please cheer me up,angry vicar/congregation,got to face them tonight as dc taking 1st communion

[fairygirl3]

ok,im looking for a bit of moral support,im in the wrong but have to face a cross church tonight ,im 6 months pregnant/tired/hormonal & trying to find the strength to get through this.
Go to c of e church very small congregation 20 regulars at most,in very deprived area,since i started going 2 &half years ago no other new families have came & stayed,apart from us only 1 other family with children.
Find it difficult at church as have a loud 3 yr old but still go every week,dh is groundsman & on social comitte ,we do as much as we can.
OLder dd & ds getting to stage where they sometimes dont want to go.Anyway this holy week have gone to mass every evening ,yesterday i was so tired/sick,worried aboutkeeping ds2 quiet during solemn service & kids didnt want to go (had been at church till 9.30 pm the previous night),so we didnt go.Also found out the other family with kids didnt go.So i turn up at church at lunchtime today after 5 hours at work,to find i was being ignored then other members laughing at a letter posted on the board which basically said our priest was disgusted with all of us who didnt go,death was the only excuse not to be there,we are all shit christians etc.This left me very upset,i already had my own guilt to deal with,was a very nasty letter.i left upset ,a member of the other family tried talking to the vicar about the letter & how it had upset his wife & me,but he was having none of it,said it was the other members idea also as they are all cross with us.
im really upset ,yet have to go to church tonight to worship but also cause my dc are servers & recieving their 1st communion.Im so dissapointed with their so called christian attitude !

i think im in the wrong as it was an important service,which i should of attended but was just so worn out.

Terrible.

Copy to bishop.

How very unchristian.

Would be tempted to send reply slip saying was dead.

you are not in the wrong. please don't let him make you feel guilty. And forcing your dcs to go could well make them reject the church.

No, you aren't in the wrong!

Jesus didn't say 'write snotty letters to people who only go to mass six evenings a week, not seven', did he?

"should we even b calling ourselves christians as we do not care about the pain he went through for us.Saying all his hard work is wasted on us/he is furious with us as are the 9 people who turned up.On the bottom is a reply slip we have to fill in & send back with a selction of boxes to tick for our excuse why we were not there,im dead,i dont care about god,there was no free food on other and various others "

err no, it is not actually about the vicar, it is about Jesus and the point of the service yesterday was remembering Christ dying on the cross and not showing the vicar you appreciate his work, the tone of that letter is all wrong.

The reply slip is real cheek. What an attitude. Would it be the end of the world if you dropped the first communion service there? I mean how pleasant is it going to be for your dc anyway? Would it be so bad to go to a different church and go through the whole thing there again? It's another lot of preparation for the dc I suppose but really church shouldn't feel like a boot camp.

Agree, find a new church!! My vicar is brilliant, whenever people (the older ones) grumble about children making noise, or breathing, or even just moving too quickly.... he reads out that lesson, Andrew or Mark 10 (??) something about people trying to keep the little children from jesus and Jesus says, no let them come to me.

thank you all,i am feeling a bit better.My dh will be back in time to go with us tonight ,its all a shame for the children as they have obviously picked up on this & are cross ,not really the attitude they should be having for tonight.

Fairy, I would say nothing and walk walk walk. Unless you live on a small island, there have GOT to be more than 20 people who could be regulars. Which church do they attend? It's probably one where you would be happy as well (One where a shepherd's pie maker with grasscutting husband and a bunch of little kids would be handcuffed to the pews by the rest of the congregation and never allowed to set foot anywhere else I should think in my experience!)

I should also think this situation is very well known at bishop level and a source of pain to all. A bit of asking around and you'll find where all the normal people have decamped to.

I am so sorry, it sounds utterly awful.

Definitely send to the Bishop; the bosses need to know when their monkeys misbehave.

Tell the Bishop that you will be looking for a new church and the lack of christian charity is having a bad effect on your kids too and you want to show them a proper example of kindness, tolerance and understanding. Stick the boot in. Then find another church.

No wonder they are such a small congregation! I expect that others know about your vicar and steer clear. I had a lovely vicar who was a bit unconventional and every anglican vicar I met knew about him. Word gets round.

A stagnent (in more ways than one) is not a good sign. A good church is an open, welcoming one that allows for different circumstances and lifestyles. The CofE church should not be run like a fricken cult.

Only thing I can say in their defense is that a lot of Vicars get a bit arsy this time of year. If they have Easter vigils and the like they get v.tired.

But your lot sound like they are horrible regardless.

What can I say that hasn't already been said? This letter is utterly unchristian and shows nothing of the love of God for his people.

Please come back and let us know what the Bishop says.

quite justa - love the phrase 'toxic christianity'!

yes is forwad in faith.
when confonted by the husband of the other family,the vicar said it was 2 members of the congregation that had said the letter should be wrote so it was,as the 9 people who did attend are 2 churchwardens,pcc secretary,treasurer& various other roles the chances are it was one of them.The other husband is aranging to talk to 1 of the wardens,but being such a small church its difficult.

justa how did you guess it was backward forward in faith?
[sorry fairy ]

Ah. I see. Blimey, they're worse than i thought.

+Ebbsfleet is lovely IMHO (despite being BIF), I can't see him condoning this sort of persecution

ok am off to get ready now,will report back tomorrow on how it goes

oh please explain what a flying bishop is if you have time

OP i am horrified to read this and my first thought was also that he sounded mentally ill

i do hope you can get some better treatment elsewhere!

A flying bishop is an informal name for a Provincial Episcopal Visitor. That means a bishop, usually a suffragan, who is appointed by the Archbishop (of Canterbury or York) to minister to parishes who do not get along with their Diocesan bishop.

It is typically Anglo Catholic parishes who do not get along with their bishops, which is quite a paradox really, given that their churchmanship puts a lot of emphasis onto the authority of a bishop.

At the other end of the spectrum, Evangelicals who see the bishop as someone to be used and abused give support to the parishes. If the bishop gets at all awkward, they are under threat of being rejected too. I don't think it has happened yet, but PEV gets muttered every so often.

Personally, I would not tattle-tale to the bishop. It is an issue to be thrashed out within the church family. There are many issues to be dealt with that the bishop really can't do much about, except pray.

It must be an awful experience to read this note. I can't really picture it, coming from a large parish. We have high expectations and burn-out too, though. It's a classic church problem.

That is appalling.

I am "High Church" C of E, and with a daughter who dances and sometimes can't get to church due to rehearsals. Everyone is always lovely and understanding - even when I have messed up and forgot to find someone to replace me on the serving rota etc.

We're not a FiF Church though

I'm very much an Anglo-Catholic but if my only church was a church behaving like this and a church of another denomination who were sane - I'd be worshipping as a Methodist or whatever in a heartbeat. For the sake of my dd really as a good church experience of any denomination is better than this. Could you cope with going to a different denomination/style of church for a bit?

Send that letter to the relevant Bishop, and your Diocesan newspaper if you have one!

Utterly flipping bonkers. Yes, of course, Jesus died so snotty church members could bully people into extra-biblical religious works, didn't He?

Oh, no, He didn't. He died so people would be freed from them.