The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ, her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the word;
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride,
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.Elect from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation—
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses
With every grace endued.
Anyone wanting to learn how Anglican Chant works as a musical style for the Psalms could look at a couple of introductory webpages.
There is a helpful one on the BBC website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A15716595.
There is a helpful one on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_chant, where I particularly like the example given - with a colour-coded musical stave that can be matched up to the text of part of the Magnificat printed in the same colours. Nice.
G'day everyone!
Many readers of this blog will already be familiar with the Aussie Christian children's entertainer / singer / song-writer Colin Buchanan. We possess 4 of his CDs in this house, and enjoy them regularly.
Well, Colin's heading over to Blighty to go on tour, so there is a rare opportunity to take the children in your family / church to go and hear him live. (And if you are an adult who wants to go, but doesn't have any children in your church or family, you must know someone to go with, surely - if not, I'd go anyway!)
Are you trying to find out which Church of England Parish you live in? Simply visit the link below and put your postcode into the search tool. Note, they've changed their website. You now have to wait after entering your postcode, and select one of the autocomplete entries served by Google maps; only then can you click the arrow button to begin your search.
It has been announced this morning that Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the 106th Bishop of Rochester, will step down as Bishop of Rochester from 1st September 2009. The precise area of work he is moving into has not yet been announced.
We've been having a most enjoyable, instructive and edifying Lent Course here in Kemsing. John Goulding, a retired Anglican clergyman, has been taking the sessions, leading us through some of the Psalms. The feel of the evenings has been pleasantly relaxed, and as we've wandered together through the Psalter we've noticed all manner of things that has brought those Psalms to life in new ways. Many, many thanks to John for taking this course so well for us all.
Since I posted on Henry Scott Holland's poem “Death is Nothing at all”, that blog post has overtaken my sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 as the most visited page on this site. Curiously, both the Scott Holland text and 1 Corinthians 13 are popular passages at funerals.
I keep finding things written by Christopher Idle at the moment. It's purely co-incidence: Looking for something unrelated and stumble upon it. First some comments on the poem Death is Nothing at all, and now this.
Idle wrote a short article in New Directions magazine. I'm not particularly wanting to endorse or plug the publication – I've never seen a copy – I stumbled upon his article online.
Back in May, we had some great moments on our CME weekend on preaching, led by Pete Wilcox, Canon Chancellor at Lichfield Cathedral. I have been meaning to blog these thoughts on lectionaries for some time, but somehow never got around to it. Anyway, finally, …
I love discovering new hymns.
Like this one by Josiah Conder, entitled My Lord, I did not choose you.
My Lord, I did not choose you,
for that could never be;
this heart would still refuse you
had you not chosen me:
you took the sin that stained me.
you cleansed and made me new;
for you of old ordained me
that I should live to you.
