Doxologies, Delirium and Discussion: Religion Chat Thread number 3

[nickelbabyhatcher]

Here we are!

Roll up and sign in!

Oldies welcome, newbies welcome, anyone welcome!

It's basically a "what happened in church/spiritual life/anything else you want to chat about that's vaguely related (or not) to churchy stuff.

I'd like a copy of the New Messenger please :)

on its way! (if i can find your email address....)
:)

I've just emailed it.

don't when you see your articles!

I haven't really looked at colleges. Due to my circs (not going to go into detail as a bit identifiable) I have no idea what the best thing to do would be but no doubt the powers that be will advise. I am quite close to Cuddesdon and have heard good things about it, so maybe...... long way to go before that though.

Nickel - very tactful. I think people presume that "shut those kids up" is the default setting so anything that shows the church is welcoming and accommodating of small people's noises has to be progress.

MaryBS - can't hurt to be welcoming. Maybe you could do it on behalf of the order-of-service-writers??

What is this Messenger of which you speak?!

Thanks, I've emailed her.

Nickel - not had chance to read the messenger properly, you'll have to let me know if you get any feedback! (btw you got my home town wrong - thats not where I live, but never mind. It might confuse people if they know the place, as there is no church with that name there!) :)

Have PMd you nickel

Morning everyone. Just about to do my seekers group. We're studying women in the old testament this term. Excited! It's going so well - such a privilege to see these girls through from Alpha/ Start type thing to getting stuck in. Yay :)

oopsy!
I took the info from Facebook - I think i took the name of your church and your county? and googled it!

well, at least you're assured anonymity - maybe they think i've made you up and written it myself!
(i'd have just been better to leave it as your name and church name like i did in the first article! )

teddies - The Messenger is the name of the magazine that my church does. It had become a bind to the person who was in charge of it before - noone was giving her articles or information, but they complained that the content had gone downhill , so she stopped doing it in December.
the idea was that a team would then take it over and re-vamp it, but guess what, the only person who showed an interest was me, and that was mainly out of a "for god's sake, you lot! can't you show some enthusiasm??" mood.
eventually, I got fed up of waiting for people to come forward so did one myself for May-jun-july, making it quarterly now, instead of monthly, so that I wasn't spending all my time on it.
It's just been "published" and is available for purchase.

You can have a copy if you PM me your email address. (i won't charge for email copies- basically the cover price covers printing and if i'm not printing it, you shouldn't need to pay...)

mhd - have emailed you. (might take a while - didn't realise how big the file was! )

Your seekers group topic sounds good - there are some really great women in the old testament. much better than the couple in the new testament (most of thewomen are invisible in that section, i swear! )

Having now looked through it properly, its a good magazine Nickel! And don't worry about my details. I was born in the place you mentioned, but I don't live there anymore. I guess it helps maintain my anonymity!

I love that idea of the churches supplying bags of quiet toys - one less thing for parents to carry and if the bags all have similar toys there may be less fighting between siblings over toys too. I get quite annoyed at people who aren't welcoming to children in church, or who assume that the parents are useless just because they haven't tried to reign in their kids. DS2 (age3) is sometimes left to wander along the pew and back again. If I try and stop him he will scream out "No Mummy" and drown out whoever is speaking at the front of the church. Sometimes I decide to leave him to wander if it is only for a couple of minutes as it is usually less disruptive than his screaming. To a casual onlooker though it probably looks as though I don't care, which is a shame. If he is too disruptive I do reign him in or take him out.

I like the sound of the Saints Alive services, Nickel. I think it is great if all the kids get a chance to join in. I'm aware that at our fairly traditional church (albeit with quite a few modern worship songs) that many of the kids cannot read the words on the screen quickly enough to join in the singing. It must be pretty boring for them to just be standing doing nothing when everyone else is singing. I sometimes wish the church would do more kids songs, perhaps ones that the kids do in Sunday School, so that all the children can join in. I think some of the adults don't like the kids songs though as they find them too simple or don't want to do the actions. How do other people get round this?

we were talking about that at breakfast this morning jaffa - from the Saints Alives i've been to, the kids just seem to sit in a corner with the colouring books etc (laid out for them if they get bored) and don't seem to join in at all!
The older ones do, singing the hymns and modern hymns, but I think they'd get so much more out of going into a sunday school/creche and doing stuff in small groups aimed at them, rather than loosely trying to include them iyswim.

