Quote of the Week  from Adrian Plass in The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, Christian Speaker, Aged 45 3/4. Edwin, the (fictional) vicar of Adrian’s (fictional) local church, is responding to a question from Adrian’s wife Anne about his response to a recent (fictional) ‘move of God’ affecting the congregation:

Edwin shrugged and smiled a little wearily. ‘I’m glad you asked that, Anne. You know how it is. God starts something off and it’s really good, then it gets — well, I suppose the word is hijacked, by some of us people in the churches, and we try to give it a shape and a name that it never really had, and then other people think we’re the experts and copy our mistakes in a slightly different way, and more folk follow their lead until it’s difficult to know if the thing you’ve ended up with is the same as the thing that God started in the first place . . .’

Wish I was like Edwin. Whenever he says anything vaguely critical he always talks about ‘us’ and never ‘them’ . . .

Edwin shrugged . . . ‘I welcome it and I’m wary of it, and I hope it helps people to see and accept that the real victories are a bit more costly and more local and more boring and more Jesus-like than a lot of these grand-sounding things that never quite happen. The hardest thing, Anne, when you’re a twit like me, and you’re supposed to be running a church, is working out how you get people to actually do things. They all want to laugh and cry and even be deeply moved as they watch the play, but not many want to be in it. I know I’m a bit old-fashioned, but I do prefer James’ definition of true religion to most other people’s.’