This is an experimental section of links using del.icio.us:
(removed as the script keeps on stopping the page)
The Cartoon Blog
The not- quite- daily internet column of Dave Walker. Dave writes and draws for the Church Times and is to be the 'Cartoonist in Residence' for the 2008 Lambeth Conference. (more)
I’d like to give a quick mention to Paul, whose children’s comic book ‘Exile Road’ is being used by the Spring Harvest Christian holidays this year. Paul writes a ‘Wiblog’ on my other site (the one that was broken but is now less broken than it was). You can read information and discussion about it on the Spring Harvest Christian holidays site.
Just as an insignificant aside, is anyone who reads this weblog going to the Minehead Week 1 Spring Harvest Christian holiday from the 5th to the 10th of April this year? I have no particular reason for asking - it is just idle chatter.
Warning: repeated use of the word ‘pisseth’ (as used in the King James Version of the Bible).
I found the clip via Real Live Preacher (who, incidentally, has a new website - worth adding to your feed reader). Apparently it is for real - it is by Pastor Steve Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church. To quote his website:
Pastor Anderson holds no college degree but has well over 100 chapters of the Bible committed to memory
Whilst I’m on a ‘Fresh Expressions’ sort of theme here’s something else that has popped up in the comments. The Baptists in Welwyn Garden City have started to ‘cross frontiers and break new ground’ by having church meetings in their local Costa coffee shop (see image: right) and have chatted with Costa who have said that can other churches can hold their meetings in Costa coffee shops too. There is news about this on the Fresh Expressions site.
As an aside, it pleased me that the minister’s name is ‘Cid Latty’. Latty… Latte… Never mind.
An organisation has been formed to administer this network of Cafe Churches and the associated website. This weekend there is a training day. Once you have set up an organisation it is always important to have a training day. If I ever set up an organisation running a training day will be one of my priorities. You can sign up now if you like, though I must warn you that I haven’t decided what the organisation will be yet.
Of course a lot of other people have been running Cafe Churches over the last few years. The Australians in particular do a lot of this sort of thing - see this group and this group for example. Andrew the Tall Skinny Kiwi was running Cafe Churches back in 1989 when you and I were still in short trousers. There are many examples of Cafe Churches in Britain that can be discovered by using a search engine on the internet.
The UCCF are encouraging Christian students to help illustrate the gospel of Mark using doodles. The scheme is called ‘oodles of doodles’ and is explained here. 400 000 copies of the doodled-upon gospels will then be given out to students this September.
An example of a good evangelistic doodle is shown above. One assumes that the three lightening bolts represent the wrath of God, the heart represents the human condition, and the five stars represent astrology. I don’t know about the seaweed - I haven’t worked that out yet.
The doodles must not use words or letters as explained in the downloadable instructions, reproduced below. It would appear that numbers are OK. Punctuation is a grey area, and therefore discouraged. Non-literal gospel drawings are encouraged, but not outside the box.
I for one am in favour of encouraging people to doodle so I think this scheme has my hearty backing. It is my opinion that pens and paper should be given out on the way into all church services. If everyone did more drawing the problems in this world would be cut by about 10-12%.
Monks have been illustrating gospels since early times. This is also relevant, but I forget why.
Background information: The UCCF is a conservative evangelical university Christian Unions organisation. See here to see the posts I’ve written about them in the past.
This is my drawing for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, a special 8 day week which is currently taking place. The Churches Together in Britain and Ireland site has links to pamphlets and the BBC has a picture showing how doves are involved. Notably the week is 100 years old this time around, meaning that there will have been a total of 808 days of prayer for Christian unity, assuming that they started it on the 8 day basis and have continued ever since (I must confess to having done limited research).
Talking of unity, I have come to the conclusion that the current Anglican difficulties to do with sexuality are as of nought compared with the most pressing contentious issue of the day we face, that of Family Services. Thank you for your comments here andelsewhere by the way - really thought provoking and sincerely appreciated.
It seems to me that your response to the thorny family service issue depends upon a number of factors including but not limited to:
Whether you have / have had small children or not
Whether you have the responsibility for running services
The kind of church you go to
Your theology
Whether you have, over the course of your lifetime, spent many long bitter hours in family services wishing that you were anywhere on the earth but here
In a way I am pleased that you all think so differently. It shows that this site has a diverse readership, and for that I am grateful.
[By the way, please feel free to reuse this cartoon on your blog with a link. If anyone would like to reuse it anywhere else let me know and I’ll post the high res version on the main site.]
Some of the UK’s Methodist bloggers have been having a gathering this weekend.
Note the dark brown cups as opposed to the pale green variety traditionally used by Anglicans. (Aside: If the Methodists and Anglicans ever join together the proposal is to have cups of a murky brown pale green colour.)
