We are away on holiday, so I don't know.
Even if I were there I wouldn't know because
a) I am always busy getting the music ready for the next thing and silently playing it over
and
b) Our lovely pastoral priest lacks the gift of preaching and teaching so rarely goes beyond badly paraphrasing the readings.
Me and Mrs LB were responsible for the "pew sheet" (weekly bulletin) at a church many years ago. One particularly slow news week we had a space so just put an empty square there labelled "sermon doodling space". The vicar was only moderately amused.
Probably didn't help that I'd been playing Tubular Bells on the piano shortly before as a dexterity exercise but he mostly knew it as the theme music for The Exorcist
O I wish I'd thought of that, when I was compiling and editing the pew sheet at Our Place! If there was space to be filled (which didn't happen all that often), I simply enlarged the font (as in size of type face)...
In Father F's time, the sermon doodling space might have been useful for jotting down
My Lovely Wife (dragged into every sermon)
Of course (repeated ad nauseam in every sermon)
Our Wonderful Gospel (ditto)
My Lovely Wife (again) Insert hate of the week Disobey God's Laws And Will Go To Hell
If there was space to be filled (which didn't happen all that often), I simply enlarged the font (as in size of type face)...
Enlarging the other kind of font might have been a bit tricky, especially if it was stone and dated from Olden Times.
Which indeed it is, hence the qualification! Not quite from Olden Times, but provided when the church was built (1908), and rather awkwardly placed at the west end of the north aisle (but close to the main door).
In Father F's time, the sermon doodling space might have been useful for jotting down
My Lovely Wife (dragged into every sermon)
Of course (repeated ad nauseam in every sermon)
Our Wonderful Gospel (ditto)
My Lovely Wife (again) Insert hate of the week Disobey God's Laws And Will Go To Hell
We used to have an area bishop who was originally from a large city in the north of England well known for football (if you know, you know). Whenever he visited there would be a sweepstake as to which point in the sermon he would mention the fact that he came from said city.
In Father F's time, the sermon doodling space might have been useful for jotting down
My Lovely Wife (dragged into every sermon)
Of course (repeated ad nauseam in every sermon)
Our Wonderful Gospel (ditto)
My Lovely Wife (again) Insert hate of the week Disobey God's Laws And Will Go To Hell
We used to have an area bishop who was originally from a large city in the north of England well known for football (if you know, you know). Whenever he visited there would be a sweepstake as to which point in the sermon he would mention the fact that he came from said city.
Our pp is a Liverpool season ticket holder. He lets us know.
We are away on holiday, so I don't know.
Even if I were there I wouldn't know because
a) I am always busy getting the music ready for the next thing and silently playing it over
and
b) Our lovely pastoral priest lacks the gift of preaching and teaching so rarely goes beyond badly paraphrasing the readings.
Sounds familiar. One parishioner here commented that if the dire music doesn't crush the broken reed, the lacklustre preaching will snuff out the flickering candle.
Lectionary reading on the vineyard with the murderous tenants led to a sermon that strayed perilously close to supercessionism and elided the difference between the religious leaders to whom the parable explicitly is directed and "the Jews" more generally.
On the other hand it did give me cause to ponder: has the church failed in its duty as tenant of the Lord's vineyard? Might the emptying of the churches not indicate that, without the coercive power of state and social disapproval, our failure to make Christ's love known in the world is all too clear?
Continuing the series in Romans, we were God's enemies in rebellion. The only way for us to make peace with God was for him to shed the blood of his son so that when he looks at us he doesn't see our depraved selves but Jesus. The most important thing we can ever do is to tell the world about this.
We got Christ's death and resurrection to rescue us, as usual--but through the stories of the murdered son and the stone cast out and restored. We had a brief excursus into evil leadership of some pastors, priests, teachers and how God rescues his people from that.
I take the *spiritual food* point, and also the fact that it doesn't work for everyone. I'm not sure how well-fed I've been over the years, but I do nowadays feel sympathetic to Thomas Hardy, who wrote:
On afternoons of drowsy calm
We stood in the panelled pew,
Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm
To the tune of "Cambridge New."
We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,
The clouds upon the breeze,
Between the whiles of glancing at our books,
And swaying like the trees.
So mindless were those outpourings! -
Though I am not aware
That I have gained by subtle thought on things
Since we stood psalming there.
(Afternoon Service at Mellstock)
Hardy is clearly referring to the act of worship as a whole, without singling out the sermon, but, as @Arethosemyfeet points out, worship consists of word and sacrament.
Classic Hardy there! But it's never struck me before how much John Betjeman must have been strongly influenced by him – or else it's sheer coincidence. Despite one being an agnostic and the other a fervent (though often doubting) believer, that poem could have been written by Betjeman. The specific 'brand naming' of 'Tate-and-Brady' and 'Cambridge New', the simple if slightly plonky metre, and above all the wistful melancholy – they were soul twins.
Maybe, but God as a thing separate from creation seems superfluous for that, if a long dead singer can do the same thing.
I don't think orthodox (small o: don't know about the uppercase ones but I doubt it) Christianity regards God as 'a thing separate from creation.'
It views God as not being a created thing, and therefore not himself part of creation. I'm not sure that's correct but it's what I've always understood Christianity to say.
The gospel was the parable of the workers in the vineyard.
We had a visiting (from the next parish) Indian priest whose accent was very difficult to understand.
However when the kiddies returned and told us what they had been doing one of them explained that the vineyard now is Creation and our work is to tend it, not destroy it. Chimed in nicely with the season of Creation.
Pride causes anger and anger causes all kinds of sin. The Sermon on the Mount tells us how to live now we are in the Kingdom of God. As Christians we are to confess our sins and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit to keep us from anger again.
Acts 2: 36-47 Peter preaching at Pentecost about repentance (much more than just saying sorry) and public confession of faith (equivalent to baptism). The importance of the fellowship of believers, supporting each other through the gift of the Holy Spirit
Our visiting preacher this morning spoke about God's name (from Genesis 2): 'YHWH' and how it can be pronounced as the sound when we breathe in, and out. (Yah, Weh). The first part of God's name is the first breath (inspiration) we take when we are born. And the second part of God's name is the breath (expiration) when we die.
If life is challenging or stressful and we take a really deep breath we are saying God's name, and He is always there with us at that time.
The wedding invitation. Not an allegory. Plenty more said, but the Take-home thought was: how do we react to an invitation? Not just to a wedding, but to any request or challenge in the ordinary course of life. Do we treat it with respect, keep our promises, give it due consideration, prepare appropriately?
This was after hearing the same sermon twice, in the same church, and 80% same listeners. Yes, I know a good sermon is worth repeating, and if the gap between repeats is long enough, it might not even be noticed.
I appreciate our PP has a busy schedule, but Am I Being Unreasonable to expect a different sermon at the second service of the day in the same church? ( this happens once a month).
Am I Being Unreasonable to expect a different sermon at the second service of the day in the same church? ( this happens once a month).
Hard to say whether you’re being unreasonable. Assuming your PP only preaches on Sundays, you’re doubling the amount of time they need to give to sermon preparation.
How much time is needed is incredibly variable. Someone who claims to study s as no read all the time says it only takes an hour or two to put together a sermon. Other estimates vary from 8 to 16 hours.
Can't really tell unless we know if this is the only date they preach in the month, or if they are doing services elsewhere on other Sundays.
Two sermons a month isn't bad. Two a week is ... pretty horrible, especially if they have other pastoral responsibilities. And there usually aren't so many people who attend both services in the same Sunday at one location, except for those uncommon churches where everybody still does morning and evening as a matter of course. If I were your preacher, I'd feel pretty safe with the idea that no one but the organist etc. would hear it twice.
It also depends on the nature of the two services, I’d think. @Puzzler says the two services had “80% same listeners,” so I assume it’s not just the early service and the later service, at which I would expect the same sermon but not the same people.
Evensong maybe? If that’s the case, and it really is mostly the same congregation, I’d go without a sermon at Evensong.
