Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 February 2006 21:42:39
A long session in church this morning, not mainly due to the length of the service but because there was a meeting about the interregnum afterwards. I was rather shocked to hear the proposal that we join with four other parishes to form a very large team ministry. Positive spin cannot disguise that numbers of clergy in the diocese are (like lifts) always 'going down' when you really want them to be 'going up'.
The anthem, 'Litany to the Holy Spirit' (Hurford) was sung beautifully as a soprano solo, followed by full soprano, then full choir. Sometimes the simplest arrangements are the best.
It was hard to sleep through the evening service, with children hanging out of every pew. Education Sunday comes but once a year and there are rather a lot of schools in Tavistock. We had the usual 'wriggly worms and cute caterpillar' type of songs from the youngest children, through to Vaughan Williams' arrangement of 'All people that on earth do dwell' played rather well by a school orchestra plus organ. The choir contribution was rather long, so thankfully the congregation joined in the refrain - some syrupy modulated thing by Rutter, the name of which escapes me. I couldn't quite decide on which side of the line bordering 'kitsch' it should go, but it was fairly close if not actually over the line. The service was also longer than usual due to a rather interesting new liturgy for the commissioning of a new headteacher to a church school. It sounded slightly awkward due to its newness, but I expect that will soon disappear as it becomes accepted practice in the schools of the diocese. There seem to be a lot of headteacher posts vacant at the moment.