An old friend of mine, Martin Jackson, is a vicar in the north of England, and blogs about life in his parish. This is in the diocese of Durham, so he recently had the honour of having his photo taken with the diocesan bishop N.T. Wright.
Today Martin has blogged on Dealing with homicidal pews. This sounds an improbable subject, but he reports the following exchange as genuinely overheard:
… an example of congregational nostalgia, implicit in an objection raised to the removal of a church pew: “Someone died in that pew.” To which the parish priest had replied, “Then it had better go before it kills someone else.” At which another priest leapt to her feet and shouted, “Let me have it – I can put it to good use in my parish….”
I’m glad that my church‘s building, dating from 1971, has never had pews. The mediaeval parish church (which is by the way where Lorenza and I are to be married – the date is now set for 24th October) had pews when I worshipped there, nearly 25 years ago now, but they were taken out and replaced with nice chairs about ten years ago.
Improbable, but true. Title for the whole conference is “Time Matters.” And it’s going brilliantly. The incident occurred during a presentation on “Navigating Nostalgia in the Congregation.” Since then we’ve had groupwork on “The Stewardship of Time,” and Professor Tom Kirwood on “Ageing Today: What the Passage of Time does to Human Beings.” Thought-provoking / energising stuff. Bishop Tom’s Bible study on the Sabbath was new ground for him – and should be worth looking forward to when it gets written up (though I suspect there’s a different project first in his forthcoming sabbatical leave).
Martin, thanks for the comment. Sorry if it looks like I ignored the rest of the conference. N.T. Wright (the same person as Bishop Tom for anyone who doesn’t understand Anglicanism) on the Sabbath sounds a very interesting topic. And I would like to understand what a bit too much of the passage of time has done to us and our contemporaries.