Theology in Strange Places

Over the next few weeks, we have so much to do! We have to de-register for weddings and get rid of the registers before we can sell the safe. We have to get the water/ electricity/ gas etc cut off. We have to sell all our furniture. Get the pulpit dismantled and turned into art...

We also have to relocate all our projects.

Last week Clare arranged for the coffee morning and credit union collections to move into the local SureStart children's centre. They were fantastically keen - and offered to prepare a flier and poster to send out. Could they please have our logo to put onto it?

Of course, everyone knows us as Mersey Street - which doesn't work as that is the building we're closing! So we need a new name and a new logo.

Fortunately, our founders had the foresight to give us the Sunday best name of "The United Baptist Tabernacle, Higher Openshaw." We have done a lot of work over the last few years on the concept of a "Tabernacle." I was gently teasing a friend who is a member of another famous 'tabernacle' - their building is so magnificent that it has even become the name of a bus stop!

We, on the other hand, will be homeless for several years to come. So the image of a Tabernacle works. And when we mentioned this to our church secretary, yesterday, he immediately came up with the image of a circus tent!

And my mind went back to the Brian Wren hymn upon which Dancing Scarecrow is based:

Here hangs a man discarded

a scarecrow hoisted high,

a nonsense pointing nowhere

to all who hurry by

Can such a clown of sorrows

still bring a useful word

where faith and love seem phatoms

and every hope absurd?

and David's circus tent seemed strangely appropriate. So I've tried to link it in with our dancing scarecrow. And this is the result: