Another post in my ‘ideas appeal’ series.

Today’s subject: What should you take to church? Are there different things you should take at different times of year and in the different liturgical seasons? All comments will be appreciated: sensible or absurd, mundane or creative.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Posted by Dave at 1:10 pm on February 10, 2008 and filed under Religion, Ideas appeal.

45 Comments

Todays idea appeal subject is ‘family services’, or ‘all age services’. Questions:

• What are the essential elements of a family service?
• Do you love them or hate them? Feel free to tell us why.

Anything you can tell me would be a help. Thanks again in advance.

Posted by Dave at 12:12 pm on January 19, 2008 and filed under Church, Religion, Ideas appeal.

49 Comments

Really quick question: What do the clergy carry around with them at all times to help them do their job? Or, what would they ideally be able to carry around with them at all times?

Thanks again - this is a real help to me.

Posted by Dave at 8:05 am on January 8, 2008 and filed under Ideas appeal.

50 Comments

As hinted at in the title, five short posts:

Unicyclist makes the 6pm service
I was impressed to read in the comments of the ‘absenteeism’ post that Sam, a reader of this blog, still made it to the 6pm service having finished his successful 24 hour unicycling world record attempt on the Sunday morning. Sorry Sam, I should have linked to your world record attempt when you were doing it back in September, but was overtaken by events. Very belated congratulations.

Walkers first rule of DIY
“Regardless of the time and energy you have expended getting the tools, equipment and materials together in order to undertake a DIY task a last minute trip to the DIY superstore will always be required within 10 minutes of starting the job.”

This time around it was the 8mm drill bit.

After many hours of toil over the weekend I now have two extra shelves in my office. We hadn’t really got the hang of things for the first one though, so I may only use it to store polystyrene bicycle helmets.

Paypal postage problem persists
After two months I’m afraid people who pay for CartoonChurch licences via Paypal are still being wrongly charged a pound for postage which I’m refunding order by order. Paypal are still unable to resolve this problem, so apologies to all affected. This also means I am delaying sending out some way way waaaay overdue licence reminders. If this is you then just keep using the cartoons and I will hopefully be able to invoice you before too long. I still want to stick with paypal as these things take days to work out and set up, and I don’t have time to do that with a new system.

Mobile phone joy
Talking of technical problems, I’ve finally upgraded my Nokia 6600 phone because if I missed a call it couldn’t tell me who had called me and also when the phone rang it didn’t tell me who was calling. Apparently mobiles should be able to do that by now, but neither Nokia nor Orange could make it do so in three and a bit years. You would think that changing from one Orange pay as you go phone to another Orange pay as you go phone would be easy wouldn’t you? Well, 4 days, several phone calls and a bit of stress and anxiety later I’m hopeful that the new phone is finally up and running. And it seems to work. I’m overjoyed.

Unusual ‘Fresh Expressions’ appeal
Lastly a small ‘idea appeal’ post. Today’s subject is ‘Fresh Expressions of church’ (do a Google search if you have no idea what that means). Have you come across any odd and unusual ‘Fresh Expressions’? Is there a hitherto forgotten group of people for whom a new Fresh Expression is required and if so, what would be different about the service / event?

Rubbish example: Church for lollipop ladies (and men these days) - extra brackets at the ends of pews for their signs and an absence of dilly dallying when crossing the aisle.

Any ideas, creative or otherwise - please do post them in the comments.

Posted by Dave at 3:57 pm on January 7, 2008 and filed under Ideas appeal.

33 Comments

Today has been the first day of my self imposed ‘get a lot done’ cartoon season. It has not been a great success. I have been procrastinating and undertaking non-essential tasks such as allowing my pens to warm up to room temperature. I have worked out that I need to get one really good cartoon done every work day to archive* achieve my goal. Today that has not happened.

But there is always tomorrow. Perhaps I will draw two tomorrow - who know. Actually I have drawn one quite good cartoon which I will post on the blog tomorrow morning but it does not meet the criteria of the ‘get a lot done’ cartoon season.

In the meantime it would be great if you could help me out with an idea or two. This will, I’m afraid, be the first of quite a few during the next two months which are my book deadline months. I will post them all under an ‘Ideas appeal‘ category. It is like a ‘Roof appeal’ but with no roof.

So, today, I need some excuses for being absent from church. They can be good or bad, real-life or made up, plausible or non-plausible. In fact they can be utter rubbish - it makes it all the more fun.

I will not be the only one to benefit from this as you will be able to use the excuses yourself should the need arise. But only if they are true obviously.

Small legal print: If you post an idea in the comments I might use it. If I do you might or might not get a credit in print. You won’t get any money as I will be spending it all on pens that work above or below room temperature. They will be fairly similar to my current ones.

Thanks in advance everyone.

*Spelling mistake left to amuse passers-by.

Posted by Dave at 11:59 pm on January 3, 2008 and filed under Church, Ideas appeal.

50 Comments