Life of Wiley

At the suggestion of Dave Warnock, I’ve created a Frappr map of UK Methodists. If you fall into this category of people belonging to the world then please go ahead and add yourself or your church.

An interesting column from Madelaine Bunting in the Guardian Unlimited regarding Richard Dawkins’ programme on Channel 4, The Root of all Evil

Thanks to Nigel Coke-Woods for the link.

On Sunday I was preaching at Abbots Langley Methodist Church. This Sunday, the first after Epiphany, is usually set up to talk about the baptism of Christ and this was indeed one of the set lessons for the day. However, when I looked at all the lectionary readings together the one characteristic that came through for me and that I chose to preach on was the use of voices. You can read my sermon here (PDF).

Abbots Langley have a different way of having children in the service in that they only come in at the end having spent the rest of the time in their Junior Church classes. They’d only the two children on Sunday and they’d been talking about resolutions in their class and had produced three differently coloured heart shapes on which to write resolutions. On the pink heart they had to write a resolution that they wanted to make for themselves. On the blue heart they had to think of a resolution that they wanted someone else to make that would make their lives better. On the yellow heart they had to make a resolution that they would make that would make the life of someone else better. I thought this was a great take on making resolutions and perhaps it’s something that should be encouraged more often, not just thinking about what we want for ourselves but what others want from us and what we want from others.

Yesterday marked the beginning of One World Week. I encourage you to take a look at their list of 40 promises (PDF) and promise yourself that you’ll do at least one of them.

I used this in the service that I preached (PDF) yesterday at Kings Langley Methodist Church.

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I was wondering how it was possible to make Ajax-based web services accessible in the sense of making them friendly to screen readers. It may be that this is very straightforward as I haven’t researched the matter yet. But I was thinking about this because of the service I’m developing that could be used by the Methodist Church and I’m sure they will have a particular keenness for accessibility. If you want to talk a look at what I’m doing you can access it here. Basically it’s a search engine written around the Google Maps API using Ajax to get the data from XML and javascript to refresh portions of the browser. So far, the only data it has is for the churches in Watford, so type Watford into the search box and see how it behaves. (The name, incidently, may not stick!)

Anyway, this thought about accessibility got me thinking about accessibility in the church itself. In our own church we’ve been talking about putting in toilets suitable for wheelchair users. We also have a ramp for negotiating the step up into the building. We have not, as yet, spent anytime thinking about how people can get to the second floor, but I’m sure this will have to follow. But this wasn’t what concerned me; what concerned me was our approach to accessibility in worship.

It seems to me that, for most churches, accessibility stops at the installation of a hearing aid loop. I’ve been to one or two churches that are able to offer a few large print hymn books, but after that that’s your lot.

Increasingly churches are turning to multimedia as an aid to worship and the use of digital projectors. These can be useful as worship aids but special attention needs to be paid to accessibility when using them. People who are blind or partially sited will struggle with these projectors and if we rely on them at the expense of giving out hymn/song/prayer sheets then we are excluding some sections of the congregation.

Of course the biggest problem in catering for all comes down to expense. Installing suitable sound systems with appropriate hearing aid loops, having available large print or braille books, installing ramps, lifts and disabled toilets all cost significant amounts of money; but then so do digital projectors, laptops, screens, carry cases and all the necessary cabling required to present multimedia rich content. It makes me wonder whether churches who are keen to embrace the digital age approach it with these issues in mind, and whether they are, by accident or ignorance, excluding members of their congregations or potential members.

Yesterday I preached for the first time in about 16 months as I’d taken a sabbatical to give more time to the children.

I’m glad to be back preaching, I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it (and how exhausting it is). Yesterday’s service was at Abbots Langley Methodist Church with a congregation of about 2 dozen. I’ve uploaded the sermon to the site if anyone cares to read it. It made sense to me when I wrote it but there were a couple of moments during it’s delivery that I thought, oh I need to explain that a bit better, or establish the linkage more between sections.

Last Sunday we attended our church review to discuss where we felt the church ought to be going. It was good to look back over the last 5 years and see where we have grown as a church (although some of the things that were brought up as growth were really status quo). However, we spent far too much time looking back than we should have done looking forward. Consequently we found ourselves in the ridiculous position of not having time to discuss the most fundamental question on the review paper: “What is the church’s vision for the next 5 years?”

We’re increasingly becoming disillusioned with what is going on at Trinity and the lack of any conviction of what we should be doing in our community. I wonder if this is true across most churches? I read a lot about what churches feel they should be doing globally but a lot less about what individual churches can be doing in their community. Clearly there are some noticable exceptions, such as many of the inner-city projects that are being run by churches; but for your average urban church, what are they doing in the community?

