What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Ditching the sermon – a dialogue for Holy Innocents

    dialogue with bishop
    This morning I decided to ditch the sermon in favour of a dialogue with Bishop Gregor.

    It has been a difficult Christmas in Glasgow with a major tragedy in the centre of the city as people were doing their last minute Christmas shopping. Bishop Gregor was himself there in the square just after the incident involving the bin lorry. In this conversation he describes what he saw, what he was asked to do and how he responded.

    Together we reflected on how Christians find God.

    This happened in the context of the Sunday morning Sung Eucharist instead of a sermon. It seemed the right thing to move the Feast of the Holy Innocents back to this day, it having originally been scheduled to be celebrated here tomorrow morning.

    As I said at the beginning of the service, Jesus wasn’t born into a fairy story, nor into a Christmas card – he was born into  the real world and sometimes we need to think about what that really means.

    Here’s the video:

    Dialogue between Kelvin Holdsworth and Gregor Duncan in Glasgow on 28 December 2014 from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

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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

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