Don’t forget, it is your Christian duty to eat up as many pancakes as you can by midnight.
The pancake recipe that you have lost can be found here:
pancake recipe
5 responses to “Diocesan Synod”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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…)
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The view from across the pond
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Buildings vs Clergy
I suddenly realised in the middle of a complicated meeting yesterday that it seemed as though people in many situations would actually prefer to have a church building than a priest. Is that so? Is that true and is that one of the key things which gives life to those who long for freshnewlocalcollaborativetotalministryofthebaptised?
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Flashmob evensong anyone?
Well, you certainly responded to the invitation to Evensong last night in big numbers, didn’t you? The cathedral was packed, with hundreds of voices from around the diocese and further afield – a lovely gathering. Lots of people went out the door asking whether we will be doing it again. The answer is yes –…
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