There’s certainly one thing that we’ve had in common over recent months and that is we have shared the experience of a broadcast on Radio Ulster, and that within a week of each other! And I congratulate you on your service.

Isn’t it extraordinary the reaction you can get, and from all sorts of people and places? I have to confess (to Glencraig people, as much to yourselves) that just before the broadcast I did get a little concerned; we were about to broadcast a traditional Church of Ireland, Book of Common Prayer, Morning Prayer and I began to panic that this wasn’t really perhaps going to work on radio. (You know what I mean). I even emailed Bert Tosh, the Senior Producer and briefly explained my concerns – Morning Prayer, a chanted Psalm, you know the kind of thing, and he wrote back in capital letters... IT CAN WORK, or words to that effect. It helped me to relax a bit, and in the end our choir sang their hearts out, our organist played to his usual standard and our readers were superb. I wish I had written down some of the comments I received afterwards, because you can easily forget, and I have no doubt that you received here in Ballygilbert the same kind of adulation and praise. Even in our Christmas Cards we received this year, I don’t know how many mentioned the Service from people I wouldn’t have thought ever would listen to Church Services on radio!

I did receive one phone call from a complete stranger from Cloughfern, of all places, who congratulated us on our traditional Service and then ended her phone call by saying, “...but you are a rascal!” I think she was referring to the joke I used, and when I met with Roy & Co. at the Primary School play at Glencraig before Christmas, we sorted out our arrangements for this evening and they also seemed to suggest I needed a joke! So here goes:

It’s called ‘An Irish Christening’. Paddy’s pregnant sister was in a terrible car accident and went into a deep coma. (Don’t worry, it gets better!) After being in a coma for nearly six months, she wakes up and sees she is no longer pregnant. Frantically, she asks the doctor about her baby. The doctor replies, ‘Ma’am, you had twins...a boy and a girl. The babies are fine! However, they were a bit poorly at birth and had to be christened immediately. So your brother, Paddy, came in and named them. The woman thinks to herself, Oh, Holy Moly, no, not me brother. He’s a clueless eejit! Expecting the worse, she asks the doctor, “Well, what’s my daughter’s name?” ‘Denise’, says the doctor. The mother is somewhat relieved, “Wow, that’s a beautiful name; guess I was wrong about my brother”, she thought...”I really like Denise”. Then she asks, “What’s my boy’s name?”

And the doctor replies, “Denephew”!

Glencraig is unashamedly a traditional Church, but, even so, over the Church year, we have a huge variety of different types of services and special ceremonies;

and I don’t just mean the month to month rota of Family Service, Morning Prayer, Holy Communion etc., but things like the Advent lighting liturgy, Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday liturgies, indeed, Holy Week itself, Candlemas, and Tenebrae on Good Friday evening, to name a few off the top of my head. But, I think one of the things we have learned from our radio experience, and perhaps it’s just been reinforced in my own mind, that whatever changes ‘Church’ may experience, there is still room for the traditional service. When it is done well, you feel God is truly exalted and lifted high, and that is the whole point of worship.

Our Diocese is very much into ‘New Expressions of Church’ and that’s fine, so long as it works and it is appropriate. We need to explore new ways of worshipping our Father God in an ever changing climate. Nothing stays the same. Sometimes, it is not Jesus that people are rejecting, but the ‘package’ that he comes in. But that goes for contemporary as well as traditional forms of worship.

I often feel myself more and more out of synch with the Diocese I am supposed to a part of. I’m not alone, and it is for a variety of reasons. But, for example, my understanding of leadership is far removed from the leadership that exists in Down and Dromore.

I have often used the example of Ghandi, who once said, “My people are the move, and I must go ahead of them because I am their leader”. That kind of concept goes right over their heads. There’s no point launching off in one direction if your people are not behind you.

The great fear and concern among many is that worship is being, in a sense, ‘watered down’ - that our creator God is only a God of emotion and a kind of lovey-dovey God that makes us feel warm and cosy inside. When God is actually a God who challenges us to be joyful, even when life around us and circumstances scream at us that life is unjust and unfair. He challenges us to love when we are surrounded by hate, to be at peace when we see nothing but war. Yes, we are to laugh in our Churches and to reel with joy, knowing all the time, however, that we were not just created to ‘be happy’. Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it best when he gave a celebrated address in Harvard University when he said, “If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not have to die. But since he is born to die, his task on earth must be of a more spiritual nature...so that one may leave this life a better human being than when one started it”.

We often use prayers and wordings which go back centuries, even to the Synagogue of Jesus’ day, because we know that whatever life throws at us, and whatever circumstances the world finds itself in, God is always the same, ever at work loving us and carrying us through; always faithful and ever sure. So that’s the place of prayers which have been composed over centuries of worship and adoration by great spiritual men and women who would put our personal spirituality in the shade. And we can still use them today – isn’t that the beauty of worshipping a faithful God? There is nothing wrong with using the same words in our worship which go back centuries and which often come from Scripture directly. It’s often a ‘constant’ in a world which is in a continuous state of ‘chassis’!

Just to end with, I can’t resist telling you a true story which concerns the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland. They had organised a special exhibition of old railway engines and carriages in Downpatrick. However when one of the carriages was brought into the platform, they realised there was a serious gap between the carriage step and the edge of the platform. It was considered a real danger to the public. So they decide that one of their members should stand at the carriage door and remind everyone as they dismounted the carriage to “mind the gap”. And so it was successfully achieved. A willing volunteer stood at the carriage door all day and continuously reminded visitors to “mind the gap”. It came to the end of a very long day and as the volunteer went to close the carriage door, he turned round...and fell down the gap!

We often repeat the same words and liturgies in our churches, not just for the sake of it, but because they happen to be true. Our challenge is to never forget that they are!