Choirs, worship songs, after service coffee - the all new religion chat thread

[niminypiminy]

A new place for us to share the lovely, silly and annoying things that happen in church life and share our great love of Graham Kendrick.

IAmTheZombie has died :(
She went into a hospice for her final days and she died this evening.
She was in a lot of pain at the end, but she died whilst asleep, so it was peaceful.

Oh nickel, thank you for letting me know. How terribly terrible sad.

May your soul fly to arms of God, Zombie.

Nickel will know as well that Zombie's real name was Candy and that there are a lot of blankets (both crocheted and knitted squares) are being collected by the Woolly Hugs team. She was one of our Yarnaholics, a Facebook Group grown out of Mumsnet, so a lot of love and warmth will grow out of Candy's life and death.
To God be the glory.

Woolly hugs are wonderful. There is such love and beauty in the world alongside the suffering.

The woolly hugs are very special indeed. Praying for candy and her loved ones.

Yes, Woolly Hugs has an ongoing project in the name of Candy's Hugs, which will go to people who need them.
Thank you fir mentioning ttgat oma

Aww I didn't see many of her posts but she seemed like quite a character! How do we get involved with knitted squares?

Look for woolly hugs, or candy's woolly hugs. There is a whole section explaining.

Yes, it's here on mumsnet aand it's also on the woolly hugs website

Ok thanks

How is everybody? All ok here. Church stuff seems to be running more smoothly than it has in a while so that's nice.

All good here. I've been fuming quietly about the House of Bishops report on marriage and same sex relationships, but have signed up as an individual member of Inclusive Church and am going to see if I can persuade my church to register, too. I really like the way the scope has widened from sexuality to looking at the barriers people put up to exclude others, even (or especially) when they don't intend to, and bringing those down so that everyone can be an important part of the church community.

My last church did a lot of work on becoming dementia-friendly, which links in with that, too.

Fabulous Broomstick - it's inclusive for everything - not just sexuality, but gender, social status, disability, mental health, race etc.
Wonderful

We went to St Michael's in Croydon today. Mainly because George Oldroyd was organist there (and buried) . That was for dh. We chose this week because they did a Gibbons anthem that we love.
Dh got to chat up the organist afterwards and was allowed to play the (bloody nice!) Organ for aaaaages.
Dd loved it too because she got to play with some children.
I loved it because it was just lovely. Very anglocatholic with bells and smells, beautiful choir, and it felt just like church should
Even though the setting was kne we didn't know, I felt at ease (normally I'm desperate to join in).
Maybe it was the smell)

Ooh, am looking at Inclusive Church and wondering how to take it forward with my church. Thank you for that!

That sounds lovely and perfect for you nickel! Are you going again? Really special that dh played the organ too.they sound nice and friendly. even though church should be less smelly and more worship band-y (couldn't help myself)

Really do hope it might be a lovely new start for you.

Inclusive church is great. The work they do for helping churches be more open is fabulous. Wanting to do some work here with it all.

I feel ill and fed up.

church should most definitely be smelly.
I haven't smelt church properly like that since i was a child.
Even the one we went to the other week didn't smell compeletely

i suppose i just felt nostalgic? or homely?
I don't know how to describe it.

Annoyingly, it takes an hour and a hlaf to get there

My church does smells and Book of Common Prayer on the first Sunday of the month, but I had a headache yesterday so didn't properly appreciate it.

Oh that is annoying Nickel, too far for a local church but I'm glad it was such a lovely experience anyway, we all need that sometimes to take us out of our daily situations.

I'm not against smelly church per se but can't worship in them due to lungs not liking incense I actually love the thought and imagery of incense, prayers rising up and all that...

Sorry you had a headache broomstick. Hope it's better today. The other church my dh looks after has bcp services and he really enjoys doing them. The words are so beautiful.

I have decided to stand back from my current church for a while. I only went to half a dozen services last year, but did listen on line quite a bit, so I could turn the noise off or down.
They have been on a tour of:"If you do not accept Jesus as your Saviour, you will be lost for all enternity", so basically, convert or go to hell.
Yesterday there was a 'salt and light' service with tealights wrapped in salt dough and a sermon that told us to be more salt and light 'to defend God'.
Then in the evening the sermon on the first chapter of Romans said that one of the functions of the gospel was to defend us from the wrath of God. This was the senior minister, who then went on to promise that there would be plenty more sermons on the 'wrath' of God.
I don't care if I am being unreasonable, but I just cannot cope with this amount of negativity.
I won't say anything about it, and I won't leave the church, I will not be missed much.
I haven't got the energy to fight, there are other things as well, I just don't need the constant discouragement.

Dutchoma there are maaaaany more positive churches out there!

God LOVES us. LOVES us.

's Not as easy as that, because I have no transport, other than my feet and I dont walk quite as far as I used to. Also I have no energy for getting to know a whole new church and my current church is one I have now been with for more than 20 years.

Is this the Baptist one Oma ? I know you've said they're rather strict with attendance and membership before

This is the church where we had the service for Bob. It's not that they are strict on attendance and membership that bugs me. I don't think they would throw me out unless I stopped paying and they had not seen me for a year, it's their teaching and preaching that gets in the way of my relationship with Jesus. This endless harping on the 'wrath' of God, I just can't be doing with it. Nobody will mind me not being there or even notice that I have gone.