Two rather fun innovations at church yesterday. It had been suggested to me that it might be a good idea to run a guided tour of the church. Indeed, it was.

About 30 people gathered after the 1030 service for a guided tour. The theme of the tour was the seven traditional sacraments so we started at the font and worked our way round to the old resurrection chapel, where we had a look (and a sniff) at the holy oils.

If anyone was wanting to know the history of anything, they probably went away disappointed. I don’t tend to do history with any great level of conviction. It was a great way to have a group conversation about the sacraments though and I guess that most people saw one or two things in the Cathedral that they had never seen before.

The other innovation was an invitation to photographers to come and take pics of the building. This innovation had been tacked onto the guided tour just a week ago, but sure enough, photographers arrived and have produced some great photos. (Hardly any of the photographs are of me, but we will let that pass this time).

You can see their results on the St Mary’s Flickr Pool page.

Some of the same photographers had also been at Lansdowne Church last week for a similar photo-gathering. Some great Lansdowne pics here.

Many thanks to Gordon Smith, who issued the invitation to the photographers and who took the pic on this blog post. Check out his Flickr page too, not least for his slightly surreal photo of Chickens in the Snow (Without Snow).