Coldplay 'Charlie Brown' Video: Is Petty Crime Peanuts?

Stole a key
Took a car downtown where the lost boys meet
Took a car downtown and took what they offered me
To set me free



It's a bit odd that, not so long after the riots, the most succesful rock group in the UK can pen a tribute to petty criminals, and then celebrate it in video. Not so long ago Coldplay were the best thing this side of OK Go when it came to creative videos for their singles, and there's probably a whole lot worse in a lot of other songs. But the story here is: hoodie gets up, does some parkour, smashes window, steals car, gets girlfriend, goes to rave, vandalises car with spraypaint, snogs girlfriend, watches sunrise. So romantic, unless you happen to be the car owner.

Is this a celebration of petty crime, or just 'art'? And are we really convinced that 'Charlie Brown' is a reference to a Peanuts character, and not to drugs?

I don't really want to have a go at Coldplay, they're a household favourite, they write great songs, and some of their stuff has got a real spiritual edge. But I really don't like this.

Ebuzzing/Wikio Religion Blogs - February top 10

Ebuzzings 'most influential blogs' list has just been updated for February. Here are the top 10 blogs in the Religion and Belief category.

1. Thinking Anglicans (must be a General Synod coming up)
2. Islam in Europe
3. Krish Kandiah (the Driscoll effect?)
4. Echurch blog (has replaced Church Mouse for me as my most regular read, good source of links, news, opinion from a wide range of topics)
5. Peter Saunders
6. The Freethinker
7. Tall Skinny Kiwi
8. The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley
9. iBenedictines
10. Anglican Mainstream, even though it's not a blog. Andrew Brown has some interesting thoughts.
11. The BigBible project (of course I can count: see 10)

Points of order:
 - Church Mouse has sprung back into the top 20 on the basis of just one post.
 - you'll find this blog in the top 20 if you can remember what it was called 2 years ago. That seems to be mostly on the strength of Twitter - on average over the last few months there have been 3-4 links from other blogs and around 100 retweets. Makes me wonder where the traffic came from BT (Before Twitter).

and I'm going to link to The Vicars Wife (65) for no particular reason, but just to see if it helps her ranking next month. Actually, we could all do it and see what happens.....

Baby Boomers and Church

Baby Boomers have left churches because they find them to be too much like other institutions, lacking authenticity and credibility. They sense that their values and life-style are not welcome at church.

They feel stunted by church in their spiritual and personal growth; and they look in vain for their church to be genuinely concerned for the wide social and global issues. As I type I imagine cries of ‘our church is not like that’ from across the country, but the research indicates that these are the perceptions of Boomers who have left in large numbers, and should therefore be considered seriously. Boomers generally mistrusted the motives of leaders regarding the power they exercised, and although they may have mellowed, ‘leaders’ still have to earn their respect and trust, even in the church.

Now is the moment for us to grasp the opportunity of re-engaging Baby Boomers with Christianity. Now is the time when Baby Boomers are starting to grapple with the life-changing experience of retirement. For many, loss of identity comes with giving up a paid job as well as new economic challenges and there is always a process of change to negotiate. As a group, Boomers are healthier, wealthier, more educated and travelled than any preceding retiring generation. They are also more separated from the church and have the potential to be dealing with more moral issues and regrets than previous generations too.

from the latest Mission Scene e-bulletin from the Baptist church, which is the only newsletter in my inbox which I make sure I read thoroughly.  There are several articles on Boomers and the church, I particularly like the idea of churches offering Gap Years for the newly retired.

There's plenty of other training, events and ideas there too, from the Jubilee and Olympics to childrens work, the retired, leadership, cafe church, etc. etc. Worth a browse.

Update: see the comment below from Steve for a first person insight into what this means.

Sad Stats for Synod: Childrens Attendance 1989-2010.

Following on from yesterdays figures for adult attendance, here's the stats on childrens attendance at CofE churches from 1989-2010. I hope that Synod this week can take time away from rearranging the dog collars on our cruise liner, and the usual tittle tattle about Rowan Williams, to ask what this data means for us.

The same riders apply to these figures as to the adult ones: it's 2 different measures for the 2 decades (usual Sunday attendance, then average weekly attendance) and theres a gap for comparison between 1999 and 2000.

