What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon for Michaelmas

01/10/2013

Once upon a time, in a land not far away, there was a seminary where lucky young men and lucky young women came to train for the priesthood and open their lives to all that God was hoping for them.

It was a place that I knew but did not study in myself but a place that some of you may well have known and visited in its day.

Now this seminary was, like St Mary’s a bit of an international place. It was somewhere that people from all over the world would drop into for a couple of months of Sunday. It was like a liturgical finishing school for the world. It was good in those days (and still is a good thing I fear) for you to have had a bit of time in a British seminary if you were studying for the Anglican priesthood from furth of these shores and wanted to climb the slippery slope of clerical advancement.

And thus the seminary in question used to admit external students from time to time.

And one of these students arrived in this place. He came from a part of Anglicanism where Portuguese was the dominant language and though he had studied English, it was a hard work at first for him to communicate.

Well, he arrived and was shown to his room and the first time he met the student body was the next morning for breakfast.

As he stirred his porridge and gave thanks for his good fortune, he looked up at the other students and said, “Last night. Last night the Virgin Mary came to me (more…)

angels, archangels, Glasgow, Kelvingrove

8 responses to “Synod – membership”

Stewart

13/06/2008

Kelvin – you are very modest in not describing your contribution to this debate – I guess it was in your usual style.

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David |dä?v?d|

13/06/2008

Kelvin, I have lurked and read here for some time. I am curious about happenings in sister Anglican churches. I live in the Diocese of Northern Mexico of the Anglican Church of Mexico. American English is a second language for me.

It is difficult for me to follow much of what is written here for two reasons. You all speak a cryptic or clipped form of English at times, even different from what I encounter from the Mad One. You also use a lot of jargon and acronyms associated with the Scottish Church.

This is all OK if you intend your blog to be mostly catering to fellow Scots. However, if you are open to a blog with more international following you all might keep my points in mind when writing.

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David |daveed|

13/06/2008

I usually try to give the Spanish pronunciation of my name, as opposed to the English, but you blog does not like the augmented letters!

Perdoname.

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chris

13/06/2008

Glad to see you got your connection going again – I’m impressed with your speedy blogging!

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agatha

14/06/2008

But what was the motion though? You can’t say it failed without telling us what it was.

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Kelvin

14/06/2008

The agenda and papers are available here:
http://www.scotland.anglican.org/index.php/news/entry/general_synod_2008_agenda_and_papers/

These have all the motions and the preparatory materials.

Thanks for your comment, David – I’d be happy to try to explain any technical terms. Synod is quite confusing enough when English is your first language.

If you take a look at the papers that I pointed to above, you will see that the synod members all have a large book in front of them.

The motion which failed would have updated the way in which membership rolls are compiled to allow people to know whether or not they are on them. At the moment, membership rolls are compiled by rectors who do not need to tell people that they are included on the roll even though they may have liabilities thereby.

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agatha

14/06/2008

As one of my bosses used to say “all aid short of actual help”.
If you can be bothered summarising what all the speakers say why couldn’t you take another couple of minutes and summarise the motion?

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Kimberly

15/06/2008

Perhaps what hasn’t been clear to readers who have come upon this post from further afield is that Kelvin was blogging the buisiness of synod in real time. That is only possible in short hand — and therefore probably of most use to those who are unable to be at synod, but broadly aware of the debates going on in the church.

So, perhaps we can let him off the hook for not being all things for all people while blogging from Synod, and be thankful for the wider pattern of good communication that we usually see here.

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