Religion Chat thread number 1

[nickelbabyjesus]

I wanted to put some random thoughts and stuff regarding church, without it having to be a debate or a specific topic (and not prayers, either)

It's basically, a "what happened at church (or in my musical/spiritual life) this week" thread.
Please join me!

I'll start:

We had Midnight Mass (on Christmas Eve, would you believe!), and it was half past 11, everyone was sitting and ready for the service to start - I waved the organist to give me my notes: he was just about to plat them when:
" TAXI FOR suchandsuch " came blaring out of our speaker system.
There's a Wetherspoon's over the road and looks like the DJ's mike was on the same frequency as our radio mikes.
So, all the congregation started giggling and we had to wait 5 minutes until everyone was calm and collected enough to carry on.

aw, it was lovely :)
soooooo sweeeeeeet!

I was a gnome,too

i've got to go home now!

see ya!

I wondered what you were on about them with gnomes - now I realise

YEs - he did really well - was very proud of him. Wants to do it again this year LOL

Can I throw in a new question for you all? I was wondering if your churches support missionaries and if so what kind of relationship you have with them (eg how often you see/hear from them, how much contact you initiate and whether you'd like to hear more/less). I guess I was just wondering if we're doing enough to keep people up to date and how it compares to others

Yes - we support a couple in China. TBH we don't really seem to keep in much contact with them. We get occasional updates, for instance when they had their children. And I know that they're prayed for regularly, and they did visit years ago. But I think we could do a lot more.

my BF comented the other day that she didn't really know who they were. She's been coming ot the church about 3 or 4yrs now and has only ever seen the odd letter from them at the back of the church and a photo and knew that we prayed for them regularly

I think perhaps we should probably do more. I'm sure there must be more updates on how they are than the (what feels like) yearly letters..........

We don't support any missionaries - I think we had something going with a lady from a country in Africa, and she came to visit - but that was to do with the old vicar, and I've really no idea what exactly we did - whether it was us as a church or whether it was him and his family.

We currently can't afford to pay to exist, but we're torn apart with that - as we want to help others, but we can't keep afloat.
The old vicar had lots of outreach ideas, but they cost a lot of money that we didn't have, then the roof needed mending, and we're basically screwed.

Our current philosophy is that we do what we can, but not to the detriment of keeping the church going, because then we can't help anyone
:(

I don't think we support financially. Just in prayers.

We're pretty screwed too - no where near meeting our Parish Share, and the tower falling to pieces, and the hall, ok lets not talk about the hall.........

We do support groups/places outside the church though think we work something along the lines of "give and get back tenfold" type thing.

If only we'd stop being so insular and worrying about ourselves so much and have a little more faith. Interestingly since we've started doing more "outreach" type stuff the balance books have started to tally up a little.

well, that's the problem, isn't it - we want to help other people - we spend all our time being offered outreach stuff. We are concentrating on giving manpower to outreach (like streetpastors, keeping the church open during the week, Mike's Place {a washing clothes and shower facility that was very expensive that we have in our church hall} and other local stuff), but we just don't have the money to spare (actually, we don't have the manpower either, but...)

the biggest issue with outreach is that most of it costs money.
We're getting there slowly, though - we've been given a lifeline in that we're possibly getting a team ministry in the town. That will provide a bit more stability in leadership, and hopefully make us able to build up the congregation (and money pot) again.

at least the roof and porch has been mended now (£120,000 worth) and the church doesn't look like it's been vandalised from the outside anymore!

Thing is some of the outreach stuff doesn't have to cost a lot and can be quite subtle.

We have regular (about twice a year) things in the hall which invites (just b&w photocopied flyer things/letters) are sent out to local streets (by the same group of people that do the flowers, clean the church, do the readings, play the music etc etc) and the local schools.

We have a "sing a long" movie sometimes (we've done Grease and Sound of Music), or a games evening. Things for people just to come and have fun and feel that we're not all about preahing at them iyskim?

A lot of it just looks like "fun" stuff we do - but actually people asj questions (Even though there's nothing remotely "religious" about the evenings) and we've had new blood joining the church as a result.

We seem to have stalled on just that at the moment, but I (and a couple of other core people including the vicar) are hoping to push for more.

