Baptism

Baptism has been on my mind today. This Sunday I will be baptising four infants. We seem to be having a rush of Baptisms here in Bideford. Anyhow today a batch of Baptismal Certificates arrived which I had ordered from the Methodist Publishing House. With them was a copy of the Methodist Worship Book (1999). I ordered this because for the first time since it came out, I am not at either a church or college which possesses copies of it for me to 'borrow.' Here we are still using the Methodist Service Book which dates back to 1975 and that is likely to continue as we are not in the right financial situation to make such an investment at present.

Anyhow I found myself perusing the 'Baptism of Young Children' service. This service reminds why I am a Methodist. There are two things I particularly like;

1/. The Baptism takes place before the vows and so is not conditional upon them.

2/. Before the Baptism the minister says to the child who is to be baptised

N
for you Jesus Christ came into the world;
for you he lived and showed God's love;
for you he suffered death on the Cross;
for you he triumphed over death,
rising to newness of life;
for you he prays at God's right hand:
all this for you,
before you could know anything of it.
In your Baptism,
the word of Scripture is fulfilled:
'We love, because God first loved us.'

To me those are beautiful words. They remind me of the imensity of God's love for us. But what takes my breath away is that this love of God comes to us before we are able to do anything to deserve it. It is pure Grace! A verse of Scripture that always been special to me comes from St Paul's letter to the Romans Chapter 5 Verse 8;

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

It all reminds us that God makes the first move of love towards us. Why? Because amazing as it might seem, God sees us all as absolutely special. That surely is something that those of us who struggle with low self esteem need to remember.

Well I am glad to be conducting a service of Infant Baptism on Sunday. It is not just about getting 'the child done.' It is about celebrating the extraordinary love of God and the valuing of all people even the most helpless child.

Coming - a new site

As of this weekend a new site will appear containing weekly sermons from North Devon. These will normally be posted on the Saturday before preaching.

Wasted Votes

Back to the Election.

Yesterday's pearl came from the overpromoted Education Secretary Ruth Kelly.

If people decide that they don't want to support a Labour government and they would prefer to support the Liberal Democrats, then what they are really doing is allowing the Conservative Party to walk in through the back door.

Is that not unbelievable arrogance. Ms Kelly says we can only chose between two parties. She tells us that if we don't back the most authoritarian government in history which deceived us into a war which cost up to 100,000 lives, then we are supporting the Conservative Party. Doesn't it remind you of Animal Farm where as the tyranny of the pigs gets worse, dissent is ridiculed as opening the way to the return of Farmer Jones?

Well, some of us are not so easily brow beaten. Shocking as it may be to Ruth Kelly and others such as Peter Hain and Attack Dog Reid who have made similar suggestions, some of us may vote on the basis of something as old fashioned as principles.

Any validity that Kelly's argument has is based on the idea that parties such as the Lib Dems and the Greens cannot possibly win. Like with Freddy Mercury's 'We are the Champions' she has no time for those she sees as 'losers.' Yet not a vote has been counted at present. She cannot tell the outcome other than that she knows the voting system is rigged against smaller parties.

It might help Ms Kelly to read this from the Labour Party Manifesto in 1997;

We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past- the post system.

When that report was ignored without a referendum and the issue put aside as inconvenient, I began to distrust the government's word. Now after 8 years of spin, I find it stunning that they tell us to vote on the basis of fear of Farmer Jones. Well, if they had been true to their word, Ms Kelly's proposition would have been an impossibility.

Down in the Gutter

Well yesterday we had it. According to the News of the World a twit of a judge named Judge Langley has decided that it is in the 'public interest' for the News of the World to tell a story from an embittered nanny to the effect that the beckham marriage is all but over.

Call me a bore if you like but I am sure that things such as legal advice over a war in whic h thousands get killed is a matter of public interest. But the problems in the love life of a footballer and a would be singer, well surely that is a matter for them. Making public private difficulties of a married couple is to me on a par with the sort of pervert who drills holes in bedroom walls to observe the action. In a case like this once the titillaion is over and the Dirty Digger has coined in more money, the end result is that a family including children are left with the misery of an unhappy situaion made worse and shared with every nosey parker on the planet.

