phillsacre.me.uk

So, quick update as to what was going on this weekend. On Friday night we helped out at 21 (back after half-term), and then went to the pub with most of the 21 crew (AJ, Laura, Jen and her sister, and James and Tash). It’s nice to have so many friends from church at the moment – especially with so many Colchester people moving away … *sob*. Aaaaanyway!

On Saturday morning, Sam Norton (the Diocesan Warden of Ordinands, who I mentioned before) came round to chat to Phil and I about ministry. It went well, and what I need to do now is send off my form and he will forward it on to the Diocesan Director of Ordinands! I won’t go into the way the CofE ordination process works, but it basically means I’m sort of on the next rung of the ladder. So that’s exciting anyway :)

In the afternoon we did a bit of shopping and saw Alex for a cup of tea. Then we headed round to Tom’s for the “Great Essex Feast”. Basically the idea was a fund-raising exercise for the Essex Air Ambulance and Friends of Essex Churches charities. Someone (in this case, Tom) would donate the food, and people would then come round, eat the food, and donate money to the charity. It was a great evening and I think we raised a decent amount! I drank and ate an awful lot and felt a bit groggy on Sunday morning, but not too bad.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then were invited out to the Carmels for lunch with some of the students. We had a good lunch there, and then stayed most of the afternoon chatting and playing on the Wii! Then we went out to Sunday@6, where I was leading the music for the first time. That seemed to go well although there weren’t so many people there, think we had a few regulars missing.

And then we came back and watched ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, which is pretty much everything that happened this weekend!

I should also mention – last week we watched ‘500 Days of Summer’ which is a good film and very cleverly written. However, I wasn’t sure about the conclusion… I wasn’t sure whether it was saying the normal Hollywood thing of “You just have to find the right person” or not. (And I can say that without giving anything away, because the ending is probably not what you’d expect). So, it’s worth watching, but I don’t think it’s one I’d watch again.

Thanks to the summer holidays, not much is going on at the moment! It’s been rather nice having the free evenings. We’ve been so busy for so long, it’s fantastic just to be able to get home in an evening and not have to go out to home group, Moore Course, youth club, music practice, PCC meetings, or whatever else we have to do. Next year we will definitely be cutting down the amount of stuff we do!

So, on Friday night we had a nice evening in. On Saturday afternoon, I helped our friend Sarah to buy a car! She passed her test a few weeks ago and so was looking to buy a relatively cheap small car. Unfortunately, there aren’t many cheap small cars around at the moment: because of the cheap road tax and insurance, it seems most people want small cars! But still, after looking round a few places we did manage to find a suitable Ford Fiesta (2000 registration) which would do nicely. It had done a good few miles (about 80,000) but it looked like it had been cared for and for the miles she’s likely to be doing will probably be fine. It was miles better than the Ford Ka we tried the week before anyway!

On Sunday we went to the morning service and Sunday@6 as per usual. Not much to say really – we had a nice quiet afternoon! Afterwards we came back home and watched Top Gear, which was very funny once again. And… that’s pretty much it for the weekend!

Last week turned out to be pretty busy! I had a pop quiz at work on Monday night, we were out at Anne-Marie’s for pancakes on Tuesday night, we had Moore Course on Wednesday night, and then I was leading home group on Thursday night. So by the time Friday came round we were just about ready for a break!

And we were able to watch “Into the Wild Green Yonder”, the latest and final instalment in the Futurama DVD quadrilogy. I really enjoyed it – I think it was a fitting end for the movies. Although the ending did conflict with the last episode of the series (“The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings”), I think it’s comparable to there being contradictory versions of the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And, of course, if they do go on to do a sixth series they might explain it somehow.

On Saturday, I took the car into the garage to have an estimate done for repairs. Hopefully the insurers will get back to me soon and tell me that I can go ahead with having it repaired! In the evening, James and Tash (some friends from Fordham) came round for dinner. It was a really nice evening! After dinner we played a game called “Mexican Train” which was very good fun – kind of like dominos. More on that later.

On Sunday morning we went to church (to both services!), and then came back home for lunch. In the evening we went to a prayer meeting at Fordham for the new Sunday @ 6 service (which is beginning at the end of April), followed by a “Visual Bible Journeys” presentation. Basically it was an overview of Saul, David and Solomon illustrated by photos and maps. Very interesting, actually! There are two more coming up in March, they’d be well worth coming to if that’s something you’d be interested in. Seeing (for example) a photograph of the valley where David defeated Goliath does help to make the Old Testament more real. And being able to see roughly what Jerusalem looked like is very useful too – often you can read something about the temple but not really visualise what it would have looked like.

Anyway, after that we came back home and collapsed watched “Lark Rise to Candleford”.

