Love Oxford: Pentecost in the Open Air

Sunday saw a large open-air service for Pentecost, in the centre of Oxford. This was an initiative of a big combination of many of the city's churches, under the banner of "Love Oxford".


Mostly, I feel very positive about that. First, it was a celebration, a festival of faith: it sought to be inclusive for people on the edge of faith, but wasn't particularly trying to arrest and proselytize them. We celebrated the birthday of the church, the joy of all being together, the tremendous heritage we have in this city, and much else beside. The sermon, from Michael Green, stressed that those who believed needed to get out there and serve our city - whether in youth work, caring for the elderly, looking after the homeless, serving on the City Council, and so on. The climax of the meeting was some open-air baptisms, conducted jointly by one of the city's Baptist pastors and the (Anglican) Bishop of Oxford: what an expression of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism"!

I do wonder what the non-churchpeople thought of it all. One of the students in a nearby college (doubtless rudly awakened at 11.30am on a Sunday, and resenting it) started playing loud music from his (or her, but I'm guessing his) window: but it didn't last long. Perhaps he decided to get a life; perhaps the college authorities impressed their rules upon him. I could imagine that for many of those around, the strength of the message would have come from how many people stayed around to buy lunch (and the attitude they had as they waited in line). And how they responded to the stewards asking them to keep the footpaths clear. Or to the crazy cyclist who insisted on taking his bike right through the middle of the crowd.

Slightly mixed feelings? Well the thing that spurred me to write this after all was today's Tall Skinny Kiwi's post on Post-Charismatics. It seems churlish of me to criticize the event on stylistic grounds (when they went to great lengths to be inclusive), but the phrase "Many are Post-Charismatic. . . after 20 years, they would rather shoot themselves than sing another chorus." seems apposite. After about the twentieth time of singing "Greater things are yet to come, ... still to be done... in this city" it did begin to pall slightly. Well, actually, the second time wasn't that great. And I wasn't really sure what the phrase/song was supposed to mean. In fact, the more I think about it, the less sure I am. [The whole singing and worship thing prompted some other thoughts, actually, but they'll have to wait for another blog.]
Nor was I sure what to make of Charlie Cleverly's outburst prayer "Lord we're so jealous of China". But perhaps we can let that ride.