The good news is that 15 Dioceses saw childrens numbers grow in the Noughties, which for all except London was a reversal of decline the previous decade. So it is possible to turn things around. Remarkable as it seems from the stats above, Carlisle actually saw some growth from 2000-2010. Yes, the 90s were that bad.

Further good news, 42 out of the 43 dioceses have a better figure for 2000-10 than 1989-99. The bad news is that for the majority of those it still had a '-' in front of it, but at least that's going in the right direction.

And that's about all I can do to cheer you up. At every other level this is catastrophic. If any other sort of organisation had these sorts of stats, we'd be debating a lot more than bonuses. It leave it for others to print off this chart, leave it on every seat at General Synod along with yesterdays stats, and ask at what point Synod will give some concerted energy to talking about the future of the CofE. And no, the solution is not more church schools. The state education system cannot, and should not, do the church's work for it. And it's obvious from the data above that, even if it is, it's not doing it very well.

It's times like this when union with the Methodists seems like a good idea. Here is what their equivalent of Synod was discussing and endorsing a few months ago. A church shaped for discipleship and mission? Are we?

Major Minus: Church of England Adult Attendance change 1989-2010.

In case anyone at General Synod gets bored of talking about bishops, here's some important information about the rest of the Church of England.

The table above shows the change in adult attendance by Diocese from 1989-2010. A couple of explanatory notes, then some comments.

Explanation/Health Warning.
1. The data above is taken from Bob Jacksons 'Hope for the Church', which covers 1989-1999, and the Church of England's published statistics on attendance.
2. Jacksons data is based on 'usual Sunday attendance', and the CofE stats on 'average weekly attendance'. There isn't a massive difference in the two measures - the latter is higher, and has declined slightly slower than uSa, which isn't available for the whole of the 2000-2010 period. So the table above isn't scientifically precise, but if it's out, it will only be by a percentage or two.

Comments.
1. The majority of Dioceses are doing better than they were. 16 had a worse figure in the noughties than the 90s, and 27 were better. Also those that improved saw much bigger changes: e.g. Manchester, Newcastle and Durham all had a percentage change which was 20 points improvement or more on the 1990s. For the first two, this saw a decline of around 20% turned into moderate growth.

2. And that's where the good news ends. It's a sea of negative numbers, North and South, urban and rural, pretty much wherever you look. The majority of Dioceses have lost over 1/5 of their membership in 20 years. That's 1/5 of the income, 1/5 of the ministers (because everyone's a minister), but strangely, not 1/5 of the parishes. In 8 Diocese the figure is higher than 30%. This is arterial bleeding, not a minor scratch.

3. I wonder if there are any Dioceses which have cut the number of parishes, church buildings, or central overheads, by the same number? I suspect not. The reality of decline is that we feel duty-bound to maintain the parish system and the local church building until it kills us. So the burden is never reduced, but it falls upon a smaller and smaller number of people.

4. Who is accountable for all this? Can we, will we, ask our bishops and clergy what they've been doing, and what they're doing now? Who is learning the lessons? Or are we (in Einsteins definition of madness) continuing to do exactly the same as before in the hope of a different result?

5. General Synod has 4 debates coming up on women bishops, and none on church growth/decline. I'm sorry but that's bonkers. Anyone who thinks women bishops is the biggest issue facing the church at the moment hasn't woken up or inhaled the coffee. There is no point re-arranging dog collars on the Titanic.

6. I have the figures for childrens attendance and they are even scarier. If the church is relying on children as 'the future of the church' then we're looking at a church 60% the size of what it is at the moment.

7. The CofE has only two realistic options. The first is to start strategic planning for a church which will be 20-25% smaller in 2030, based on the continuation of current trends. The second is to shift significantly towards leadership, investment and structures which are focused on growth. There are currently incremental steps towards the latter (Fresh Expressions, mission funding, Bishops Mission Orders etc.), and a vast amount of 'make do and mend' towards the former.