In one discussion someone suggested that our community needs to be broadened to encompass the places from which we draw our congregation. Personally I don’t accept this since the community in which we live is served ably by another church, whereas the immediate community of Trinity should be being addressed by Trinity. I think part of the difficulty comes from the fact that Trinity sits in a predominantly Asian community. To my mind that suggests that we, as a church, can be doing work to promote racial tolerance and cultural education and integration. I’m not saying that we’re not doing that, but perhaps that can become part of our focus, part of our vision, working with the community in which we find ourselves.

We’ve been put in a bit of a quandry in relation to our church just recently. We’ve been attending Trinity for over 10 years now and found the church to be very warm and welcoming. Louise and I were both brought up in the Methodist tradition and are comfortable with its social theology and doctrines, though it can sometimes be a bit astride the fence.

Sadly a couple of years ago a friend of ours died. She was one of the members that made us feel very welcome when we first arrived. She had moved away to train as a missionary teacher and went off to work in Jamaica for a few years before returning to the UK where she died a few years later.

Our friend had bequethed a substantial sum of money to Trinity without any covenants to its use. Some of this money was going to be used in building a disabled toilet on the church premises which would have been quite a fitting use for the money. However, at a recent church council meeting I discovered that the finance and property committee had decided that they would simply use our friend’s legacy to prop up the church bank account to maintain current interest rate payments. The disabled toilet being funded from a gift day taking place next week.

I’m all for gift days raising money for this kind of project, but I think that the use of our friend’s legacy to simply maintain bank interest payments is both inappropriate and disrespectful. We both feel that in this regard our church (or at least those members in the positions that matter) is lacking real vision. To put it bluntly the church should be relying on its living members to maintain its financial viability and be using bequests of its faithful servants in a more respectful and forward-thinking way. Our friend was very pro missionary work and this was reflected in her life, surely we should use her bequest to support projects like The Watford Town Centre Chaplaincy, or to provide books for schools in poorer countries.

The result of the church’s decision has left us considering whether we should seek an alternative congregation with whom to worship. A congregation with more vision about its role in our community and our world. What I think we will do though is bring the issue up at our forthcoming Annual Church Review (which happens to coincide with the Gift Day) and vote appropriately at the Annual Church Meeting.

On Sunday I had the privilege of participating in worship lead by one of Local Preachers on trial.

The theme for the service was faith and he gave a great illustration for the benefit of the children in the service at the beginning talking about the hazel tree in his garden.

Sadly, his confidence let him down, nerves got the better of him and I struggled to follow and in places hear the sermon.

What strikes me is that as preachers one of the most important things we need to learn (aside from theology and our own faith) is how to communicate with the congregation. Everyone’s with me so far as this is clearly obvious. I think the best approach and the one I use, is to speak using the same conversational style that you would use if you were chatting to your partner or friend. For those preachers who either don’t use notes at all or just use headline notes this will come naturally, but for those of us (like myself) who write out full scripts I find it helps to write it out as though I was conversing with someone. Then, by the time, I’ve thought about it, typed it out, printed and read it, and re-read it; the flow of the conversation is firmly implanted in my mind and it allows me to connect with the congregation with eye contact and gestures.

Most pulpits or lecterns will have the microphone (if there is one) positioned such that it works best when the head is raised, but if you are having to read the script then your head is down and not projecting into the microphone. The result is that you can’t make eye contact, making gestures is then fruitless and your voice ends up as a mumble. If, on the other hand, you have the conversation in your head you don’t have to rely on your notes so closely and can relax more with the congregation, making for a much pleasanter experience for the preacher and the congregation.

Of course all this is not just related to preaching but can equally apply to any form of public speaking. The more relaxed you are, the more effective you will be at putting your message across.

It seems to have been quite a while since we managed to get to a service at our church together as a family. We managed it this Sunday for our Harvest Festival. Our Minister Rev. Will Hunter lead the worship and used the Parable of the Sower for the basis of the service.

As it was a family service with the all the Guides and Scouts, etc. taking part the sermon was fairly short and took the form of a multiple choice quiz on the pertinent aspects of the parable, namely what happened to the seed the sower planted.

It was a pity that no-one had checked the microphone before the service started as the kids that read the lessons couldn’t be heard. This is frustrating for both the reader and the listeners. I think I’ll have to make sure that this gets added to the list of things the stewards should check before the service begins. Funnily enough the steward couldn’t be heard when she read out the notices!