What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Palm Sunday

    There’s no sermon from yesterday to upload. It is the only Sunday in the year when we have no preaching and simply let the story do the work. It is our custom on Palm Sunday to read the Passion story – that’s the story of the end of Jesus’s life from whichever gospel we have been reading through the year.

    Here at St Mary’s, the congregation, who are the body of Christ, read the words of Jesus whilst two people at the front narrate the rest of the story.

    Yesterday is probably the chilliest Palm Sunday on record. Here in this part of the world, we usually associate Holy Week with a growing sense of spring. New life is all around us. This year, it feels as though it hasn’t quite arrived.

    However, that’s a reminder that Holy Week is celebrated in all kinds of contexts. I struggle a bit working out how people could celebrate Easter in the autumn, but that, of course, is what happens in the southern hemisphere. There must be places where Palm Sunday is always held in the snow and it is hard to imagine what that is like.

    As it was yesterday, there was not much snow here. Much of the rest of the country was covered in it but it was a clear, if bracing day.

    I found myself taking to liturgical gloves.

    Brrr.

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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