Bishop shuts down concert

[tobee]

I can't see a thread already on this, but am I the only one 😱?!

From Sky

https://news.sky.com/story/this-is-a-terrible-racket-bishop-in-dressing-gown-interrupts-church-concert-and-asks-crowd-to-leave-my-house-13402383

Great little story! Anyone know what the music was, apart from the a capella Dancing Queen that’s mentioned in the article?

Sounds like a grumpy High Church bishop to me. I bet he wouldn’t have kicked off if had been the Mozart Requiem, however badly performed.

He looked very cross.

He is raging😂 i mean surely he must have known they were there ?

"MY house" indeed. Not Gods house. Not a community haven, to be shared. Nope. His. Mine. ME ME ME. What a disgusting and disgraceful emblem of Christianity in 2025 he is.

I hadn’t realised there was a piece of video. I just read the article.

Now I’ve seen it, I’m with the bish.

I thought they’d be trying to bring people into God’s house nowadays, not kicking them out.

He must have known the hall was being used. Way to show how tolerant he is.

Very embarrassing.

🤣

Me too! Awful

Does say they'd already overrun their booking time. I suspect they were settling in to a long night. From the start of the video I suspect the technical issues that made them overrun were simply not being prepared.

When people behave in a noisy, rowdy and inappropriate manner in 'Gods house' (as you put it), then the minister has every right to ask them to leave.

A choral concert, rowdy and inappropriate? Choir singers?

In his dressing gown 😂

Am I the only one who's saving this to play at the end of parties?

😂😂😂

Does sound sensitively handled. It may be they get grief from neighbours about late night noise. That said, 10pm doesn’t sound bad to me. How odd.

I really wish there was more info on overran their booking time so if it was to 9pm and he gave them an extra hour I’d I’d have a lot more sympathy than if it was to 10pm and he kicked them out on the dot.

That said many places do. I’ve been to a few weddings I’ve been to hsve wrapped up quite abruptly at 10:45 as the booking is to 11pm and that means you are all out by 11 not just finishing.

@slightlydistrac do you agree the church belongs to the Bishop then? and is "his house" - because that is what he said. I am an atheist but I hire the local baptist church for noisy toddler music sessions and ASD music sessions. They are very much "this is a community space and does not belong to us" which is, I thought, the ethos of the Christian church.

Clearly wasn’t a Catholic Church. Thats far noisier! We know how to party!

Granted not the best singers but that's beside the point.
It looks like a cheerful happy gathering of people in the church, clapping and singing and enjoying themselves.
Far better than having an empty quiet church so the man of the cloth may sleep peacefully.
Did this man not know that they were coming, so that he could be prepared or make some kind of arrangement?
He certainly wasn't raging, but he was clearly upset, hopefully it was down to a lack of communication.

Good thing there were no moneylenders in there! Of course had it been the Vicars Annual Abuse of Young Men Celebration he would probably have followed the recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury and ignored such antics. Easier to pick on a few people singing.

They should have gone to Bangor Cathedral where partying and promiscuity was the order of the day until recently.

He is the bishop with responsibility for parishes that don't want women priests in London and tbh they are all very high church so he wouldn't be used to this sort of music.

The church is hired out as a concert venue all the time - I've sung there - and there is usually a pretty strict deadline on being out which I think is 9.30 so he had probably given them a bit of leeway.

IIRC the vicarage is abutted onto the back of the church - there was a maze of rooms behind some of which looked quite residential, in which case it was going on in the same building as his house.

Not perhaps the best way to approach it though.

My son has performed with this choir at one of their Xmas concerts (in the orchestra not the choir themselves ). They tend to perform a lot of musical theatre type stuff.

they are an amateur choir but they hire in professional musicians. I cannot believe anyone was rowdy etc, probably frustrated at what was happening.

I think the bishop overstepped the mark.

If they'd gone past the booking time they were the ones who overstepped.

Got some sympathy with him tbh. They were already over-running and still had two songs left to do. Then there would have been a final little speech, people chatting as leaving etc. I would have thought he would have got dressed though and discreetly found one of the organisers to tell them to finish up.