Big Speakers and Dead Flowers

It was one of those days today. Got very little done, but had a good time doing it.

We welcomed Mike Pilavachi as a guest speaker for a special lecture to the entire Federation this afternoon, as well as preacher at Federation Worship, which meant that we spent all afternoon setting up the sound equipment and soundchecking with the band. In turn this meant that the things I normally spend all Tuesday doing (preparation for lectures for the rest of the week) got compressed or ignored in a small 2 hour slot in the morning.

Mike is somewhat of a celebrity amongst those who have worked with youth - he's the founder of the Soul Survivor annual festivals, amongst other achievements - so many people were looking forward to hearing him speak. Knowing that I was going to be the sound engineer today meant that there was a fair chance I'd be meeting him. However, I didn't expect to go totally incoherent within 30 seconds of meeting him.

The church doorbell rings (yes, they have doorbells!). I answer it. There, like a drowned rat in the pouring rain is a dripping wet Greek bloke. I let him in, introduce myself, he asks me which year I'm in, and I go incoherent trying to explain that I'm a second and final year! I feel like Jar Jar Binks (see illustration). Hardly a great first impression. However, later conversation is a greater improvement. In his lecture Mike spoke of his regret that at Soul Survivor 2009 he encouraged a Big Top full of young people to turn to Jesus, but didn't explain the cost of being a disciple. Afterwards in a quiet corner I catch him and we discuss the effect that obedience to God's call has on not only my own life, but also that of my children who will shortly have to move for the second time in two years, and make friends all over again.

It's interesting the effect that a 'celebrity' speaker has on Fed Worship. We've never had to put extra chairs out before.

Afterwards, clearing up, I demonstrate why churches shouldn't have flowers out in Lent, as I drop a rather heavy speaker (of the audio variety) on top of a lovely arrangement of daffodils and tulips. The speaker won.

The Great Blessing

It's been a funny old week.

This week's intensive course was 'Race Awareness'. It was a good course, aimed at making us aware of the issues facing ethnic minorities in this country. And it did that. It's just a pity it took 2.5 days to do so.

With that out of the way I could now focus on 2 things - firstly Greek (our teacher Mark was pleased to recall a conversation with a startled member of staff who was surprised that we'd all passed our pre-Christmas test and there had been no dropouts all term!).

Secondly my 'Life and Service' essay on 'the Dulles Model of Church'. I'm convinced there's a spelling mistake and there should be an extra 't' on the end of that second word. Some guy called Dulles analysed loads of churches and decided that a good church has a balance of 5 elements. I've got to analyse a church I am familiar with against this model and given that I'm not intimately familiar with that many churches I've picked on one in Ferndown. Against some definitions I have to decide to what extent does it identify as an institution (partial tick), as a mystical communion (partial tick), as a sacrament (tick), as a servant (tick), as a herald (tick). 1000 words written this afternoon, another 1000 needed before Thursday.

And on Thursday afternoon a regular meeting of the students where the most exciting things we could find to talk about was whether it was OK to wear academic robes in college. Passions rose high but I couldn't get excited about it. It's like those meetings we used to have at work where some executive had travelled halfway across the world to talk to us about the state of the business and somebody would ask a question about the repainting of the bike sheds....

Back to the title. Tuesday night was Federation Worship, and this week it was the turn of the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies (IOCS) to lead. IOCS are the only people who seem to be quite distinctive about the style of worship that they share with us - all other houses of the Federation seem to dumb down their distinctiveness for public consumption, but IOCS doesn't hold back. 55 minutes of incense, recited and intoned liturgy, choral led responses, and much sprinkling of water, as we celebrated the Great Blessing of the Waters (i.e. Jesus' baptism).

It was one of those occasions which I'll remember for a long time as it was so different from my normal experience, but I'm quite happy for it to remain an occasional experience - it's a bit too late for me to defect, and I can't chant well enough.