The practice at Our Place is usually to have the same sermon at early morning Communion, mid morning service and evening service. A number of people attend both mid morning and evening. We are just about to experiment with a different sermon in the evening, and are particularly fortunate that preaching duties can be shared between rector, non stipendary associate minister, two retired priests with PTO, and two lay readers
Am I Being Unreasonable to expect a different sermon at the second service of the day in the same church? ( this happens once a month).
It used to be de rigeur for Baptist churches to have two full-length services every Sunday with many of the same congregation at both. Once you recognise that Baptist sermons tend to be a good bit longer than Anglican ones, and that we start with "a blank sheet of paper" for every service rather than a prepared liturgy, you'll realise that a lot of work is involved. I did it for years and TBH was losing all sense of enthusiasm for the evening service, especially as numbers were often low.
When I was an occasional preacher in the baptist church of my teens-young adulthood, I used to reckon it didn’t take much less time to choose hymns and prepare the service, than to prepare the sermon. I have every sympathy with ‘losing all sense of enthusiasm’ having to do it week in and week out.
When I was an occasional preacher in the baptist church of my teens-young adulthood, I used to reckon it didn’t take much less time to choose hymns and prepare the service, than to prepare the sermon.
Agreed. And IME the sermon (and the reading(s) it is based on, of course) is the centre around which all the other pieces have to fit.
I absolute sympathise with the burden of a busy workload. Our parish priest has five churches, and most Sundays there are three services, one of which will normally be lay led. She has the regular assistance of a retired priest twice a month, and a lay reader who preaches well, plus a team who share the monthly family service. There are also two church schools where she is involved weekly. She works incredibly hard and this is my only criticism of her.
The two services situation in question occurs monthly, in the largest of the churches, being the main Eucharist in the morning plus a monthly Evensong. The choir sings at both services and at least half of the Evensong congregation has already attended the Eucharist. So 60-80% are the same listeners.
In my previous church we did not have the same readings at both services, so a repeated sermon would not have worked. but we do here, or at least the Gospel / NT reading is the same. If I were in her shoes, I would either do a very truncated version of the same sermon, or, better, a reflection or meditation, maximum 3 / 4 minutes.
I did read, years ago, about a Vicar who basically gave different versions of the same sermon at different services, i.e. the "full version" at 11am Mattins, a "headings" mini-version at the early Communion service, and a "family friendly" version at the 9.30am service in a housing estate. It made sense to me!
Many Indian people speak English as a first language, if you have difficulty with the accent you just need to listen carefully, you’ll get your ear in after a while. Just as you would with a Tyne or Glaswegian accent. If they were actually giving a service in Urdu or Hindi then your church needs a translator.
Many Indian people speak English as a first language, if you have difficulty with the accent you just need to listen carefully, you’ll get your ear in after a while. Just as you would with a Tyne or Glaswegian accent. If they were actually giving a service in Urdu or Hindi then your church needs a translator.
It's not necessarily that simple. Some people find this easier than others; if you have auditory processing difficulties some accents can be just impossible. I have before now had to end support calls and ring back hoping to get some else with Indian call centres because try as I might I cannot understand the person on the other end. My ear doesn't just "get in".
The point here is the intonation. Indian English has totally different intonation patterns and it is not reasonable to expect native speakers of British English to be able to pick up Indian English intonation patterns intuitively. They are different languages from a spoken point of view.
The point here is the intonation. Indian English has totally different intonation patterns and it is not reasonable to expect native speakers of British English to be able to pick up Indian English intonation patterns intuitively. They are different languages from a spoken point of view.
Yes. It is intonation and stress patterns, and words getting run together in unaccustomed ways. It all gets exaggerated when they are leading worship far more than when chatting one to one.
Neither of our local Indian priests speaks English as a first language. For one it is Urdu and for the other it is Tamil.
I know exactly what Alan29 is saying. We had an Indian priest for most of the summer.
He was a lovely man and was fine for the liturgy when one knew more or less what to expect
but it was really difficult to understand his homilies.
By contrast our priests of Nigerian origin are easy to understand.
Yes, we get Bible study leaders from everywhere, and some of them are easier to understand than others. The one from Haiti we have at the moment isn't too difficult. It helps for me to remember how crap my Vietnamese accent is.
