Month: September 2010

Wondering

“Every Life is a Pile of Good Things and Bad Things”

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I heard something today about a girl I once knew.

She’d gone travelling around Africa – gone to find herself… seek inspiration to help her change the world.

I got a phone call today… She’s come home early, due to being attacked and robbed.

Nasty Stuff.

I was going to try and write something deep…and something meaningful. Instead I’ll share the words of @notbovvered:

The sun shines and the rain pours on the righteous and wicked alike. Life isn’t fair: it just is…

I’ll leave you with the closing moments of Doctor Who – “Vincent and the Doctor”


Doctor Who 2005 5×10 Vincent and the Doctor 3
Uploaded by IDavros. – Classic TV and last night’s shows, online.

Church Life

Church Pews v Seats Research

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It has come to our attention recently that our site has become a bedrock of knowledge in the research field of “Church Pews or Seats”.

Whilst we hope to continue our work in this field, we do need a grant to help us investigate further. An example of where our research could go, is a close examination of churches, and how people sit.

So we can possibly link up and develop our work further, please let us know if you know of other centres of this research.

If you would like to support us please get in touch.

Church Life

What to do in a boring sermon!

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If you’re anything like me about 5 minutes into most sermons you might find your mind wandering off. The first thing I have to say about that is ‘bad mind, very bad mind’…or maybe not! Sometimes this wandering off might be that you’ve got a lot on your mind like something at work, what you would have been doing if you hadn’t been dragged along to church or any number of other things.

There is however that rare occasion as every preacher will tell you that the sermon is just boring. Here’s some challenges for you to do that will hopefully amuse you and those around you when you find yourself in such a situation.

  • See if you can tie your neighbours shoe laces to their chair or pew whilst pretending to be deep in contemplative prayer.
  • Search the weekly update sheet for mistypes to point out to the vicar later.
  • For the more charismatic types, lay down. Sleep. See how long it takes to be awoken by the sounds of people praying over you.
  • Cough every time the preacher says the word God/Jesus and see if anyone catches on.
  • Repeatedly try to catch the preachers eye and wink at them.
  • Tweet a message to The Church Sofa.
  • Attempt to get your row to do a mexican wave.
  • Hum the mission impossible theme tune and see if you can get out with out anyone seeing.
  • Every time the preacher asks a rhetorical question, answer it out loud.
  • Pull faces at the preacher and see how long it is before they laugh.

Let us know how you get on with these and if you have any more suggestions let us know!

Church Life

The chair vs. pew debate continues part 2

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Well we wouldn’t want anyone to think that we at the church sofa are biased in any way, so I’m going to give some reasons as to why the chair is mightier than the pew.

  • Chairs are usually more comfortable
  • Chairs work very well as foot rests, pews are much more damaging to the ankles
  • Can be set up for slalom races…better than straight line races any day
  • The give the health and safety person something to moan about when they’re stacked 5 times the height of the tallest person in the church
  • More useful as building blocks (i.e if you want to find out what Solomon’s temple looked like during a boring sermon)
  • On the subject of boring sermons a pew would be very hard work to throw at the preacher a chair on the other hand…
  • When you’re told to take a seat, with a chair you could literally take it with you
  • There is always one really bad chair that you don’t want…this encourages people to be on time
  • You can lean back on a chair on 2 legs,  I know that is not what it was made for but we all do it
  • The youth worker is kept happy with chairs for when they have a crazy idea involving the whole church building, like when I turned the church into a beach by filling it with sand, turning the heat up, lighting a BBQ and playing volleyball!
Church Life

Why church pews are better then chairs.

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Why church pews are better then chairs.

  1. We know what to expect when we walk into the church hall.
  2. Solid climbing frame.
  3. Mini race tracks.
  4. Easier to keep track of ‘your pew’
  5. You can talk for ages after the service and not have anyone try and stack your pew away from under you.
  6. You can save your chewing gum for next time.
  7. A handy shelf for supplies like bibles, song books, notice sheets, coke, and chocolate.
  8. Put a few cushions down, get a blanket, and you’ve got yourself somewhere to kip.
  9. If you have doors on the end of the pews, you could charge people access rights to your pew.
  10. “Best burning material since we burned the cat.”

Any other reasons why pews work better then chairs?

Wondering

Social Media Verses News Reporting

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Around about 10 years ago I cam across a little known movie called “Gossip”. The central idea to the film is that gossip and rumours can be looked upon as fact. In fact its summed up by the quote;

Gossip and news *are* the same thing, they’ve always been the same thing. People tell stories, that’s what makes us human.

If there has ever been an example of this, it must be this story of what happened to ITV Westcountry:

160x120 knut the polar bear at berlin zoo Sipa Press / REX

ITV has acknowledged an “embarrassing” on-air error after a reporter claimed that a polar bear had washed up on a Cornish beach, but the animal later turned out to be a cow.

Naomi Lloyd, presenter of ITV’s West Country breakfast bulletin, told viewers that the large, white beast had been brought in on the tide close to the seaside town of Bude.

“A walker in Cornwall has caught an extraordinary sight on camera. A polar bear has washed up on a beach near Bude,” said Lloyd.

“The bear comes from the Arctic Circle and an investigation is under way as to how it could have ended up there.”

Now it turns out that the cow which was  bleached white by the sea, was spotted by dog walkers… who in turn contacted the TV station. The TV station then put this story live on air.

This has got me thinking. Is news reporting ‘fact’ or ‘word of mouth’?

If the latter, is social media replacing ‘word of mouth’?

For example, if I want to check travel information, I check Twitter – not a website. Another example is that I heard about the bomb scare in Exeter the other day via Twitter – not via traditional news mediums.

Are we really getting to the point where gossip social media is starting to over take traditional news reporting?