Another thing we started doing a few years ago (Though not strictly outreach) is invited the 2 local school choirs (infant and junior - both on the churches doorstep) to come and sing at our 9 Lessons Service. Instead of our hashed together choir doing all the choir only bits, the schools do a song (or 2) each as well. It's meant that local parents see the church as a part of the community as well not just a "religious establishment"

It is hard, I know we're skint (I only get paid less than half the RSCM rates........I did offer to give it up, as was a novetly when I agreed to start playing there that I'd get paid at all - having previously played in a tiny methodist church that didn't pay the organist a penny ). But they refused.

Baroque it sounds like you're doing loads in the community. We hae the same problem re building. It's a nightmare. Just had a big refurbishment we can't really afford, and bits of our tower also need sorting out. It's costs a fortune to get anywhere near warm. But we do support some stuff and give to charities as well, some local charities like the children's hospice then stuff like Tearfund. We think that it's always important to model giving as much as possible, and find that somehow the more you give, the more you get back :) But totally understand re the difficulties.

Sorry Baroque just realised have just repeated what you've already said re. giving!

we could do a lot more, and more often. But we're working on it.

The (soon to be licensed) Reader/ex church warden, Vicar, me, and one of the key people in the children's ministry are all off to Spring HArvest at Easter...........I don't think you'll stop us when we get back

DH's wages suddenly stopped when the last vicar started.
no discussion, no asking him if it was okay, no telling him he had to accept it, just stopped going into his bank account.
He's too shy for his own good and didn't dare question it.
he only gets paid for extras now.

Not having a vicar/priest in charge doesn't help matters. People think they've got noone to ask.

Our reader is too old to be licensed, but he's been specially commissioned (or something forget what it's called) to continue being reader even though he's over age.

We've got the Guides joining us to sing as part of Church Music Sunday in June - they'll do it as a badge, we're doing it mainly for the publicity...

What else have we done recently?
well, we've got our junior chorister - his admission was in the paper this week with a pic of him and DH - when we picked up the paper at Sainsbury's, DH was very to see his picture in there - he hadn't expected it. thought he was going to pass out "noone told me i was in the paper!"
together with our phone number.

We have a church fete 2ce a year (well, it's more like a bring and buy sale with tea and cake), the two churches are having a Big Tidy Up soon, we've had The Last Supper and Quiz nights and Harvest Lunches and things like that.
Our church doesn't have any grounds, (St Mary's is bang smack in the middle of a residential street and St Michael's is in the high street - we've got a tiny graveyard and "pocket park", but it's maintained by the council and is too small to use as an event space) so we can't hold anything outside. St Mary's has a good church hall attached to the church, and the quizzes and suppers are usually held in there (well,actually in the church itself cos the church hall is tiny and cold)

We've got some street pastors, we do have schools coming in (mainly at christmas to use the church as a concert hall), and before Easter they've done One Way (not sure if that's going to continue now the previous minister has gone to pastures new, they might not have time to come back for it)
talking of which, we've lost our Children and families' minister, who used to keep in close contact with the schools, and visit them. (and do magic tricks - he's great ) We jut don't have anyone who is able to visit schools now - the ones young enough are all in full-time employemnt and the ones who have time are too old to do anything.

Oh, i'm supposed to be being positice about what we do not what we don't do!

LOL @ your last line.

We usually have 2 fayres a year (Spring and Autumn), and we have a "Bagains" thing, plus we have a yearly auction - that's always popular, plus a few other things throughout the year as well.

Oh for the last few years we had car boot sales at the nearest "green space" - but they're stopping this year I think.

We're lucky in that our church isn't the original building (that was burned down by a teenager just after WW2 - who says children worthy of ASBO's are a new thing ). So don't have "pews" in the current building that was rebuild. It's rows of chairs we can be moved around (and taken out),

2 years ago we had a "community Christmas fair" where all of the chairs were moved out of the middle of the church (my word that was a huge job) and local charities, organisations etc were invited to come and have a stall in the church - totally free of charge to them - all proceeds they made went to themselves (the charity - so no invidiuals profitting).

We also have a bi-annual(??) Christmas tree festival that always draws people in too.

