[Magdalen] Psalm - Whither Goeth Thou?

[sally.davies at gmail.com]

Well, it probably doesn't need saying but he's not actually talking to God,
just to some self-projection that he calls God (maybe we all do that,
frequently).

As the Good Book says, if we can't love our brother that we can see, how
can we love God whom we cannot see...

IN terms of time, ourr traditional early service with Gloria, Psalm and all
gets through in just over an hour. The "contemporary" 9.30 takes more than
an hour and half, minus Gloria, Psalm and Creed but PLUS a string of
choruses, some repeated several times, a stand-up Testimony session, and a
lengthy (though usually interesting and well preached) sermon.

The Communion is done before the Word so the children can share and then
they go out to Youth and Sunday School. It's a very large church, many
young families, three services on a Sunday and all well attended.

Many Evangelical churches in this Province have a similar structure though
IME doing Communion first is a bit unusual, the children usually go to
Sunday School from the start and then come in for Communion. St John's does
it this way to include them in the "praise and worship".

The evening service is all "Scripture and song" though once a month there's
a Eucharist as well. A fairr number of older people go to that one, too.

Sallly D
On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 at 03:00 James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> This sort of reminds me of when we had an interim a few years ago, Fr.
> Will, as we called him, noticed a man who was a fairly regular attendee at
> the early service.  However, he generally came just as the service was
> starting and left just before it ended.
>
> So Fr. Will, desirous of making some contact with this faithful member of
> the congregation, one Sunday managed to get things so that he was actually
> at the back of the church as the man was leaving.  He approached him and
> said that he had seen him at the services often but never was able to say
> hello, and he just wanted to talk with him.
>
> The man fixed him with an icy stare: "I didn't come here to talk to you; I
> came here to talk to God." And he then walked out.  Fr. Will was sad, but
> realized the man just wanted to be there and not be engaged any further at
> this time.
>
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**"  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > In a message dated 3/14/2015 10:17:49 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> > jguthrie at pipeline.com writes:
> >
> >
> > But  there will always be couch-potato parishes where the expectation is
> a
> > morning entertainment by the choir (and clergy), occasionally interrupted
> > by
> > talking.>>>>
> >
> >
> > Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!   :-)
> >
> >
> > David S.
> >
>