What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • We’re going on a journey

    Crib Service starts at 4 pm – bring a torch

    A couple of years ago, there was a new initiative in St Mary’s – someone suggested that we should have a crib service for children at 4 pm on Christmas Eve. We kind of expected a few children from the young church to show up. In the event there were about 50 people in the place and it was judged a great success. A year later, the turnout was just about double. I spoke to some of the people afterwards who told me that they were so pleased to find it because none of the other churches in Glasgow were doing anything for children at Christmas. I disputed this but they told me that no, they had checked online and that no-one was doing anything. More than that, someone said, some of the churches are not having Christmas services at all – you can tell, there’s nothing on their websites about Christmas at all.

    Now, there’s two things to learn from this. Firstly that churches which want younger people and children to come to them need to get on with providing services which are suitable. Secondly churches which want anyone at all to come to them need to face the reality that if they are not online then they will be perceived not to exist and if they don’t put their service details online then no matter how good the services are, people will presume that nothing at all is being done.

    There are still Episcopal churches in Glasgow who are putting out a strong message online this Christmas that they are not doing anything to celebrate it. People from those parts of town will come to the cathedral instead of going to their local church. It isn’t particularly that they like what we do – though when they get here they love it and will tend to come again. It is simply that they can’t find out about what is happening locally and draw their own conclusions.

    St Mary’s is a place where we are quite clear that Christmas is not just for children. We are not a congregation that thinks that Christmas is just a family time either – church and Christmas is for everyone. (I thought John Bell’s Thought for the Day today was particularly fine, by the way).

    I’m really pleased though that these crib services have become established here on Christmas Eve now. Tomorrow’s Crib Service starts at 4 pm and participants are asked to bring a torch if they can. We’re going on a journey and we don’t know who we are going to encounter on the way…

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6 responses to “Repeat post – wiki video”

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    Ah goodie. I’m sure you’ll let us know how it goes 🙂

    (What an *awful*ly annoying voice-over on the video…)

    Reply
  2. Erp Avatar
    Erp

    Do you have the critical mass of people times effort/person to get the wiki going?

    Reply
  3. Stewart Avatar
    Stewart

    Sounds a wonderful idea – now what topic can we use and discuss to improve our worship.

    Reply
  4. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    That is a good question ERP. At the moment, the wiki is really working as an intranet. (Or perhaps an extranet). It means that several of us can work together on a page without being physically located together.

    One of the things that are very prevalent in churches is the presence of dispersed teams. Keeping everyone one track by e-mail can be quite hard.

    A good example of what we are doing at the moment, is using a private, protected part of the wiki so that I can work on wedding bookings with our weddings organiser.

    In time, and with help from others, I will be developing various bits of cathedral documentation. We are good at doing things in St Mary’s but less good at writing them down.

    Thus, a liturgical manual is one of the goals of the wiki project.

    Also things like “How to organise a ceildih in St Mary’s” and “How we organise champagne for Easter Day”.

    Reply
  5. Lay clerk Avatar
    Lay clerk

    “How to choose the post-Evensong pub”

    And the answer to both the ones you posed is obviously “get the choir to do it”!

    😉

    Reply
  6. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    I remember signing up for “St Mary’s Hub” a while back, but I didn’t record its URL, and I can’t now find it. Is that the wiki you’re talking about, or are you now starting from scratch with something different?

    I’m just curious to see how you’re using the technology, in case there’s anything we can learn and apply up here.

    Robin

    Reply

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