Sadly due to childcare constrictions I'm not on any "committees" or the PCC so I don't currently get much chance to have my say on what things should change/be done (some may say that's a good thing ).

We do also have a monthly (term time) after school service for the Infant/Junior (mostly infant) pupils at the school across the road. That's actually one of our best attened services.

I know other churches can't do the week day thing - but I know a church not far from us does a weekly(?) one on a Saturday evening that is MASSIVELY popular (I know of children from our town that travel up there on a Saturday with their parents to attend)

I can't find their website but they're on facebook \link{http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saint-and-Drews/210716188641?v=wall\here}

We also run a yearly holiday club in the first week of the summer holidays - again letters go out to the schools to invte children from their - each year we're full to capacity.

I personally think we're in exciting times - and can't wait to see how we make the church more of a part of the community again like it used to be - just in a different way

I like the idea of an auction.

yes, St Mary's is like that - but it's carpetted and the acoustics are rubbish.
our pews are victorian - they're great for concerts and normal use - and they're lovely and heavy and fixed, so no scraping and moving them around. I wish we could have free-form sometimes, though, but the pews are so beautiful.

You do quite a lot in your church.

we talked about facebook and twitter at PCC, so i think we're getting the Youth Club onto it!

we also have a weekly toddler group.

we didn't have a christmas tree this year.
don't know why - noone ever mentioned it, so it didn't get done :(

sorry, yeah, St Mary's does a holiday club. works better in their building.

yes the auction is always popular. Basically they gather up all the "good stuff" that's been donated to the church for the fayres/bring and buy/jumble sales, ask people for any extra's they've got and then do an auction.

I got a gorgeous dark wood nest of tables (yes I know they're naff according to MN ) for £15 the other year. I use one of them as my laptop table now

Oh yes we have a toddler group too........we're trying to rename it - but so far the only name anyone came up with was "Barny's Babes" - which sounds a bit risqué for a toddler group as it's currently known as "Toddler Church" (which it's been named as since it was started about 20 odd years ago). We're the only church based toddler group in the town that has "Church" in the name of the group and I'm certain it puts non-Christian-but-not-adverse-to-a-short-bible-story-and-a-few-religious-kiddy-songs-before-they-play-and-drink-coffee off. They see the "church" and it puts them off.

Yes we do devote the first 20 minutes of the group to a mini toddler service, but so do many of the other church toddler groups in town - which are thriving. Whereas we are limping along........

ours is Busy Bees.
and its logo is a Bee.
awwww.

awww.

Actually - one of the little girls that's currently coming (we average about 4 children ) last week told her nan that they were going to "Tumble Church" - which although still includes "Church" I think sounds much more fun

is your website offline?
i've just tried to get on it and it says page not found, but the cache is there.

taht's odd - it's working now...

that does sound fun!

how about Barny's Tumblers
or somethign that doesn't sound so rubbish.
(no good at making up names)

which website - my church one???

I don't know......haven't been on it for a while. Person that runs it has been off for a while as her DD (adult but only in her 20's) died suddenly a few months back. That's the reason I took over the newsletter - I realised I was the only person that had any time on my hands, that could work a computer, and was regularly around that could do it - so offered -and it became permanent,

Tumbling toddlers?

Sounds like you both do loads.

nickel, at vicar just stopping paying dh, that's crap, he could have at least had the courtesy to talk to him about it.

We do similar stuff - summer fete, afternoon teas, barn dances (we mainly do these to raise money for local charities rather than church) Recently started Messy Church once a month which is going down well. Thinking of doing an Easter holiday club. We have the two local schools in fairly often for lessons, Christmas celebrations etc (had all 350 of my dcs school for a christingle, was lovely)

We have pews but they have woodworm and some are falling to bits. I'm not a pew fan tbh - too uncomfortable and fixed, would like to have some flexibility. All comes down to money in the end.

Another community thing we do is have a stall at the local canals festival which is a big deal - just like a church presence. Last year we did a fairtrade stall, craft tent for kids and a prayer tent, quite a few people came in just to be quiet and pray if they wanted to. We also do a lot with the local old people's home and residents association. It's about getting out into the community, and yes is exciting stuff.