The Methodists are way ahead of use Anglicans in terms of mixing and mingling. Not only do they meet in real life, but they’ve had a Facebook group for a lot longer than our brand new Anglican one (I’ve been overjoyed at the response by the way - thanks everyone).
According to this Gateshead Lib Dem blog the Church Commissioners sold a church to the St Stephen The Great Charitable Trust in November for £100:
The landmark St Cuthberts Church on Bensham Bank has been sold by the Church Commissioners to the American based St Stephen The Great Charitable Trust.
The historic landmark has been sold for £100, reflecting the state of the building which is suffering from structural problems and vandalism. The building needs considerable investment to bring it back into use.
The nineteenth century church was designed by the famous Victorian North East architect John Dobson.
The Church Commissioners were keen to see the building continue to be used as a church. Work on restoring the building is expected to take a year.
The sale of the church has been welcomed by local Liberal Democrat campaigners Susan Craig and Peter Andras.
Does this sound familiar? An Anglican institution is desperate to hand over their asset(s) to someone. Things don’t go smoothly with the first possible recipient, but then SSG are there in the right place at the right time and get given it for free.
The £100 price tag is not really the issue. Such an amount might be entirely appropriate given the hundreds of thousands that will need to be spent on the church. What really surprises me is that the Church Commissioners have decided SSG are suitable recipients at all given:
The ongoing legal cases between SPCK and SSG as well as between SSG and some former employees. SPCK gave away millions of pounds-worth of assets to SSG and got their fingers badly burnt and yet the Church Commissioners appear to be doing exactly the same thing. [If you are unfamiliar with the SSG / SPCK bookshops story see all the posts in the Save the SPCK category on this blog.]
The dubious aims of the Saint Stephen the Great Trust. SSG have said they are aiming to restore 47 redundant churches, one for each of the 47 battles St Stephen the great fought against the Muslims (statement now removed from their website, though I have the text recorded here). In their video SSG make it fairly clear that they see acquiring churches in Muslim areas as one of their aims. I just can’t see how giving a church to such an organisation can fit within the requirements for new uses for redundant churches, namely that they should be ‘sensitive to the setting and history of each building‘.
It could of course be the case that the Church Commissioners are unaware of the whole SPCK / SSG situation, but this seems unlikely. It is true that this sale took place before the release of the St Stephen the Great video and the Radio 4 Sunday programme, but a lot of information about SSG was available online before that time. Surely you’d do a quick Google search before giving a church building to someone.
Here’s some background reading:
This April 2007 video by the same Lib Dem councillor shows the church before it was sold (Warning - contains local ploughing and footbridge news and also some in-depth photocopying footage)
Extremist Sect Sets Up Church - No, not SSG. This is a report relating to a previous controversy, when the The Society of St Pius X were due to take on the church.
Listed Church For Sale - The Gateshead Council site listing the church as being for sale again in February this year
The page about St Cuthberts (now deleted) on the Church of England site said:
This is a rare opportunity to acquire a landmark building, in a commanding position overlooking the River Tyne. The property is being sold with the benefit of a development brief produced by Gateshead Council supporting the conversion of this Grade II Listed Church to a range of commercial and residential uses. All parties are keen to see the property sold and sensitively converted to secure the future of this landmark building. Built in 1845 to the designs of John Dobson and extended by the addition of an aisle in 1874, the church stands in a large churchyard that has been used for burials. It comprises tower, nave, chancel, vestries, aisle and west gallery. The building has suffered from subsidence due to former mining works in the area and is in need of substantial stabilisation and other restoration costs. Guidance on these likely costs is available from the agents. Offers are invited by 28 July 2007, with detailed evidence of feasibility within three months of submission of offer.
Cartoonist Darren Harvey-Regan, creator of ‘Bold’s Fold‘ has a second book out called ‘Bold’s Fold - a second helping’.
Darren’s cartoons are all about the charismatic branch of Christianity. If you are, or have been, involved in that side of things I think you will enjoy this book.
Those who have been reading my website(s) since the early 2000s might remember that we featured some of Darren’s cartoons on Wibsite.com. At the time Darren was the cartoonist for ‘Christianity and Renewal’ magazine. ‘Renewal’ was later dropped. I can’t remember why exactly. Probably because, as all library-goers know you can only renew something about eight times before having to take it back and choose something else. Failure to do so will incur a charge of 20p a day.
[Welcome to anyone who has found this blog from the Radio 4 programme. The posts on the SPCK / SSG story can be found in the ‘Save the SPCK’ category: Page 1 (most recent) / Page 2 / Page 3]
You can now listen to the programme again here: Radio 4: Sunday programme. The SPCK item is 25 minutes and 15 seconds in.