(and they still seem quite "grown up" to me - but it might just be because I've only really been to special dates services rather than just a normal service )

Thank you Mary - it's nice to get positive feedback

I will, of course, be requiring more articles from you in the next issue

Sorry to hear that, I'd got the idea from the bit you'd quoted that they had percussion instruments to take part but I can see I may have misread that. On thinking about it, I'm not sure it'd be a great idea with small kids. Although DS2 would shake a tambourine or similar with great enthusiasm when there was singing he'd also shake it when someone was speaking as he wouldn't necessarily understand that it was OK to shake it at one bit but not at another. May work well with school age kids though.

I'm impressed with the magazine too nickel - well put together, interesting articles (esp the wonderful Mary's) and good info about the churches. Like the cartoony bits (lol at the cassock) and the dc colouring pages too, mine would love that in a church magazine! I like to get ideas as I do our team monthly newsheet and it does get tedious after a while. Got to do it by monday in fact again --- sigh, does come around quick!

Group went well this am - talking about Sarah and Hagar. Everyone was engaged. nickel there are some great women in the NT as well, just as you say a bit hidden, but a lot can be gleaned from a few lines - apart from the Mary's there are Joanna, Lydia, Phoebe, Priscilla, Tabitha to name a few :) Strong women - some led churches, and despite the fact that Paul is often called a misogynist, he wrote about these women glowingly and supported their leadership in a way utterly radical for the time.

(don't get me carried away)

jaffa - i think they do have all sorts of stuff to take part, but tehy just don't seem to.
as i said, i've not seen a normal every time service, so it could be much more welcoming, exciting, and participatory.
I've only seen a snapshot.
(i'm happy to be misled and mistaken in this instance!)

thank you mhd
I like the colouring pages too - there used to be one double page with kids' activities on (Mouse Makes) i nthe old mag.

After hearing that St Mary's only take 20 copies (with 5 subcribers - i hope that's as well as the 20 ), I hope that having more stuff for the "family" in will make them more keen to take it.

I bought a year's licence for the cartoons from the Cartoon Church website.
It cost £35, so I'm going to be making the most of it!

See, I agree, I'll never understand that impression of Paul - he was rather forward thinking in calling women disciples and encouraging them to lead worship.
His ideas on the position of women generally is more modern, and has been vastly mis-interpreted imo.

Colouring pages are great!

Our parish mag goes out to many non-churchgoers too, then at Christmas the whole village gets a copy FOC.

Also agree re: Paul being misunderstood

I tend to lurk on the education threads on here but don't post much. In Scotland the only religious schools we have are Catholic ones. The others are all loosely Church of Scotland but don't tend to have a strong Christian ethos. I get the impression from the education threads that Church of England schools tend to have a pretty good reputation because I've read of parents trying to get their kids into them. Is this correct? If so, I'm curious as to why it is that they seem to be more highly regarded than the non religious schools. Any ideas?

The faith school that DD will be going to has a good ethos of respecting others, and also is hot on discipline. The local secondary demonstrates neither.

Not only that, when I went round the faith school, every classroom had some evidence of belief, and at the open day, the head started his speech with a prayer! The pupils were really polite and friendly too, and demonstrated a real pride in their school.

jaffa CoE schools (seconday at least) often do have a good reputation but the debate is whether that's due to their Christian ethos or because they're effectively selective with their intake. Personally I'd say it was a bit of both . It's a bit of an emotive topic on here for sure!

Thanks Mary and Milly. Since we don't have many faith schools up here I was curious about it.

Hello all!!!

Nickel - I've PMed you to ask for a copy of Messenger :)

MHD - I'd be interested to hear more about the women your group discuss. I'm already thinking of some potential names for our tiny SESame seed and love Esther, Ruth and Naomi. (Boys names are more difficult but nevermind, we've got nearly 8 months!)

Meant to say thank you to whoever it was that recommended the Hillsong Kids CD - I think it's a little old for DS at the moment but I'm enjoying it and I'm sure given time, he will as well. At bedtime, he's now started putting his hands together to "talk to God" :)

Hello Mary, teddies, jaffa, millie and anyone else lurking!

Ruth is a great name, is the middle name of minipanda, her first name is OT as well.

I was well chuffed yesterday at God's Gang - cell group we lead for DS (11yo) and his mates, when we were discussing the Great Commission. Asked what going to make disciples meant, and then went on to talk about who was discipling us. DS immediately said mum and dad of course - was delighted he seems to realise we disciple him as well as parenting and telling off!

Aww Panda, you are quite right to feel very chuffed with DS and also yourselves! I'd be so proud if DC ever said anything like that :)