I have no great feelings about the Beckhams. However, I despise the cult of celebrity which build people up in a manner akin to a fairy tale before destroying them when they demonstrate normal moral failings.

I wonder how the Dirty Digger would feel to have his life trawled over salaciously or indeed that of his editor or journalistic whores. It's time to stand up to this degrading filth. Would that the Dirty Digger and the News of the World Editor could be horsewhipped as half time entertainment at the FA Cup final. But no! Most of us are too decent to descend to such a gutter.

Most of us that is. An exception can be made for the political class who whilst ignoring the electorate other than for the five yearly time of deception, seem to be totally captivated by the peddler of this filth. For Messrs Blair, Brown and Howard have all degraded themselves by going on pilgrimage to News International HQ.

Judge Langley may be ignorant of 'public interest'. I suggest that the public interest would be best served by politicians having the backbone to give the Digger the sort of gesture that used to be associated with that great showjumper Harvey Smith.

Where have all the Young People gone?

Went to my district synod yesterday and actually stayed awake!

The highlight of the day was a talk by Mike Bossingham who has recently written a book on Family Friendly Churches. He highlighted the massive decline in Sunday schools over the past century and explained that in the future our expectation that at key moments in life, people would return to the church no longer holds. Why? Because many have never been there in the first place.

Mike explained how there were churches that have bucked the trend. However to do so means a major change in our church culture. We need to be welcoming to young people, sensitive to the needs of the fast changing world of family life and welcoming of creativity.

Mike's book which is accompanied by a CD Rom tells stories of some of the churches that have responded to this situation. The circuit in which I work intends to explore these issues in the next few months. Certainly we need in a changing world to be open to a realisation that we need to find new ways of being church. Otherwise the shock will come if it has not already at the point when the congregation is so old that there are no volunteers left to do the jobs that need to be done.

I would encourage any reader to look at the Family Friendly Churches website and even to buy the book with a view to being open to change.

As well as this ( although this is not the subject of Mike's book) Ithink that the church needs to start engaging with the real world and not the world of 100 years ago that is so often romanticised. And that means being constructive in that engagement. After all if the church is seen in the reactionary guise adopted in recent years by the new Pope, well we can hardly blame people for walking away.

Chelsea

Grudgingly I say congratulations to Chelsea. They have clearly been the best team this season and desrve to be Premiership Champions. However, I am grudging in this because the signs are more clear than ever that footballing success can be bought. Others have done it but Chelsea have done it on a grand scale. I struggle to comprehend how someone like Abromovitch can make so much in so little time. After all oil workers (his industry) in Russia are paid a pittance. Still I guess the rest of us football fans are a tad jealous and would love to be in their boots.

The best news is that near bankrupt cambridge City have come second in Conference South. Now that's an excellent achievement!

Is this election necessary?

I can't help wondering if thisa General Election is necessary at this time. The current Blair Government has after all another year to go if it wishes. There is no problem implementing its programme through Parliament other than that which arose in its haste for dissolution.

To me there seem good reasons why a General Election is undesirable at this time. After all we have the postal voting scandal in Birmingham which is now accompanied by a massive increase in postal voting concerning which the conduct of certain political parties may be open to criticism.

More than that on two crucial issues Labour seems to be hiding behind still to be published reports. These issues are local government finance and pensions. What eventually emerges on these issues may indeed be unpopular but by then there will be a long wait before any future election.

Come to think of it, I think I know why the Prime Minister was not for waiting!

Pope Benedict XV1

I guess that in my worse nightmares I never once envisaged Cardinal Ratzinger as a future Pope - at least until his election sermon ahead of the conclave. For years he has been the ultimate disciplinarian of the church who succeeded in making John Paul look a relative liberal. On a range of issues from academic freedom to relations with other faiths he has been the ultimate rottweiler. I find it hard to believe that he will in any way respond to the challenges of engaging with modern society.

However, equally depressing has been some of the attitude of the British press. Always longing to mention the war ( not Blair's mind you!) they have dug up the fact that the new Pope was at 14 a member of the Hitler Youth. This was hardly a free decision of an adolescent and says nothing about the new Pope.

A dreadful choice - Yes! But sadly the British media missed the real issues.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I hope to post at least something each day. I hope that you will join in with your opinions. First postings will be tomorrow night - unless inspiration hits me early.