Sunday 23 June 2013

Viral vicars and the gospel...

A Twitter friend of mine is the lady vicar who led the flash mob at a wedding last week. 


It is all going rather viral now, with the Guardian and other reporting on it.

And even some of my clergy colleagues condemning it for being irreverent, and not appropriate within a liturgy.  Thankfully, the ones that I've spotted with this sort of line have only very recently been ordained so I suppose know no better. They will hopefully grow up to distinguish between their own preferences and propositional statements on 'right' and 'wrong.'

There is also a great big slice of clergy anxiety about it all.  "But <I> couldn't do that...!" is what it seems to be about.

Each of us has to minister in a way that fits us, our shape, our spirituality, our personality type.  Kate Bottley is and extrovert who likes to dance, evidently. Others are not.  She can declare love and blessing and the grace of the gospel by the delight that she gave others at that church wedding. Others have to try and do it their way, with the people that they come across and working with their own selves.

Where does this blog post go? I don't dance at weddings: never been asked, probably never will.  But joy, laughter, putting people at their ease, making it their day as well following liturgy: all those things feel important as we proclaim a gospel of love, redemption and life lived in fullness

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