What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Best Questions in the World

07/03/2014
We offer a course at St Mary’s every now and then called the God Factor. You may have heard me mention it. It works like lots of church courses in that folk gather around food and have a conversation. In our case we gather around the best pizzas in town which come from just across the road and most of the courses have chosen to meet on a Sunday lunchtime.

However, the God Factor is different from a lot of courses that churches run because I can’t tell you what will happen exactly from one course to the next. I can’t give you the book. I can’t give you a plan for what those on the God Factor will all learn. Why so? Well, because the participants set the agenda. The first meeting is all about collecting questions from the group. Those questions are then grouped and tackled by the group over about eight weeks. The idea is that they get to use those running the course (clergy and laity) as a resource to try to find answers to the questions that have been logged at the beginning.

For those who want a bit of pedagogy, this arises out of a situation where the Vice Provost is into Paulo Freire and the Provost is known to read Ivan Illich in the bath, but let us not be too technical and get too distracted by methodoloty right now. Because the exciting thing is that we’ve just got the questions for the course that is beginning at the moment.

I think these are the best questions in the world to get a group to try to answer. See what you think below. Oh, and if you want to join in with this course and engage in trying to find the answers to these then get in touch with the Vice Provost using this contact form.

The Questions – God Factor – March 2014

Bible
- Is it OK to disagree with some bits of the Bible?
- Do I have to believe everything in the Bible?
- What is the best way to read the Bible?
- If the Bible was written in approximately 400 AD, how accurate is it?
- Why are only some Gospels used today?
Church and churches
- How does the Scottish Episcopal Church choose its clergy?
- Who are Episcopalians and how do they differ from Catholics and other Protestants?
- What is the Church for? Couldn’t we do without it?
- Why are there so many different denominations?
- So few people go to church these days; will it change or simply die out?
Doctrine
- Is God male or female? Black, Chinese, White?
- How will I know that God has accepted me? Forgiven me?
- Can you lose your faith, find it and lose it again in your one lifetime?
- Is there such a thing as condemnation?
- Is ‘God’ a male?
- Reincarnation – does it exist?
- Do you think suicide is a coward’s way out?
- Spiritual ‘dry spells’ – what to do during them.
- What ‘sins’ cannot be forgiven?
- How do we define sin?
- Is there an afterlife? If so, what does it look like?
- Is there a hell?
Ethics
- Why is the Church obsessed with sex?
- Why does a message of peace and love end up causing war, suicide bombings and so much hatred?
- Why so many different rules and regulations, e.g. on birth control and same sex marriage?
- The Vatican = corruption? Wealth? I struggle with their beliefs – no birth control, third world women dying etc.
- Was there any truth in the Da Vinci Code book?
- Why do the different denominations of the Church always seem to be at odds with each other?
- Is faith just for sad people and those who need a crutch?
- Why are so many religions intolerant of different people, e.g. gay people, and contraception?
- Should the Church be involved in politics?
God and Jesus
- Is Jesus God or just a way to God?
- Why did Jesus allow himself to be crucified?
- Will Jesus return?
- Was Jesus God or human?
- Does God exist?
- Why does God not intervene on issues of poverty/hunger etc?
- What does God look like/feel like?
- Was Mary really a virgin when pregnant?
Other faiths/religions
- Why is Christianity different to other faiths?
- Why are there so many different religions?
- Why has religion caused so many wars?
- Why is the Jewish religion so feared? Hated?
- How should we respond to people of different faiths?
- Relationship between Christianity and other faiths.
- Is the Christian faith the only way? What about good Buddhists, Muslims and Humanists?
- Is war and bad weather judgement from God?
Worship
- How can I learn to pray?
- When during services do people ‘cross’ themselves and why?
- Would Scottish independence be good for the UK?
- Does God really love everyone? What about those who reject him?
- How does prayer work? Is there a right and a wrong way to pray?
- Why does it feel so incredibly peaceful in a church?
- Why is incense used?
- Why is the Eucharist important?
beginners, faith, God Factor

11 responses to “The Joy of Evensong”

Kennedy

23/09/2014

Does England-shire have Breach of the Peace as an offence?

