• Sermon preached for Lent 1, 2013

  18/02/2013

  Here’s the video.
  
  
  And here is the text:

  One of my favourite stories about St Mary’s is one that I’ve heard several versions of. It concerns one of my predecessors as Provost here.

  He had been here for a couple of months and thought that things were going OK. And then suddenly a letter appeared from a member of the congregation. (It may be that person is still here and just about to write to me in similar terms, so I’m taking a risk in telling this story).

  The gist of the letter was that its author listed the many ways in which the worship of the congregation had changed in those three months.

  See here, the letter writer wrote – see all the changes that you’ve made.

  And in the letter there was a list. In the version of the story I like the best there were 90 points listed but I don’t know whether we should allow a little bit of exaggeration in the telling.

  And the Provost in question had to confess (more…)

Previous Posts

• Shoes

  15/02/2005

  The Shoe Exhibition just has to be seen. We've given up pews for the first week in Lent and installed 104 pairs of women's shoes in the nave instead. Each pair of shoes represents a woman killed in an incident of domestic violence. 104 women are killed this way each year.More details o­n the church…

• Recorded music in the liturgy

  11/02/2005

  I remember a long time ago hearing of a Church of Scotland minister who had a service to mark the death of Elvis, complete with suitable music. At the time, I thought that was tacky. However, when I was in my ordination training, I did use recorded music in our worship quite a lot. One…

• Charles and Camilla

  10/02/2005

  Given the genesis of the Church of England in Henry VIII’s complicated love life, I have to confess that I find the squeamishness over re-marrying those who have been divorced to be incomprehensible. I am pleased that the Archbishop of Canterbury is getting involved. However it seems to me that if he can bless a…

• Ash W 2

  09/02/2005

  Today has been an excellent Ash Wednesday. A world record turn-out (for Bridge of Allan) of penitents. The Freddie Mercury number during the penitential liturgy went down a storm. An early problem with ash that was too clean was solved by cutting it with charcoal from the thurible. I gave one of the servers the…