Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 October 2004 11:56:00
Well, now he's gone, after at least three goes of getting rid of him (the Grand Opening of Chapel Perious on Thursday, his works leaving do on Friday and then a final Communion Service yesterday), Vic the Vicar, after 14 years as Anglican Chaplain and Parish Priest, has gone off to think and teach about cheese, how it affects our lives and how it should be applied globally. Or is that gloopily?
A final sermon on keeping faithfulness, not judging and remembering that Jesus would most likely be in the ex-church-cum-nightclub-with-pole-dancing than in our ex-church-cum-chaplaincy-centre. Then a bit of wine and nibbles, an encyclopaedia of Jewish cheese-related recipes as a gift, a bit of blubbing from the people who have been here longest, and then he was gone.
Forgetting to leave the vestry key, which I am now going to have to wrestle out of the hands of the chaplaincy administrator.
Vic the Vicar has been splendid. Encouraged me in my preaching; got me to do jobs (like getting the readings ready, helping with communion); turned up half-way through the first hymn at my licensing service, that sort of thing. Primarily, he's been the driving force in bullying people (especially the Anglican Church) that it is better for this building to be multi-purpose chaplaincy centre maintained by the Univeristy than a shabby parish church with a congregation of 8 and half a million quid's worth of repairs to do. I find it staggering that the diocese even had to think very long about the choice - they actually took about 8 years to think about it. Hopefully, this will help the Anglican Church realise that the parish church, in the cities at least (with a few notable exceptions) ceasing to have any realistic meaning in the context of ministry. Almost everyone is a congregationalist now, choosing where to worship.
Useless sermon at the 5 o'clock last night - I just went on too long, and it was too didactic for the more informal setting we're hoping for. Did get a laugh for having an e.e.cummings poem being followed by a piece of praise written by a 13th century Welsh monk.
Discussion on "what is faith?" ended up by us guessing which of the four figures around Jesus in the stained glass window was which of the 4 evangelists (apparently, after a fire some 50 years ago, they put to of them back in the wrong place, so it doesn't go logically Mt, Mk, L, J). The five figures all have symbols under them - Jesus has a Pelican (mediaeval piety believed the pelican plucked it's own feathers to draw blood); then the 4 Ev's have a human, an ox, an eagle and a lion, which are the four beasts from Zechariah/Revelation, and have traditionally been applied to each of the evangelists - I think it goes:
Matthew / lion
Mark / ox
Luke / human
John / eagle
but I wouldn't sweat to it.