[Magdalen] opening churches

[Roger Stokes]

Grace,

I have long felt that a sermon should consider the context in which it 
is delivered, i.e. be relevant to the congregation. Decades ago I was in 
a diocese where the Suffragan "guided by the Spirit" was known to 
deliver basically the same sermon whatever the context with a minor 
variation according to whether it was a confirmation or the institution 
of a new priest. It was a joke around the diocese until I wrote to him 
to say that I felt his normal confirmation sermon was not appropriate 
for the congregation I was serving then. That must be a problem for 
anybody recording a sermon to be played back for congregations up and 
down the land.

When you said you deliver the service from your kitchen the naughty side 
of me wondered about having some fresh-baked rolls which you take out of 
the oven at the start of the service and then use for the sacrament of 
the table. (When I was at university we had a roll for communion in the 
college chapel.) The kitchen would also be a suitable venue for a week 
when the Gospel admonishes us to be like the leaven which leavens the 
whole dough. That would go down well with Zoom and a "here's one I made 
earlier" bit.

Roger

On 05/07/2020 15:07, Grace Cangialosi wrote:
> We are allowed to have outdoor worship with no more than 50 people, masks,
> no group singing and no sharing of communion.  Some churches are doing
> this, some aren't.  We aren't, for a variety of reasons.  Churches may also
> record or stream services from their buildings with no more than the
> numbers necessary to do that.  We don't have the technology for that.
> I'm still doing services on Zoom from my kitchen.  Last week and this I've
> patched in sermons by our bishop and another staff member.  They're
> offering us one each week as a break from preaching, if we want. I'm not
> going to make a habit of that, but it was nice to have a couple weeks'
> break from preaching. I'd only missed one week of preaching since December,
> except Easter, when I sent everyone to the Cathedral website and went there
> myself.