I mentioned a while back about “Mexican Train”. Well, it’s basically a dominos game – see here for the rules. You basically have to lay out your ‘train’ with dominos, matching the numbers end-to-end. As we were playing, I kept thinking what the best way of arranging your dominos would be in order to make the longest train.

I thought this would be a good problem for a computer to solve… so I just knocked up a quick python script which will generate the longest chain given a set of dominos. (If you just run the script, it will generate a random set of dominos and a random start number and give the longest possible path). It’s a fairly useless script, but then again maybe it will come in handy next time I play the game ;)

Just thought I’d better update before I forget everything that’s gone on at Christmas! On Christmas Eve we went to the carols by candlelight service at Fordham. It was absolutely packed! Around 300 people in the church – a church which has a seating capacity of about 150. We put out a whole load of additional chairs but there were still people standing at the back. It was lovely to see so many people there, though – and I think everyone enjoyed it. The music went well and Mike did a good talk.

Afterwards we went to Ipswich to stay with my parents for Christmas. We had a great time with my family, we played a few games and what have you – all the kinds of things you usually do at Christmas! And on Saturday we came back home after lunch, and as of yesterday we’ve been down at Phil’s parents.

So… in general, it’s been busy but great fun! My Mum got a webcam for Christmas which looks brilliant – we had a chat with my aunt in Australia using Skype. I might have to get one.

We’ve watched a fair bit of TV over Christmas too – haven’t seen the Doctor Who special yet (curse our Freeview recorder which didn’t record!) but we will catch up on the iPlayer soon. We also didn’t see Top Gear Vietnam special (we watched The 39 Steps instead), so another one to watch on the iPlayer. The new Wallace & Gromit was good but I didn’t think it was as good as the previous ones.

Aaaand, I think that’s pretty much up to date. That’s all from me for now!

On my post about confirmation (amongst other things), Matthew asked about my reasons for getting confirmed given my Baptist / FIEC background.

The short answer really is – there’s not actually a spiritual reason! I feel like over the past few months God has been pushing me towards ministry. Possibly ministry in the Anglican church, even. As such, I think that if in the future I did train to become an Anglican clergyman, I think me not being confirmed would present an issue for some people…

I do, of course, already count my baptism as a visible acknowledgement of my faith – which confirmation is also supposed to be – but simply as a matter of church order I thought confirmation would be a wise move on my part.

However, in terms of my theological position on infant baptism / confirmation… well although I was brought up and baptised (not as an infant) in an FIEC church, I do think there is some merit to the Anglican way of doing things. I heard a talk by Andy Saville at Fordham called “Why I am not… a Baptist” (it was part of a series. It’s not nearly as controversial as it sounds, and is available on the Fordham website – which is how I listened to it). Basically, the talk was about infant baptism – the arguments for and against it, whether it’s justifiable from the Bible and church tradition.

It does indeed seem that there is a good case to be made for infant baptism. It’s probably got a bad name because it has been abused – a lot of parents seem to want to have their children baptised but then don’t ever come back to church! But that doesn’t mean it’s a reason not to do it in proper circumstances.

And confirmation is really just a follow on from Baptism, allowing someone to confirm that they want to be part of the Christian faith as well as the church (and God!) confirming their acceptance into the church and wider Christian family. I love the actual confirmation part of the service, where the bishop presiding over the ceremony says “God has called you by name and made you his own”.

Finally, I should make clear that this is not at all a criticism of nonconformist churches! I still look back at my baptism and think that was an important day for me, that is when I publicly declared my Christian faith. I just wanted to say that I think confirmation is no bad thing for those who have grown up in the Anglican tradition, provided that people don’t see the act as more important than the state of the heart.

We’ve been incredibly busy the past few days, and it’s not set to slacken off for a while. On Friday night we helped out at 21. I was leading and AJ did the talk. It seemed to go pretty well, although I wasn’t sure whether any of the kids were listening in our discussion group. C’est la vie, I think the best you can do with youth work is hope and pray that something goes in despite everything!

On Saturday Phil was out most of the day visiting her sister in Reading, so I did the weekly shop in the morning and then spent most of the afternoon preparing for the Moore Course next week. In the evening, we went out to a home group meal to celebrate our home group leader getting married, so that was rather nice.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then Phil’s parents came round for lunch so that was rather nice. In the evening I went out to a music practice for the youth service at Fordham next week! So that’s our weekend in a nutshell.

I may not be posting up so much over the next couple of weeks though, here are some edited highlights of what’s coming up for me:

• Pub quiz tonight with work colleagues
• Music practice tomorrow night for youth service
• Doing a talk at 21 this Friday on “The Church”
• Going down to London on Saturday to visit my sister (she has an operation on Friday to remove a cancerous growth)
• Youth service on Sunday!
• Confirmation preparation class a week today (I will be getting confirmed on 14th December – more on that some other time!)
• Church re-ordering committee meeting next Tuesday
• Moore Course meeting next Wednesday
• Home group on Thursday evenings

Some of those things are optional and, in fact, I think I may duck out of a few. But I still don’t quite understand how I managed to end up so darned busy? As I’ve said before (in this very post) – “C’est la vie!”

