• Say a prayer for Fred Phelps

    wbcsignFor the last few years, the Westboro Baptist Church has become famous for picketting funerals and spreading a message of offensive hatred. There can be few who haven’t seen the “God Hates Fags” posters.

    When they first appeared, it seemed to be so vile that it might be a parody, but no, it turned out these people really did hate gay people (amongst others) as much as they said they did.

    A great deal of the responsibility for this lies with the founder, Fred Phelps who is apparently now dying and has been ex-communicated or disfellowshipped by his church. Once again, hatred seems to be the order of the day, even amongst those who have caused such trouble for others.

    I wouldn’t like to think that anyone died without someone praying for them. So, my challenge today is to those reading this to light a candle and say a prayer for Fred Phelps.

    I think Fred Phelps has behaved reprehensibly during his life. I also happen to believe he is a beloved child of God who is in pain and who is dying.

    You see, the things is, God loves.

    God loves Fred Phelps. That’s the point of the faith I believe. It is giddy, capricious love that gives meaning to life. Love that changes everything.

    So, I’m lighting a candle for him. I hope his pain is eased and that he is found by love.

    I pray that God blesses Fred Phelps.

    And praying for him, and blessing him is the only way to win.

18 responses to “General Assembly on sex and singleness”

  1. Kennedy Avatar
    Kennedy

    DCampbell writes:
    Wow, Kennedy – I hadn’t realised there was so much or so many people to it, but surely it is not beyond us to have some kind of webcast of the more important sections of the proceedings

    Webcasting from Palmerston Place presents a number of challenges:

    resourcing the camera crew, vision mixer and director (kit and people) and integration with the projection system to carry any slides and visuals
    looking at the lighting to allow good pictures but without interfering with the projection system (which suffers from light spill from the windows already)
    Network and machine infrastructure in the building to capture and code the video.
    Dedicated bandwidth (with Quality of Service) to transfer the video and audio stream out to a distribution server. (We currently piggyback on Palmerston Place’s own internet connection).

    An alternative would be an audio stream with a general shot webcam updating every 30 – 60 secs but again would probably need a dedicated connection to the net to ensure that there was no breakup.

    This is not a litany of reasons for not doing things – it’s just a realistic assessment of the resource requirements.

    Kennedy

  2. Kennedy Avatar
    Kennedy

    Or another thought-

    We start having Synod on the Th/Fr/Sa after the Assembly on the Mound and share the costs of the setup.

  3. Kennedy Avatar
    Kennedy

    No, I suppose a general ‘piskie tag would work just as well, but I’m with Kimberly and would prefer #piskie

  4. kelvin Avatar

    My only problem with piskie is that in some parts of the UK a “piskie” is one of the little people, and not necessarily a nice one.

    See for example:
    http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/cornwall/folklore/the-piskies-of-cornwall.html

    “Some people saw them as the souls of pagans who could not transcend to heaven, and they were also seen as the remnants of pagan gods, banished with the coming of Christianity. In tradition they are doomed to shrink in size until they disappear. “

  5. Elizabeth Avatar
    Elizabeth

    Maybe it’s just me, but I have always found the potential confusion between pisky and piskie immensely pleasing (by ‘always’ I mean, since I discovered the term – not too many years ago!). It’s one of the (many) reasons I’m pleased to be on the pisky/ie side of the pond.

  6. David Campbell Avatar

    Thanks Kelvin – all this stuff is quite amazing really – especially Kennedy’s informative and knowledgeable material about what is actually needed. I agree about the Primus’s charge being essential, but if live streaming (if that is what it is called) is too intensive an operation in all kinds of ways for an admittedly small audience, why not do a twice daily edited digest of each day’s business like the one the Revd Dougkas Aitken does for the CofS?

  7. Kelvin Avatar
    Kelvin

    Rob Warren already does do digests in audio format – video may well be the next step, though it is quite a big step to take.

  8. Kennedy Avatar
    Kennedy

    The video update that Douglas Aitken does is a copy of his audio update with appropriate video material behind it ie you don’t get any actuality from the chamber.

    We would still need editing and coding time before the video could be uploaded to an external server.

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