Page 55 - Phonebox Magazine February 2008

PARSONS AND PANCAKES
How would you react to seeing a team of ministers, robed up in vestments, or dressed in a dignified black, tearing along in a relay race, clutching their frying pan in one hand and trying to prevent their pancake from falling out of it into the street? I suspect that it might raise at least a giggle. Certainly it had that effect last year, when four Mission Partnership ministers (including me!) formed a team and took part in the pancake race arranged by the Christian Foundation, around the Square in Wolverton. In our heat we were pitched against the MK Dons Football in the Community Team, whose four members had finished the race almost before our second member had got going – so we lost miserably! But plenty of members of the community stood there laughing at us and taking photos, and we had a good laugh too! We are looking forward having the same sort of fun at this year’s Pancake Race.
So what is it that raises the giggle? I suspect that it’s something to do with the sense of incongruity. There’s perhaps an idea in the air that ministers should be dignified, straight- faced and lacking in humour, solid and rather immoveable, so that the sight of them letting their hair down or flipping a pancake doesn’t quite fit the mould. I can’t help feeling
however, that if this idea is in the air about the clergy, the same idea is there, lying behind it, about the institution and the faith they represent. Perhaps for too long there has been a view that Christian faith has to be something rather serious and stodgy, and perhaps we, as members of the church, have inherited and absorbed the idea and brought a certain stodginess into our church lives too.
Of course we speak a great deal about joy, and we know very well that joy is something much deeper than a tooth-pastey smile. Deep joy is not the same as being jolly and can sustain us in hope even through times of unhappiness. But how much do
we all ‘buy in’ to the idea that
Christian faith has to be
something to make us serious? I
remember just a few months ago
looking around a Christian
bookshop (not in Milton Keynes!)
and finding a card picturing our
Lord looking seriously and
lovingly at a number of children
who were gathered around him.
"Let the children come to me,"
was the text that sprang to
mind. They each had a long-
suffering, serious look on their
face, their eyes cast down
towards the ground. A friend
picked the card up and commented wrily, "Come to Jesus and he will make you... sad!!"
On February 5, rain or shine, the Christian Foundation will be continuing their Pancake Day tradition, inviting different community groups, in Disney theme fancy dress, to come together and enjoy themselves running around Wolverton Square! This year the event, which runs from 11.30-2.00 is in aid of Willen Hospice. Do come and join in if you’re free. God, who rejoices in creation and who in Christ offers us life in all its fulness, wants us to have fun!
Mary Cotes
We have been conducting weekly auction sales in and around Bedford for over a century. Our Bedford salerooms are among the largest in the country and sell anything from Georgian chairs to JCB’s, a Range Rover to
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Phonebox Magazine 55
Welcome to our Sunday Services
ANGLICAN
Parish Church, High Street 8am Holy Communion 9.30am Sung Eucharist creche and Sunday School 6pm Evensong and Sermon St Luke’s, Wolverton Road 11am Family Communion
BAPTIST
Lovat Hall, Silver Street
Rev Paul Rosier 616286 10.30am Family Worship with creche, Sunday School
CATHOLIC
St Bede’s, High Street Rev James Evans 671342 6.30pm Mass (Saturday), 9am Mass
METHODIST
High Street 10.30am Service and Junior Church
UNITED REFORMED
High Street
10.30am Family Worship