Many Indian people speak English as a first language, if you have difficulty with the accent you just need to listen carefully, you’ll get your ear in after a while. Just as you would with a Tyne or Glaswegian accent. If they were actually giving a service in Urdu or Hindi then your church needs a translator.
It's usually intonation and emphasis rather than accent per se that I find hard to follow. A couple of years ago we had a visiting priest who came from I think Kenya. I found him hard to follow, which was a shame, because what I could follow was well worth paying attention to.
Many Indian people speak English as a first language, if you have difficulty with the accent you just need to listen carefully, you’ll get your ear in after a while. Just as you would with a Tyne or Glaswegian accent. If they were actually giving a service in Urdu or Hindi then your church needs a translator.
It's usually intonation and emphasis rather than accent per se that I find hard to follow. A couple of years ago we had a visiting priest who came from I think Kenya. I found him hard to follow, which was a shame, because what I could follow was well worth paying attention to.
Intonation and emphasis are part of accent.
Indian English has been taught by Indian English speakers for several generations now; this means that some specifically Indian English features are part of what is taught as English. My surname has a Th in it and an 'or' digraph; many Indian speakers cannot pronounce it at all.
Having said that, a lot of Scots and Americans seem to call me Carol.
Many Indian people speak English as a first language, if you have difficulty with the accent you just need to listen carefully, you’ll get your ear in after a while. Just as you would with a Tyne or Glaswegian accent. If they were actually giving a service in Urdu or Hindi then your church needs a translator.
It's usually intonation and emphasis rather than accent per se that I find hard to follow. A couple of years ago we had a visiting priest who came from I think Kenya. I found him hard to follow, which was a shame, because what I could follow was well worth paying attention to.
Intonation and emphasis are part of accent.
Indian English has been taught by Indian English speakers for several generations now; this means that some specifically Indian English features are part of what is taught as English. My surname has a Th in it and an 'or' digraph; many Indian speakers cannot pronounce it at all.
Having said that, a lot of Scots and Americans seem to call me Carol.
One of the vestigial influences of Gaelic on Scots and Scottish English is a tendency to separate consonant sounds with a slight "uh" rather than run them together. "Alba" being a classic example.
Comments
Even if I were there I wouldn't know because
a) I am always busy getting the music ready for the next thing and silently playing it over
and
b) Our lovely pastoral priest lacks the gift of preaching and teaching so rarely goes beyond badly paraphrasing the readings.
O I wish I'd thought of that, when I was compiling and editing the pew sheet at Our Place! If there was space to be filled (which didn't happen all that often), I simply enlarged the font (as in size of type face)...
In Father F's time, the sermon doodling space might have been useful for jotting down
My Lovely Wife (dragged into every sermon)
Of course (repeated ad nauseam in every sermon)
Our Wonderful Gospel (ditto)
My Lovely Wife (again)
Insert hate of the week Disobey God's Laws And Will Go To Hell
Which indeed it is, hence the qualification! Not quite from Olden Times, but provided when the church was built (1908), and rather awkwardly placed at the west end of the north aisle (but close to the main door).
We have a font; it's tiny, wooden and easily moveable.
We used to have an area bishop who was originally from a large city in the north of England well known for football (if you know, you know). Whenever he visited there would be a sweepstake as to which point in the sermon he would mention the fact that he came from said city.
I was thinking Leeds-Bradford.
Our pp is a Liverpool season ticket holder. He lets us know.
Sounds familiar. One parishioner here commented that if the dire music doesn't crush the broken reed, the lacklustre preaching will snuff out the flickering candle.
I couldn’t possibly comment 😇
Rejoice! Be generous! Build Community!
On the other hand it did give me cause to ponder: has the church failed in its duty as tenant of the Lord's vineyard? Might the emptying of the churches not indicate that, without the coercive power of state and social disapproval, our failure to make Christ's love known in the world is all too clear?
