Last nights concert in the old Methodist chapel was quite simply wonderful. The entire choir from the Cathedral arrived to sing. And sing they did. It was a sell out...and was magnificent. They sang the Brahms German mass and filled the room with glory! I sat upstairs with my friends and could see the reactions from the people sitting below me. We didn’t just clap at the end, we cheered...long and loudly.
Because it was sold out they were taking great care with the tickets, mine were scanned as they looked closely at me and asked me for my name twice! Clearly this was a great moment for many of us as the music was wonderful.
We now have another two days of this joy to go. I will be picked up early to get us there and parked before ten am. We are all booked to have lunch together at the hotel which organised the whole event and then an afternoon session will take us through another few hours of glory.
I’m enjoying this enormously....chatting with old friends is a bonus along with the wonderful music. Thank you God and the old friends who are transporting me to enjoy this glory!
1 comment:
I am glad that you enjoyed it and have several more to go to. We have had some music concerts in our church, and even one in the Vicarage Garden earlier this summer.
All are well received and well attended and raise much needed funds for the church, perhaps we need to have one every other month, which might help us to overcome the shortfall in finances. Now we are faced with losing several thousand pounds from our income by new rules that take fee's for occasional offices away. Particularly funerals at the Crem, where for some reason the central church believe that a funeral held outside the church doesn't incur any expenses? This justifies taking a substantial amount of income from churches, and will drive more funerals into the arms of civil celebrants as Vicars will either have to accept the change and provide a funeral at our expense, or alternatively, refuse to conduct funerals for anyone who doesn't live or die in the parish.
At a time when parishes strive and struggle to meet their share, this blow to parish finances will have huge implications for the survival of parishes as single entities, church closures and more.
Its not as if the central church are short of money, they can afford to distribute millions of pounds across the church for new initiatives to put bums on seats, while taking with the other hand, money from smaller churches for their own administration.
Rebellion is on the horizen.
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