In summary, the programme contained the following:
Introduction to the bookshops and the crisis
Me talking about my surprise at statements found on the original SSG website
Sections of text from the SSG video
Gregory Hallam talking about Orthodoxy and Islam
Mark Brewer
Aude Pasquier, speaking form a publishers perspective
Mike Ford vistits the Chester shop and comments on what is and isn’t on display
Richard Greatrex, former Bristol manager
Christina, another former manager
Jane Mcgarry (?) USDAW
Interview with Phil Brewer
Some of text from the programme transcribed via hefty use of the pause button (see ‘Editor’s note’ below):
Presenter: A little over a year ago a small charity called St Stephen the Great took over the running of Britain’s most famous religious bookshop chain, SPCK. The chain was said to be on the verge of financial ruin and the staff were worried about their jobs. At the time of the takeover SPCK’s 23 bookshops employed a staff of 200, but since then the staff have left in droves complaining about the style of the new management, as well as changes to their contracts and working conditions. Publishers say new books aren’t appearing on the shelves. St Stephen the Great (SSG) now a limited company is run by the Brewer family in Texas who describe themselves as lay Orthodox Christians whose aim is to spread the Orthodox message by acquiring redundant Anglican churches. Mike Ford has this special report.
Mike Ford: Set in the normally genteel world of religious bookselling the saga might well have come straight from the pages of a novel by Barbara Pym. SPCK was traditionally one of the most respected chains in the business. Some of its shops had been trading since the early 1800s stocking a broad selection of theological books and supplying churches with communion wine wafers and candles. But in more recent times the chain had faced desperate financial problems and had difficulty securing a buyer. So when the Brewer brothers from Texas agreed to take over it seemed like manna from heaven.
Dave Walker: I think when SPCK wanted to get rid of the shops they wanted a solutionthat would involve as few redundancies as possible and I think they saw St Stephen the Great as being the best option in the circumstances.
Mike Ford:: Dave Walker is a cartoonist for the Church Times who has been following the story on his blog.
Dave Walker: I was very surprised when I went onto the SSG website that some of the statements that were on the site at the time didn’t strike me as being particularly compatable with the more open minded stance of the SPCK shops.
Audio from SSG video: I’m Mark Brewer, chairman of the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust. Who was St Stephen thew Great? He was a man who lived in the fifteenth century who fought some 47 battles against the Muslim Turks who were invading Eastern Eurpoe at that time…
Mike Ford: Mark Brewer and his brother Philip describe themselves as lay orthodox Christians. They named their charity after a Saint who built a church after each of his 47 battles against the Muslims. The brothers want to follow in that spirit by acquiring 47 redundant churches from the church of England and turning them over to Orthodox use. Posters in their shops use the slogan ‘Buy a book - Save a church’.
Audio from SSG video: The second major project of the Trust is a lovely old Victorian church in the city of Bradford. Known as Saint Mary Magdaline, the abandoned building would most likely have become an Islamic centre as it is only two blocks from what is already the second largest mosque in Europe. Now, thanks to… (fades)
Mike Ford: Many Orthodox Christians have been alarmed by this video. Father Gregory Hallam, an Orthodox priest in Manchester thinks it could suggest that the Orthodox church has a confrontational attitude towards Islam.
Father Gregory Hallam: I belong to a church in the Middle East that has lived alongside Islam for over 1400 years, and some of Mr Brewers statements about Islam strike us as being very un-Orthodox in the sense of not being consistent really with our whole approach to interfaith relations. We in the Orthodox church regard all religions as being an indication of God’s graciousness to mankind.
Mike Ford: The staff at SPCK became increasingly unhappy about the changes the Brewers were making. They related to the range of stock, the way it was ordered and the working conditions. The new management style didn’t go down well either. The staff voted with their feet. More than two thirds of managers have left along with scores of others. In Exeter the entire team walked out. But the chairman of SSG, Mark Brewer, said the new measures had to be taken.
Mark Brewer: We came into the bookshops a year and a month ago facing mounting losses on the trading operations and set about the very difficult and sometimes unpopular task of trying to make the shops profitable enough to at least pay their own way while continuing to spread the word of God through the printed material as well as of course church requisites and some religious articles of one kind and another.
Mike Ford: It was understood from the start that the shops would continue to sell a range of materials, but according to staff in some shops the stock is narrower and they aren’t receiving supplies. Aude Pasquier, sales and marketing director for a London publishing house says the changes are posing serious challenges to religious publishers.
Aude Pasquier: Basically I think the range of books is not being carried any longer. Potential customers can’t find the range of books that they used to be able to find in the SPCK bookshops. Writers have been coming to us asking why - how come I cannot find my books on the shelves of the SPCK bookshops. For publishers it means that we have lost 23 shops in 23 different locations where we had clearly a good customer base and we have to be able to reach those customers by some other means from now on.
In summary: I felt it gave a good summary of the situation. The nature of such programmes is that each person’s contribution is reduced to one or two sentences, but I think a good number of points were made nevertheless. I’d have liked what was said on to have gone further - for example the various Anglican dioceses who have said nothing about the fate of their local SPCK shop escaped without mention - it wasn’t for a lack of talking about it on my part.
