I’ve been reflecting recently on what I’ve started calling the “messy bed test”. It runs is as follows. My younger son, for reasons known only to himself, likes to mess up our bed. He likes to pile up the pillows, mound up the duvet, push the bedspread onto the floor, and then sort of burrow into the bedding. I suppose it’s a sort of den or something. By any objective measurement this is a pretty benign activity – it only takes 2 minutes to straighten out the bed again, and he’s not doing any harm at all, and he loves […]

It seems apt at this time of year, where there is a lot of remembering going on, to think about the past, and in particular people from the past. One thing I have noticed is that people from my past don’t always stay there, and in particular having changed to another church locally, there are an lot of familiar faces. In fact, there have been one or two folk where I’ve had to pause for a minute, and think to myself about how we “signed off” last time we saw each other. Are there any unresolved issues kicking about – […]

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road? A. To get to the other side. Chances are you’ve heard this joke a million times – I certainly have. It’s the classic children’s joke – utterly daft, amusing because it’s pointless. It sets up an expectation of an unexpected punchline, but then no. There are million of daft jokes out there – “How do you know if there’s an elephant in your fridge? Footprints in the butter.”, “What’s yellow and very dangerous? Shark infested custard”, “What’s brown and sticky? A stick” and so on. I love these jokes. They’re not particularly […]

I lit up Darth Vader’s lightsaber with a laser pointer – think it worked pretty well. And I also had a stab at BB8.

I recently had the pleasure and privilege of being at a clergy study day, at which Rowan Williams was speaking on prayer. He is a excellent speaker and theologian, and gave us much food for thought. A number of things he said struck me, either as new ideas, or timely reminders, so I thought I’d jot them down here. I must make clear that all of this is my paraphrase/understanding of what was said. The nature of a post like this is that it’s a little disjointed, and really just a collection of thoughts. Anyway – here goes! Prayer is […]

One of the things I have had to come to terms with is to what extent the stuff we do at the front of church is/should be a performance. There is no question in my mind that leading a congregation in worship (in the broadest sense) is a performance, and that is right and proper, and should be approached as such. For instance, when I presided at communion for the first time last week, I practiced the words, the actions, the movements, and timings beforehand until I could do it naturally, and in a way that helps us all feel […]

On Saturday I am going to be ordained priest at Ripon Cathedral, and I’m writing this at my ordination retreat at Mirfield. It has been a bit odd trying to explain to people that I’m being ordained again, but that’s the way we roll in the Church of England. This time last year I was preparing to be ordained “Deacon”, and this time around it’s “Priest”, or “Presbyter”. It is rooted in the threefold historic orders of ministry – Bishop, Priest, and Deacon, with (if you’ll excuse the gross oversimplification) the Bishop particularly being about oversight, pastoring the pastors; Priest […]

At my old church, we used to run a summer Holiday Club for local children, where we did usual sort of Sunday group stuff over a whole week! Of course, the highlight was the daily drama, where (in theory) the teaching from the day would be explored and we would travel together on a spiritual journey of learning over the week. But it was also a whole lot of fun, with silly jokes, daft costumes, and a real pantomime feel. One year in particular stands out in my memory, which was when the Club was called Kingdom Quest, and the […]

Spring Harvest has always held a very special place in my heart – as a young person I would travel to Skegness, to be spiritually fed and inspired, to see hundreds, if not thousands, of other people my age worshipping God. Just in case you haven’t heard of it, Spring Harvest is a Christian festival – essentially a bible week – with loads of teaching, seminars, workshops, worship, prayer, and so on. It’s for the whole family, with different streams of activities tailored for specific age ranges, and across all the sites and weeks about 20,000 people go in total. […]

The second idea for child-friendly prayer/worship was from CBBC’s Art Ninja program(!), specifically The Day of the Bug episode (although I’m guessing the iPlayer link will expire in a week or so). It needs a little bit of organisation and time – but the basic idea is that you create a large (A4 or A3) picture of your fingerprint, with the prayer bit being that we’re each special and uniquely made by God, so all the fingerprints are different. It is a two-stage process (especially with lots of children), so is probably best done either over two days/sessions, depending on […]