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  23/09/2014
  
  It is not an offence, but it is a concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_the_peace#England.2C_Wales_and_Northern_Ireland
  
  There may be other ways of dealing with it as anti-social behaviour.
  
  Reply
  1. Ruth
    
    25/09/2014
    
    I do hope so. The Abbey’s been there for hundreds of years, it’s not as if it could be said to be encroaching on the buskers’ pitch.
    
    Reply
Gerry Lynch

23/09/2014

I’ve long been a Choral Evensong addict. You might be interested in the article linked to, which I wrote on a similar theme. I’d also say, apropos the BCP, let alone the delightful SPB, that rumours of their death are greatly exaggerated, despite what was in many places a quite conscious attempt to kill them off.

Rather as the worship of the pre-Reformation English Church lay dormant for centuries waiting to be rediscovered, the same will apply to our historic prayer books with their wonderfully rich language, incomparable Collects and Prayers, and realistic take on the human condition.

http://sammymorse.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/why-is-cathedral-evensong-growing-and-what-does-it-mean/

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Richard

23/09/2014

Someone once described to me that evensong was the jewel in the crown of Anglican services. Never having experienced the service at that time, I had no idea what he was talking about. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to attend evensong regularly in various places where I have discovered the subliminal quality of evensong worship. There is a feeling of intense and intimate communion with God, where the music encourages one to slip in and out of meditative consciousness. Fabulous stuff- it can leave one drained in the most delightful way.
Incidentally, I have heard people complain that they don’t like evensong because there isn’t anything “to do”. Tragic.

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Susan Sheppard Hedges

23/09/2014

As a singer in a choir recently returned to the US from two weeks of ‘subbing’ at Norwich and Wells Cathedrals, I love the evensong. All the hubbing and bubbing in rehearsals previous to the service left one almost panting for breath. Then the choir gathered outside the quire as the organist played the prelude and we entered. Yes, we worried about the singing, but the prayers were most wonderful and gave even us that time to be in communion. I love it.

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Beth Thomas

23/09/2014

Summer evenings, evening chorus of birds, peace at the end of the day, time to reflect on the week past and that to come, treading in the steps that people have taken since the 16th Century plus some of the most sublime liturgical music written. What’s not to like?

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Bob

23/09/2014

Evensong at St. Mary’s is sublime you sum it up wonderfully Kelvin. A peace that passeth all understanding and speaks to the soul.

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Graham Ward

23/09/2014

I find Choral Evensong is often the easiest service to bring people who are strangers to church to. It doesn’t demand the same degree of commitment sort involvement as the Eucharist. No-one’s going to shake your hand and offer you the Peace whether you want them to or not, you don’t have that awkward moment that says “I don’t go to church” when everyone else goes up for communion and you’re left alone in the pew.
The pattern of the daily office is easily explained, as are the cycles of psalms and bible readings. The idea that this form of service has been used, virtually unchanged, for hundreds of years reminds people of the permanence of the church – and instantly makes them a part of it. And crucially, much of the best church music is not found in settings of the Mass, but in the canticles and anthems used at Morning Prayer and Evensong.

Reply
Jaye Richards-Hill

24/09/2014

Evensong was certainly what brought me to St Mary’s at first-and it is still one of the things (along with morning prayer) that I miss the most.

I’ve always loved the service – the words,music,silence all come together for me into something which yes, very much soothes my soul.
In Cape Town, they do a Jazz Vespers once a month which is basically, Evensong with some really smooth cool jazz music…. that’s a nice twist on an old friend…

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Melissa Holloway

24/09/2014

Evensong changed our life, I think.

And afterward we would take the almost adults across the street for some of their first ales and pizza.

Now I see it was such a fleeting moment. Most evensongs seem like that to me still- wonderful and fleeting.

Reply