Author Archives: The Briefing

Factotum #6: Do-it-yourself-church

Everyday Ministry

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Are you amongst the 5 per cent that watch SBS television? Usually I’m not, but I read the TV guide and there it was: the movie The Factotum. I watched the first part of it. It’s a clever comedy about an unlikely speech writer for an aspiring Italian politician. The factotum is summoned from his teaching job to write for the politician. He is given no choice; his whole life is disrupted as he does his master’s bidding. Not a bad model for us as factotums, except we are given the script, rather than producing our own.

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Christ vs culture

Everyday Ministry

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When I first became a Christian and went to a Protestant church, I noticed two things: one was that the church buildings were very small compared to Catholic churches, and the other was that everyone was different to me: they were in the main Anglo-saxon. Over the last 15 years, I have spent time in six churches, and our church buildings are still too small, and most of the people inside them are still Anglo-saxon.

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