Summer Madness

Well, after a bit of an early start, I headed down to Summer Madness, and thankfully, the feelings of being slightly out of it yesterday had passed when I spent half an hour there... sitting in the group chatting and catching up on what had happened. Now, it was still different to actually camping, but as you'll find out later, I was slightly glad I wasn't camping...

This morning's 'service' was led by Kathryn Scott, with a mix of known songs, new ones, and best of the lot in my humble, traditionalist opinion, a verse and chorus of 'What can wash away my sin?' There really are some amazing old gospel/redemption hymns with sound theology and excellent sentiment, and it's good to see the leaders at Summer Madness incorporate some of them into the singing - last year we had 'My Jesus I love thee, I know thou art mine', and it flowed nicely... and even is the finish to last year's cd!

And as for the speaker, well, I really do like Andy Hickford. Sound Biblical teaching, and an exposition from the Bible! As in, he had the passage open, and referred back to it - not like some speakers or preachers who launch themselves off on a tangent having read the 'text' or passage. Andy looked at the call of Moses, from Exodus 3, and established that Moses' identity was bound up in God's call, and that we also find our identity in Christ.

This afternoon, I went to the seminar 'Called or Collared', on the theme of vocation and calling. The panel was made up of Alan Abernethy, Ken (Fanta) Clarke, James Boyd, Craig Cooney, and Denise Acheson. The seminar was very good, and we heard the stories of the panel, and soem of the challenges and problems with being ordained, but also of the delight and joy found in the ordained ministry.

Then there was the famous Bishop's Barbecue, which Harold does every year for the Down and Dromore subcamp. Once again, the burgers were great, and the craic was good. And I'm not just saying that because there's a chance Bishop Harold will be reading this at some point! If he does have a look, it will be thanks to the secretary of my blog fan club - Mr Martin Montgomery!

Tonight's 'service' had the Psalm Drummers, who use a lambeg, and a bodhran (probably spelt wrong, but my Irish is not great!), as well as other bongos etc to create rythms. They did a sort of a presentation type thing which started with the lambeg and bodhran as competing, but they ended up in the same rythms together. The inference was that these rival drums would come together in some form of unity.

I wasn't so keen on the speaker tonight, though. He was Tre Sheppard, and it seemed that the first twenty minutes were a standard sort of motivational/sales pitch that any religion or salesman could have used to get people onside, about how we have to play a part in the community and move forward, and that we can change history - that the fact isn't that we may change history - we will, but in what way? Eventually, then, he mentioned Jesus, and a couple of bible references in passing, but I wasn't so keen on it at all. Some people, perhaps the most of the crowd were taken by it, but I was talking to a few people afterwards who expressed similar thoughts to mine...

After that, we wandered a bit, talking to people we knew, but then the rain came on at about 10pm, and I was so glad I wasn't camping, as I could come home and get into my warm bed with proper walls and all that!