I’m talking about weddings, of course!

Last Saturday was Andy B and Helen’s wedding, which was held at St Osyth Parish Church. We managed to get there in good time (it doesn’t take very long from Colchester). It was a beautiful day, Andy and Helen were really lucky! Anyway, the service itself was lovely – although I don’t think the organist was very used to playing new songs. Not that it spoiled the service, of course, but it was quite amusing nonetheless!

Afterwards we headed back home for a while (the joys of going to a wedding near to home), and then went back for the evening do. It was a really good evening as well – we were able to catch up with a couple of people (Naomi, Ran and Katie) who we hadn’t seen in over a year, as well as see Sarah and Jon (and a friend of theirs, Rachel, who we’d met once before). We had a good old dance to some of the old cheesy tunes – unfortunately the DJ seemed to have a real fondness for “Megamixes” – he played four or five that I counted! I did dance to the 60s one, but in general I’m really not a fan of them. The Beatles megamix, for example, basically took a load of choruses from the Beatles’ songs and arranged them into a rather soulless track which is rather less than the sum of its parts! Still, it was all good fun, and everyone had a good time! Many congrats to Andy & Helen as well :-)

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then went straight to my parents’ for lunch. We had a nice afternoon there, and I managed to pick up all my old CDs. It was a real trip down memory lane, reliving my mis-spent youth (well, not really).

In the evening we went to the all-age service at Nansen Road, where I played guitar for some of the songs. The service went well, despite me managing to forget my capo (and therefore not being able to play some of the songs!). Afterwards we headed for home, and watched “Stephen Fry’s America”.

I’m talking about weddings, of course! We’ve now been to six weddings this year – only another two to go before the year is out…

It went very well, anyway. It was in Cambridge, so we travelled up by train on Saturday morning and got there in plenty of time. The journey up was actually fairly painless, even though we had to go via Liverpool Street! The wedding service was lovely – Mike spoke really well, and the band were great. We particularly liked the songs that they sung during the interlude – the girl who sang had a lovely voice! They really did justice to the Celtic version of “When I Survey”.

Anyway, afterwards we went to the Regal (a Wetherspoons pub) for lunch with Roy and Janette and the boys, and then had a wander round Cambridge. Despite it raining, we managed to stay mostly dry and get to the evening do without problems. It was at a hotel called the University Arms, which is very nice (if expensive!). So we had a good time catching up with a few people from church who we hadn’t spoken to in a while. Gavin and Sarah offered to give us a lift back home, which meant that we didn’t have to spent two hours on the train (plus the walk to and from the station at both ends).

All in all it was a great day, and I wish Chris and Ruth all the best :-) (Not that either of them will read this, but the sentiment was there).

On Sunday we went to not one, not two, but THREE services! Two in the morning, and one in the evening. The morning services were harvest thanksgiving services, and so there were a few people there who don’t normally come which was nice to see. In the evening, Andy was doing the first part of a series of “Firm Foundations” courses – this was was on “Worship: The Principles”. We both very much enjoyed it, and it was good to see quite a few people from outside the parish coming – including quite a few from the St Albright’s congregation.

Right, I think that pretty much brings you up to date with the weekend. My copy of “Dig Out Your Soul”, the new Oasis album, arrived today and I’m actually rather enjoying it. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I’ve really been liking what I’ve heard so far. I will try and post up a fuller review of that when I’ve had the chance to listen to it a few times!

I happened to be searching Google Maps for churches near Colchester today (I’m not looking for a new church, just wanted to check how the Fordham site was doing :-) and came across something rather bizarre.

Google Map search for Churches near Colchester

As you can see, Google seems to think “Places of Worship” fall under the same category as… “Bus Station”. So, next time you’re at a Bus Station, just remember that you should be reverent, for you are walking on holy ground. Or something.

The other thing I should mention is Simon’s blog feed. Now, for a long time now Simon has had his blog behind a password protected area – including the RSS feed. Unfortunately, Google Reader does not like feeds which use authentication, so it just bails. I got around this by setting up a little PHP script which did the work for me. Unfortunately this means I have to host the PHP file on this server, not a massiv problem but I’d rather not have to do it.

Anyway, I’ve found a way you can subscribe to authenticated feeds in Google Reader without creating any scripts to do it for you: simply use FreeMyFeed. It very cunningly stores the username and password (encrypted) in the feed URL so that no authentication data is actually stored on FreeMyFeed.com. Pretty clever, huh?

The upshot of this is that I will be removing Simon’s blog feed from this site. From now on, please use FreeMyFeed.