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To Ardrossan
To Ardrossan on Tuesday evening for the Institution of the new Rector of the North Ayrshire Team ministry the Rev Martin Sofield. It is always exciting to be there when a new ministry starts and Tuesday evening was no exception. All good wishes to Martin as he takes on this new role. I sometimes wish…
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Who is welcome?
I want to pick up again on a comment that has been left by Helen on a previous post. She said: Is it necessary to explain who you welcome? Should a church not welcome all? If you list welcoming gay people then you would need to list disabled, addicts, people of other ethnic backgrounds……..etc all…
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Last night at St Paul’s Cathedral
Though I worked in the Diocese of London for a few years before beginning my formal ordination training, I’ve never considered myself a member of the Church of England. Thus, it is always interesting for me to go to worship down there and encounter their little ways. Last evening I was at holy mass in…
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Podcasts
I’ve been meaning to post a reminder on here for a while about the two podcasts that are available from St Mary’s. There are two of them, one video and one audio and they carry the sermons that are preached week by week at the 1030 service. There was a period earlier this year when…
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Friendly and Welcoming Churches in Edinburgh
Time for a quick round-up of churches which welcome and affirm gay folk over in Edinburgh. I made a plea for information last week which was forthcoming, so it is only fair to list the results. Old St Paul’s has a statement on the page of its XYmonday group which says it is “inclusive group…
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Human Rights Petition
There is a growing and unfortunate clamour for a roll-back on human rights commitments. These included some unfortunate comments from the Prime Minister over the weekend to the effect that he thought that human rights legislation had gone too far. Personally I don’t think it has gone nearly far enough. One of the major goals…
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Gifts and Skills
One of the themes that I'm wanting to pick up on at St Mary's if that of Gifts and Skills. We're hoping to be running some kind of course or retreat or series of workshops in the autumn which focus on the idea of discerning your gifts and skills. The sermon this morning that Akma…
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Are there any gay friendly Episcopal churches in Edinburgh?
Someone said something to me earlier this week which quite shocked me. They said there was no Episcopal congregation in Edinburgh which was welcoming to LGBT people. By this, they did not mean that there was an absence of any Episcopal congregations with happy gay people in them. That is clearly not so. The question…
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What people are searching for
Here is the latest list of the things that people are searching for, which result in them alighting on this blog: Buying new swimming trunks – presumably ended up on this post Madonna knitting – will have resulted in this one Please don’t take him just because you can – will be referencing this one…
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Attitudes
Now, there has been some real news worth noting in the week that is passed. The new Scottish Social Attitudes survey has been published. It is a huge survey of what people in Scotland think about a number of different things. The value of this research is that they keep asking the same questions over…