GadgetVicar

Renewed Love of Music

Spurred on by the comment by Carol Moore (lead singer of Talking Drums) the other day, I did something I haven't done for twenty years and hooked up a turntable to the hifi. I've listened to "Devo Live", Tubeway Army's "Replicas", "Pieces of Eight" by Styx and two lps by an obscure new wave dulcimer band called Attacco Decente. And it all sounds very good indeed.

One has to be intentional about vinyl - with a cd or mp3, one can skip songs easily. It's convenient, I suppose, but not conducive to listening to albums as the artist intended. Music is more disposable now. In the olden days, we used to listen to whole albums, even when we had to get up out of our chair to flip the record over. We'd have the artwork on the sleeve to examine in detail, often reading the easily legible lyrics on the inner sleeve over and over again. It's a much more engaging and relaxing process. I think I'm hooked!

Charity shops, here I come on my search for ancient vinyl recordings.

Unwanted Comments

I have noticed that, on some blogs, the authors don't publish my comments. Over the last few months, this has happened several times. I've been putting it down to the comments getting somehow lost in the wilds of the interweb. It has now happened too many times to be that. After taking time to make a considered response, surely it would be polite to publish it? Or maybe there is a little too much truth in my comments and their readers might be exposed to a different point of view. We can't have that can we?  I suppose that these bloggers have every right to ignore any comment they don't like.

I perceive some unwillingness to listen in those who disagree with or even strongly disapprove of my views on all sorts of things. Some might say there was intolerance at work.

Let it be known that all publishable comments which are not rude, libelous, or personal attacks will continue to be published here. I have no fear of opposing views being aired to the wee band of GV readers. I'm a true liberal that way, you see.

It Takes Courage

Some fantastic music from 1982. Oh, how we danced at many a gig to this one!

Talking Drums - Courage

The Forthcoming General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

An email received from Willie Philip, minister of St George's, Tron, Glasgow:

Dear friends in Christ,

As you will no doubt already have seen in a spate of recent press articles, this year will see a highly charged General Assembly, with some of our brothers and sisters from Aberdeen Presbytery appearing at the Bar in their appeal against the Presbytery’s decision to induct a man who has openly declared himself to be living in a homosexual partnership.

Already, some voices in the church are raising the stakes.  The editorial of this Month’s Life and Work (the C of S magazine) urged strongly for the Church to show leadership in opening the way for acceptance of homosexual practice.  Articles have appeared in the national papers similarly.

But this is an issue of enormous magnitude:  not just about sexuality, nor even only about the authority of Scripture, but about the nature of humanity, and indeed the nature of the gospel itself, a gospel not of affirmation of sin, but which demands repentance from sin, and brings liberation and transformation from sin.

Mindful of the fact that there are many congregations, and many more church members, who are deeply troubled at the decision of Aberdeen Presbytery, and who do not want to see our General Assembly publicly backing their decision, in consultation and with the support of Forward Together a group of us have published a Statement which can be found here:

http://www.confessingchurch.org.uk/

It seeks to urge commissioners to support the Aberdeen protesters, and also to support an overture being brought from the Presbytery of Lochcarron and Skye, which seeks Assembly support for a clear endorsement of biblical sexual morality:  “That this Church shall not accept for training, ordain, admit, re-admit, induct or introduce to any ministry of the Church anyone involved in a sexual relationship outside of faithful marriage between a man and a woman”.

(We believe these issues will be debated on Saturday evening, 23rd May)

We would like to encourage your support in signing up to this statement, which can be found at:

http://www.confessingchurch.org.uk/

We want as many to sign up from the C of S as possible, especially ministers, elders and other leaders, to send a strong signal from the ‘grass roots’ of the church that we do not want our Assembly to lead away from Christian orthodoxy in this way.  But also from others of all denominations whose solidarity is so important, and such an encouragement at such times.

I do hope you will add your name, and be willing to circulate it to others you know in your presbytery (and elsewhere) whom you believe would also be willing to sign up in support.

Finally, but above all, please do join with us in prayer about this matter, that the Lord our God will hear our plea and have mercy on us in his church, and that this may rebound for the glory of Christ and his gospel in our land.

Thank you for taking time to help us.

Yours in our Lord Jesus Christ,

William J U Philip

Sermon Text

Last Sunday, the congregation took over the sermon slot with their texting of questions on worship. We hadn't planned for it at all. Immediately before the service, when I realised that Jenny had texted me the questions I was meant to ask her, we had the inspiration to ask the people of God to text in their questions too. To my surprise, it worked very well, with over thirty texts received, most of which asked helpful questions. We covered an awful lot of ground, but I hope that we both cast vision for worship and learned together too.

Listen to it all here.

Eighteen

GV Boy reaches the magnificent age of eighteen today. How can this be, when I am still so young myself? I mused on this at regional council last night during one of the boring bits (which were not quite as many as usual - could the regional council be about to spring into life?), estimating that, of the  couple of dozen people present,  I was the fourth youngest. After twenty one years of ordained ministry, I'm slowly edging up the age ladder at ecclesiastical meetings.

Many happy returns GV Boy! To mark the occasion, I look forward to visiting a hostelry with him later this evening.

Talent

An utterly amazing Talent Show last night. The audience enjoyed comedy, music, song, dance and even some swinging from the rafters from trapeze act, Aerolocos. The standard was very high indeed, and some of the acts were profoundly moving. One such piece was Cheen's performance on the piano and Powerpoint which she dedicated to her papa and to her home province of Szechuan following last year's earthquake.

As usual with these things I feel humbled and very limited in my abilities!

Thanks to Alison (who put the whole thing together), the caterers, welcome team, techies and performers. Thanks too to everyone who offered their skills and participated in the auction.

The whole thing was fundraiser for the Building for the Future Project but it also served as a wonderful evening simply enjoying God's creativity and one another's company.

(Picture courtesy of Grayza)