Classic Hardy there! But it's never struck me before how much John Betjeman must have been strongly influenced by him – or else it's sheer coincidence. Despite one being an agnostic and the other a fervent (though often doubting) believer, that poem could have been written by Betjeman. The specific 'brand naming' of 'Tate-and-Brady' and 'Cambridge New', the simple if slightly plonky metre, and above all the wistful melancholy – they were soul twins.
I don't think orthodox (small o: don't know about the uppercase ones but I doubt it) Christianity regards God as 'a thing separate from creation.'
It views God as not being a created thing, and therefore not himself part of creation. I'm not sure that's correct but it's what I've always understood Christianity to say.
And what attributes of Things and Beings do you think God does not possess?
Given that "is" is a form of the verb "to be", in what way does God be without being a Being?
We had a visiting (from the next parish) Indian priest whose accent was very difficult to understand.
However when the kiddies returned and told us what they had been doing one of them explained that the vineyard now is Creation and our work is to tend it, not destroy it. Chimed in nicely with the season of Creation.
Pride causes anger and anger causes all kinds of sin. The Sermon on the Mount tells us how to live now we are in the Kingdom of God. As Christians we are to confess our sins and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit to keep us from anger again.
If life is challenging or stressful and we take a really deep breath we are saying God's name, and He is always there with us at that time.
This was after hearing the same sermon twice, in the same church, and 80% same listeners. Yes, I know a good sermon is worth repeating, and if the gap between repeats is long enough, it might not even be noticed.
I appreciate our PP has a busy schedule, but Am I Being Unreasonable to expect a different sermon at the second service of the day in the same church? ( this happens once a month).
How much time is needed is incredibly variable. Someone who claims to study s as no read all the time says it only takes an hour or two to put together a sermon. Other estimates vary from 8 to 16 hours.
Two sermons a month isn't bad. Two a week is ... pretty horrible, especially if they have other pastoral responsibilities. And there usually aren't so many people who attend both services in the same Sunday at one location, except for those uncommon churches where everybody still does morning and evening as a matter of course. If I were your preacher, I'd feel pretty safe with the idea that no one but the organist etc. would hear it twice.
Evensong maybe? If that’s the case, and it really is mostly the same congregation, I’d go without a sermon at Evensong.
The two services situation in question occurs monthly, in the largest of the churches, being the main Eucharist in the morning plus a monthly Evensong. The choir sings at both services and at least half of the Evensong congregation has already attended the Eucharist. So 60-80% are the same listeners.
In my previous church we did not have the same readings at both services, so a repeated sermon would not have worked. but we do here, or at least the Gospel / NT reading is the same. If I were in her shoes, I would either do a very truncated version of the same sermon, or, better, a reflection or meditation, maximum 3 / 4 minutes.
Afraid so. Our diocese has a number of foreign priests, but no programmes to help them learn English.
It's not necessarily that simple. Some people find this easier than others; if you have auditory processing difficulties some accents can be just impossible. I have before now had to end support calls and ring back hoping to get some else with Indian call centres because try as I might I cannot understand the person on the other end. My ear doesn't just "get in".
Yes. It is intonation and stress patterns, and words getting run together in unaccustomed ways. It all gets exaggerated when they are leading worship far more than when chatting one to one.
Neither of our local Indian priests speaks English as a first language. For one it is Urdu and for the other it is Tamil.
He was a lovely man and was fine for the liturgy when one knew more or less what to expect
but it was really difficult to understand his homilies.
By contrast our priests of Nigerian origin are easy to understand.
It's usually intonation and emphasis rather than accent per se that I find hard to follow. A couple of years ago we had a visiting priest who came from I think Kenya. I found him hard to follow, which was a shame, because what I could follow was well worth paying attention to.
Intonation and emphasis are part of accent.
Indian English has been taught by Indian English speakers for several generations now; this means that some specifically Indian English features are part of what is taught as English. My surname has a Th in it and an 'or' digraph; many Indian speakers cannot pronounce it at all.
Having said that, a lot of Scots and Americans seem to call me Carol.
One of the vestigial influences of Gaelic on Scots and Scottish English is a tendency to separate consonant sounds with a slight "uh" rather than run them together. "Alba" being a classic example.