I don't know what it will take to provoke the necessary sense of crisis, the deepening of conviction that we need to tackle this issue, so that the CofE overcomes its sniffiness about 'bums on pews' and recognises that there's a reason the New Testament talks about the number of people being saved on a regular basis. It's because each of those people matters to God, and each of those people is someone we're called to reach with the gospel. The CofE is largely failing in that task, and until we have reckoned with that, we call into question our claim to be called a church at all. Are we actually doing the task our Master has set us?

Prayer Spaces in Schools

Prayer Spaces in Schools Teaser from Prayer Spaces In Schools on Vimeo.

An excellent new website, packed full of ideas and information about how to set up prayer spaces in primary and secondary schools. It's emerged from grassroots practice, and seems to be catching on all over the place. From the site:

In the UK, prayer spaces are spreading, and they're spreading fast.

Schools and youth workers are finding that these creative, prayer/reflective spaces provide a simple, effective way to communicate and to welcome children and young people into an experience of the Christian faith. They offer an invitation to 'belong' without requiring any particular 'belief'.

"I’ve never seen prayer displayed or experienced like this before. It’s made me realise how many different ways prayer can be appreciated. it’s opened up religion into my life. Thank you!"

Teachers and other educational staff are finding that prayer spaces (or 'soul spaces' or 'sacred spaces' or whatever other names they're being given) fit well with different curriculum areas - R.E. and Citizenship being the most obvious, but not the only ones - as well as with wider aspects of school life.

"Thank you for the amazing prayer experience that you have given us as staff, parents and for the students. It will have a totally transformational effect for many people. We are so appreciative of all that you have done for our school community, for all the unsociable hours, for the energy and strength you’ve injected to our spiritual life."

There are separate sections with ideas on prayer stations (interactive places for prayer), lessons and curriculum links.

And because they can be used by children, they can be used by adults too, so if you're after some creative ideas for prayer in regular worship, Messy Church, all-age worship, in the home or for your cell group, it's worth a browse as well.
A full version of the video above is being posted on 8th Feb.

How are Bishops Mission Orders being used?

The latest Resourcing Mission bulletin from the Church of England has a paper summarising where the CofE has got to with Bishops Mission Orders (BMO). A BMO is a way of legally recognising a new mission initiative that either doesn't relate to a geographical parish, cuts across them, or simply works best as a freestanding initiative rather than something answerable to a parish leadership/vicar.

BMO's came into existence in 2007, as part of the emerging mission agenda in the CofE, and following the experience of several 'Fresh Expressions' which didn't naturally fit into a system based on geographical parishes alone.

A few headlines:
 - there are now 22 BMOs in operation
 - a further 22 are being considered
 - 27 out of the 43 Dioceses either have a BMO in operation or are thinking about it.
 - the vast majority are in urban or suburban areas.
 - 5 are focused on youth/students, 6 on new housing areas, 3 on networks, and 2 on central business districs in cities. 8 have a wider remit across a town, area or deanery. So there's quite a bit of variety.
 - there's a variety of worship venues - 5 use a parish church belonging to someone else, several use hotels, pubs, schools or cafes, and there are cell churches too.

The paper gives a few examples:
Sorted  - youth congregation in Bradford run by a Church Army evangelist
Emmanuel Bristol - mission community planted by Christ Church Clifton, has grown from 50 to 180 adults in 4 years.
Glo - mission project from a church in Stockport based on community development on 2 large housing estates.
The Order of the Black Sheep - deserves a BMO for the title alone. Mission community for folk on the margins.
Exeter Network Church - reaching hundreds of people in Exeter through a variety of networks, like sport, prisons, debt counselling, youth, social projects etc. ENC has been running since 2005, and the BMO has given it the legal equivalence to 'parish status' that gives it an extra sense of legitimacy and 'proper church'.
Kairos - a network of small missional communities within a Deanery.
York Community Chaplaincy - a business/city chaplaincy in York, also involved in Street Angels.

As well as showing how BMOs can be used to creatively reinvent the CofE at local level, each story is also an encouraging account of mission in various settings, so even if you have no interest in Bishops Mission Orders, its exciting just to see what people are doing.

Mathematical Geek Day

Later today it will be 12:12 on 1.2.12. I'm beside myself with excitement. But it's only a dry run for the 12th December.

If only the CofE would publish a special prayer for the occasion.