Directed and tech. managed video coverage for service at Manchester cathedral with both Archbishops

A event that has been in the planning for 6 months finally came to fruition last night. Following a previous event at the cathedral I was asked to provide video coverage for the congregation at the special Run the Race service wih both the Archbishop of Canterbaury - Rowan Williams and the Archbishop of York - John Sentamu as part of their Mission to Manchester taking place all this week.

As the diocese wanted as many people  to be a part of the service they needed to use every last corner to fit everyone in. However this meant, that depending where you were sitting, you wouldn't be able to see parts of the service.

With the help of Manchester College who provided a 6 camera rig and crew headed up by Colin Ralph,  I devised a plan to place 24 plasma screens around the cathedral and then directed the video so that everybody would be able to see what was happening where ever they were sat.

There were a number of elements to the service including marking the end of the Bishop of Manchester's Run the Race pilgrimage, the signing of a copy of the King James Bible and then a reading from it and the induction of the new Order of William Temple which has been created to honour peple who have made a significant contribution to the life and witness of the Diocese of Manchester.

As a sound person, this was some what outside of my comfort zone, but I have been involved in other events mainly in the corporate communications sector for comapnies like Shell, SmithKline Beecham and AT & T.

Integrated household survey reveals how religious your area is

Simon Rogers in The Guardian has just published a report from the Office for National Statistics

With typical timing, the report has come out the week after the Pope's visit to the UK. But nevertheless, it's an enormous survey: some 450,000 respondents asked questions about their beliefs, sexual identity and health. Besides the findings which show that 1.5% of the population is gay, it includes lots of other details:

• 71% their religion is Christianity
• 4% say their religion is Muslim
• 21% have no religious affiliation
• Slough has the highest level of religious belief in England - 93% - whilst Brighton and Hove has the lowest at 58%
• Inverclyde has the highest level of religious affiliation in Scotland at 92%
• Flintshire has the highest level of religious affiliation in Wales at 81%

It also provides an interesting breakdown of ethnicity and health. Are there any links between any of the datasets - between good health and religious belief, or high ethnicity and high religious belief? Here are some completely unscientific findings:

• 33% of Blaenau Gwent is in poor health, the highest percentage of people in the UK. Only 67% have a religious affiliation, one of the lowest rates in the country
• Slough, besides having the highest religious percentage in the country also has a very high number of people in good health - 81%

Do those two figures tell us anything meaningful?
Although the report is published as a PDF (of course), the ONS has given us the spreadsheet of results and you can download them below. What can you do with the data?

DATA: download the full spreadsheet

It was interesting that one of the early comments on The Guardian page says...

Given that the question asked by the ONS was "What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?", it's not really possible to work out how religious an area is - just that loads of people still lazily tick the 'Christian' box without thinking about it. It's a shame that the ONS couldn't have chosen a question that actually asked about religious belief.

I look forward to seeing what people can do with this data and whether it can be used to identify needs in a community.

How do we as Christians relate to our communities?

I went to an excellent day of seminars led by Rev Dr Phil Meadows from Cliff College on Shaping Up for Mission. Phil is part of a new project called Inspire and they are re-imagining John Wesley's spirituality in a 21st Century context. It is amazing to see how much of Wesley's strategies still apply today.

To learn more about Inspire go to the web site. There is a national conference on July 3rd that I will be going to.

Jonny Baker has also blogged about a 'gathering' he attended with other folk from various emerging churches and communities this weekend, and in his post he shared some of the prayers they used as part of one of worship times and is based on a well known prayer but with some added explanations....

For God so loved the world - may we naturally follow suit,
That he gave his only son - may we learn the wonder of sacrifice,
That all who believe - may our love for one another be the crucial evidence,
May not perish - may we work to halt the collapse of lives, of communities and of creation,
But have eternal life - may we point to the hope you bring now and for the future.

Jonny also links Mark Berry's site which has more of the prayers they used - all very thought provoking stuff.

What language to we use to describe God?

Jonny Baker is his blog has posted a very interesting article on the words we use to describe God.

grace on saturday night ( yes i decided to go and watch the football later...) was really good with lots of stuff to chew over for months to come i suspect. we've been having a few discussions on the language we use in grace and how it can be used to include or exclude often unwittingly. speaking of god was the first service where this has been picked up. jenny has written the service up in the grace archive, with links to prayers, confession and so on...

I do thoroughly recommend you take a look at this but please do it with an open heart. It has really made me think about the language we use to describe church and how open or closed we make God in the language we use. Do take a look at the archive, I found it very interesting the words the congregation at Grace decided to 'park'.

The whole use of language and moving away from some of the standard phrases we trot out (like those that Grace chose to park) got me thinking about musicians and some of the work we do with Wellspring helping them to free themselves from the music put in front of them and improvise.

Once you start to improvise you have to listen to what everyone is playing to make sure what you are playing fits with what others are doing. You need to listen. When playing the 'dots', you don't need to listen in the same way, you have the security in knowing that someone else has worked out that what you are playing will fit, so you don't have to think for yourself. But when improvising you have to listen, think and then decide if what you are doing is working.

Thanks Jonny and the folk of Grace for making me think.