What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The Kalendar for 2022 – 2023 is available free!

    For years now, I’ve produced a Kalendar for the Scottish Episcopal Church with all the bible readings set out for the year.

    In the past I’ve sold it for around £4. For a range of reasons, I’m not going to be selling it this year but am releasing it online so that anyone can download it and print it out for themselves.

    It is available right here: Kalendar 2023

    Anyone who would like to make a donation because they enjoy the Kalendar so much and want to encourage me to keep doing it is welcome to do so via paypal.

     

     

5 responses to “Diocesan Synod”

  1. Mary Sue Avatar
    Mary Sue

    I fight this every stinkin’ time I’m in church. The average age of our Vestry is 47, the eldest is 69 and the youngest is 28 (*waves*).

    However, all I hear about is how we are a ‘grey’ church in fear of dying.

    I think it’s too much trust in statistics and not enough in the power of the Holy Spirit. And I will beat that through their heads if it KILLS ME.

    Reply
  2. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    Conversations about mission that assume the Church is dying are bad enough, but at least the subject is being talked about. It’s worse when the mere idea of having a conversation about mission causes consternation and retreat behind the brocaded curtains.

    If such a conversation is to get going at all, however, we need to be prepared to rethink radically our ecclesiology. It may not be strictly inevitable that decline will continue, but we need to be realistic about the prospects (such as they are) for future provision of ordained ministers and stipends to sustain them. All churches are facing a decline in these areas.

    Reply
  3. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    P.S. – I’m not leaving the Holy Spirit out of the reckoning, simply saying that sober and realistic thinking is one of the less trumpeted gifts of the Spirit.

    Reply
  4. Kirstin Avatar
    Kirstin

    I was feeling much the same Kelvin, I was starting to believe all the doom and gloom merchants and wasn’t looking forward to another 3 days of it. I didn’t really think it was the case but when the dripping tap just keeps on going eventually you start to wonder. LYCIG gave me the kick up the backside I was needing to stop listening to the negative and concentrate on the positive and there is lots of that about. If we keep talking about decline we will talk ourselves into it, we need to stop it now!

    Reply
  5. duncan Avatar
    duncan

    Mary Sue,

    Perhaps some parts of our church are glad to be grey.

    But seriously, while I applaud the resistance to ‘sociological determinism’ (i.e. decline is inevitable), I think we can also think creatively about our demographics before we chuck out the baby, or the bathwater. It’s time to recycle the grey water.

    Some recent thoughts I had are here:
    http://www.dunc.info/?p=94

    (I don’t know how to do that clever trackback thing…)

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • World AIDS Day Forum

    Here’s a video of a conversation I had with one of the members of St Mary’s last Sunday. Andy Winter was chatting to me about the way treatment and perception of HIV has changed over the years. We talked about new PrEP medicines, reducing stigma and the extraordinary news that the epidemic could be ended…

  • Sermon for Advent 1 – 29 November 2015

    Here’s the sermon I preached yesterday   You can’t beat a good quiz on the internet. Two minutes completing a set of multiple choice questions and some computer somewhere out there gives a verdict on what kind of person you are. Thus is was that this week I followed a facebook link and found myself…

  • Making Scotland’s Sex Trade Safer

    The recent death of Cynthia Payne provides a helpful reminder of the two-faced attitude to prostitution that we often hold. Ms Payne managed to cultivate a populist and almost comic Carry on Whoring image. She invited the great and the good to her home in Streatham and offered sandwiches and “services” merely in exchange for…

  • This ain’t persecution

    Getting a religious ad “banned” by a company that doesn’t show religious advertisements is evidence not of religious persecution but of the idiocy of the Church of England’s press office. We should be thanking God that religious (and political) ads are banned in cinemas.