Except for the hymns of the day my posting seems to have been very slow recently but I notice that most bloggers have little spells like this.
I tend to blog when I really feel I have something to say and have not really had much to say recently so no posting.
I hope readers have been enjoying the hymns of the day from the pen of Fanny J Crosby and it has led me in a sense to comment on some things that are happening that lots of churches don't seem to have any knowledge about.
The past few week I have been asking congregations in churches I have been preaching at about a number of things that are going on at the moment and been rather disappointed how little knowledge there is about them.I was in another circuit this morning and they seemed to be poorly informed. Here for readers are the items and hopefully a few of you have heard about them:
The Real Easter Egg
I was amazed that we consume around 8 million Easter eggs in this country and that there has never been any details of the real Easter story on them - that is until this year. You can buy an Easter egg this year called the 'Real Easter Egg' which shares some of the story on the box and is Fairtrade.
Singing the Faith
I think I have mentioned this before and while I understand there is a great deal of opposition to the new hymn book, when I asked this morning there must have been 95% of the congregation who had blank expressions. Seems to me that the book has not even got onto agendas of churches and churches councils and really now is the time we ought to be thinking about it if we have any intention of buying it or even deciding not to.
Biblefresh
I am amazed that this is another project that people seem to have very little idea about especially when there are projects going on within the Methodist Church to support this. In our district we are helping with the project to hand write the Bible and each circuit is supposed to be taking part so it is reasonable to expect that this might have filtered down to the individual churches.
The other thing happening in our district is that we have purchased a John Wesley study Bible which is going round the district and will then be sent to Rwanda where we have been supporting a number of projects. The church I was at this morning is in our district so I had hoped they would have heard of the Biblefresh project.
I wonder if this is just a local thing or if it is a much wider thing and the church I attend is well informed and keeping abreast of a number of things that others seem to have no knowledge of.
Well a few things there to think about and who knows some of you might have some thoughts on them - or even what the experience is where you are.
3 comments:
When Hymns and Psalms was produced, there was a lot of publicity, then the sample booklet, then the pre-publication offer (which was the only reason one of the churches I had bought it). This time, apart from the draft list in the MR a while back, there's been nothing; I've had nothing I could take to a church council, and now there is a pre-publication offer which will make no difference at all because we haven't even discussed it. Unless they give us adequate publicity material, it isn't going to go anywhere. None of my churches can afford to buy a whole new set of books, and few of them would be interested if they could. I suspect this one is going to bomb...
My Mother would have said it is a lame duck, and you are right I think there has been very little publicity especially if you do not read the Methodist Recorder.
I have to say thought I am not sure the other things have been communicated very well either given the response I have been getting wherever I have mentioned them. Biblefresh is doing slightly better in our circuit than some of the stuff but even though we have now had two newsletters there is still some surprise when it is mentioned.
I think the 'Real Easter Egg' would be a great idea for my scripture class, many of whom are hearing the 'real' Easter story for the first time.
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