- Do you have a decent church website?
- Is it up to date?
- Is it responsive – ie does it work on mobile phones?
- Does your own online profile feature your ideas and hopes and dreams other than a desire for people to turn up to church?
- Do you know what you are doing with twitter and facebook?
- Who could you learn more about social media from?
- Do you have a compelling reason why people should come to your church other than where it is or what denomination it belongs to?
- Can everyone in the church tell you in one sentence what that compelling reason is?
- What is your beginners’ course like?
- What comes after the beginners’ course?
- Do people like the preaching?
- Do people enjoy the music?
- Have you dealt with conflicts from the past?
- Are the people friendly?
- Do you have any new groups starting soon?
- Do you talk about making the world a better place?
- How will people experience joy if they come to your congregation?
- If someone from your past turned up unexpectedly at worship how would it make you feel?
- How do you identify newcomers and what do you offer them?
- What problems will arise if you do grow and how will you deal with them?
- Do claims that you welcome everyone stop you working at welcoming those who traditionally find it hard to find a home in church?
- Do you use language that is inclusive of everyone?
- How do you know?
- Is there any identifiable group of people that you can’t explicitly say are welcome because of how an individual or group in the congregation will react?
- Do you want to grow or not?
7 responses to “The Antisemitism Notice”
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Helpful, thank you
What is the concern with the reproaches? I’m not familiar with them
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They can be interpreted as being directed at us the listeners. But they can also be interpreted as speaking to Jewish people as all the imagery is from the Hebrew Scriptures and doesn’t reference the experience of those who actually were around Jesus during his life on earth.
For example:
“I led you out of Egypt, having drowned Pharaoh in the Red Sea:
and you have delivered me to the chief priests.”Who is being addressed here?
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That’s interesting, because whenever I have sung the Reproaches I have always felt them as being expressions of personal repentance rather than accusations thrown at the listener.
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I must admit I had always read the Reproaches as directed to the listener. That the Egypt from which we are delivered is the Egypt of the modern world, the slavery of ghastly jobs (I’ve had a few, in fact a lot) and the oppression of terrible political systems. But I come from a totally different thought world to that of most people today, and I absolutely see they wouldn’t commonly be read that way.
But I think it would benefit everyone to find a way of expressing BOTH what faith can offer in terms of freedom AND the mess we do make of the world, and sitting with that tension.
And I think the church as a whole urgently needs to find a compelling and deep reaching way of doing both.-
You might be interested that we’re looking at Isaiah 59 as a helpful text for this year, given the current ways of the world.
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I’m of much the same mind. (A mind that is still blown away when I hear them sung)
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Thank you
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Forgetting to press the button
By the way, the reason that last Sunday’s sermon has not appeared on the Cathedral website is that though I carefully rigged up the camera, I forgot to press the button to start the recording. All of which makes me think that the time is coming for me to let go of the responsibility of…
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To the Tower
Off to the Tower yesterday afternoon – my annual trip up the tower at St Mary’s to the ringing chamber for the Bell Ringers’ AGM. It was great to see the ringers and to be able to congratulate them in person for their achievement during the year. There are one or two new members of…
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