- 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?
9 responses to “The Syrian Lesbian Blogger Story”
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You are real?!
I am very tempted to produce a spoof blog post ‘outing’ various Christian bloggers. I suspect at least one of them actually is a Syrian lesbian …
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Oddly enough I was talking to somebody last week who struggled to believe it. I kind-of basked in your reflected glory.
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Amusingly, The Times claimed that the sapphic poetry was, in restrospect, something of a giveaway! I’ve never deliberately read a lot of lesbian poetry, but the dude’s attempts seemed plausible to me (in contrast to his using Scottishisms like “wee small hours”)
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Kelvin! You’re an out gay priest …. you never said!
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Ain’t no further out to go, Blair.
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And yet the press insist on telling us, every time they write about you, that you have come out. As if it’s a shocking new development.
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I know. It must be because nothing else much is happening in the world, Beth.
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Michael Stipe went through a period of being outed by the UK press every two years or so for over a decade; you are, at least, in good company 😉
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[…] politics were on Kevin Holdsworth’s mind too after a spate of news stories suggested that Queen Victoria was right when she stated that […]
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