating an oath read out by the Diocesan Registrar, and then is followed by the Bishop of Oxford’s Charge, which is effectively the sermon. In this Bishop John spoke about his hopes for the Diocese, using Philippians 1, 3-11 as his text. Oh and despite having a broad range of churches represented we used the modern Lord’s Prayer (as was used at the inauguration service) rather than the old cop-out of defaulting to the modified-traditional version. After the service was a chance for everybody to meet Bishop John and our fellow Churchwardens.

Bishop John’s sermon was a good one, and he had a nice mix of serious points and laughs to get his ideas over. He challenged us to make our churches welcoming and open to all which pleased me. We got a chance to chat with him after the service too, as Rev Richard has actually managed to book him twice to come to St James already, and he’s only been in the post for a matter of weeks! Having said that we’ve had Bishop Stephen along twice in the past year, so it will be nice to welcome Bishop John along too. Bishop John certainly seemed to be making a conscious effort to try and talk to as many people as possible, and when I mentioned that we would be in Taizé at the same time as he and the Oxford Pilgrimage is there he said it would be good to see us at the service on the Sunday morning before they leave. All in all it was a great evening, now the hard work of being Churchwarden begins!

Church, Music

Thatcham Rockmass 8

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Tonight a group of seven of us from St James went to Rockmass number 8 at Thatcham. Amongst our number were several people who had never experienced Rockmass before, including Rev Richard. We have on a number of occasions tried to ‘explain’ Rockmass to Richard, but I guess tonight is proof that you can’t really explain it, and the only thing to do is experience it for yourself.

Also there tonight, as the ‘star turn’ so to speak, was Ian MacDonald, the Diocesan Youth Officer. You can get the view from his side on Youthblog, but from ours it was a great talk. As Ian said to us before the service, Rockmass is a difficult congregation as there is a really broad mix of ‘young people’ – although Rockmass is usually thought to be the kind of service aimed at young people, the reality seems to be somewhat different, with a broad range of ages coming along.

Anyway, as this was Christ the King Sunday, Ian used the example of the third Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, to explain the meaning of the festival. He also managed to include that one of the reasons he likes Rockmass is because it is so loud nobody can hear how badly he sings, and also a really rather funny story about Colin the Fireman at Bristol Airport. Certainly it kept our interest throughout the whole talk, had some laughs, but ultimately a good message at the end.

Surrounding all of this was the usual selection of quality music, the band sounding better than ever. As at previous events there was a good mix of songs that were new, together with ones that we knew from previous visits – although two of the new numbers – the Rockmass style Christmas carols did leave some people somewhat stunned I think! They also expanded on the use of more secular numbers started last time with Lean on Me, adding in What if God was One of Us? – Ian has linked to lyrics of both songs over on his blog. As Ian comments, the use of mainstream songs is quite a brave move, and as last time has left me thinking about which other tracks could work in a religious setting.

Anyway, I diverge – all the people we took along said they enjoyed themselves, and I think Rev Richard went away with some new ideas. As he said as we left, he’s seen everything today, from a BCP 8am service, through our new Family Service at 9:30am, through to this, almost two hours of loud rock music, but surrounding a perfectly straight Eucharist. Incidentally, apologies for the lack of pictures this time – I only had the mobile phone camera with me, and with all the electronics around, we were asked to turn phones off. However, there are pictures of what it is like over at the Rockmass site.