Phil Brewer’s responses in the final interview will, I’m sure, be the topic of some debate. As Richard has said in the comments below he misrepresented the reason that many of the staff left, avoided the islamaphobia issue and his comments about ‘broadening the stock’ are just not borne out by reality.
Thanks to the BBC for running this story and for the producers for ensuring that such a wide variety of voices was heard. If you have comments on the programme then do of course post them below, but you can also comment on the Sunday programme website.
[Editor’s note (Sunday pm): I need to get on with work, so the transcript of the programme is incomplete. If anyone else wanted to do any more transcribing (from 31 minutes) that really would be marvellous - I know that you can listen to the programme but it would be good to have a written record.]
Update: a comment by Richard Greatrex has been added to the Sunday programme site:
Re: The takeover of the SPCK Bookshops by St Stephen the Great.Many of the points made by Phil Brewer need challenging. Go into your local SPCK/SSG Bookshop and look for any of the new titles published since August by the major Christian publishing houses in the UK – SPCK, DLT, Church House, Kevin Mayhew, etc. I doubt whether you will find more than 5%. The range has radically diminished and not got broader, as Phil Brewer said. In some cases even the range of Orthodox material is less than before the takeover. Phil Brewer states that many of the staff left because they couldn’t cope with attempts to modernise business practice. But most of us welcomed this with opened arms, we were willing to work hard to remodel the shops in a more business-like way. We left because we and our colleagues were treated in most unbusiness-like and unchristian ways.
So says Time Out magazine in its special Religious London issue which is on news stands everywhere as long as you are in London. Sorry for being so London-centric again, but it’s just that I don’t have any other capital cities half an hours train ride away.
Here is a sample paragraph from a sample article. In a religious fashion piece the magazine ‘meets the young Londoners making religion hip’. Londoners such as Lizzy B Houston, ‘The Christian Rockabilly’, who says:
I am religious but the word really irks me. It’s about so much more than going to church. It’s a mentality and lifestyle. I have conversations with Jesus throughout the day. However, I do go to church on Sundays. I like the Glorious Undead Church in O’Reilly’s pub, Kentish Town, where kids who don’t like the Anglican style go in their punk, goth or metal gear.’
The Pentecost Festival is a huge event planned in London from the 9th to the 11th of May next year:
A massive weekend party in central London with hundreds of free events and high impact performances. A cross-generational, multi-cultural celebration of the Church’s creativity and compassion that will fill hundreds of venues - coffee shops, parks, pubs, streets, boats, churches, clubs, hotels, halls, restaurants, theatres, shops…
In a snapshot: vision, creativity, comedy, sport, the arts, prayer, children’s entertainment, fashion, debate, movies, food, music, colour, campaigning, social action, hope, physical theatre, story telling, clubbing, ecology and much much more…
Rob Frost, the much loved and respected Methodist minister who died in November was, if I understand correctly, to head up this initiative. The plan is still very much for it to go ahead. A draft programme (pdf, 2mb) is now available to download, and I have to say it does look really promising. Speakers include Tony Campolo, Adrian Plass, various MPs and there is a jolly good comedy line up. There are plans to take over Trafalgar Square on the Saturday with modern music-type bands.
The event is organised by Christians on the evangelical side of things, which I realise may not be the natural ecosystem of everyone reading. But I for one think it is a good thing to support and I hope it is a success. Put it in your diary if there is any chance you can be in the vicinity of London and you have a diary.
The Echo has the story of the new papal tractor which has been built down the road from here in Basildon. A New York Times report has a few more details.
The tractor is a gift from Fiat, who own New Holland. The tractor took two days to make. Normally they can put one together in about ten minutes but this one has special features - a hint of gold and the coat of Papal arms.
The tractor plant is a well known landmark in these parts. It is next door to the Festival Leisure Park (known locally as ‘Bas Vegas’) where the young people go ‘night clubbing’ and the like.
Discussion topic for groups:
Tell us about the time you sent the Pope some kind of vehicle. Did he seem pleased?
The not- quite- daily internet column of Dave Walker. Dave writes and draws for the Church Times and is to be the 'Cartoonist in Residence' for the 2008 Lambeth Conference. (
Posted by Dave at 6:53 pm on February 27, 2008 and filed under Cartooning, Art, Ecumenical matters, Religion. 
Whilst I’m on a ‘Fresh Expressions’ sort of theme here’s something else that has popped up in the comments. The Baptists in Welwyn Garden City have started to ‘cross frontiers and break new ground’ by having church meetings in their local Costa coffee shop (see image: right) and have chatted with Costa who have said that can other churches can hold their meetings in Costa coffee shops too. There is 
So says Time Out magazine in its special 
