CEN November 2007

Here is last month's Church of England Newspaper copy

Nearly time to get all grumpy about the amount of energy wasted on Christmas lights. If you prefer to join ‘em rather than beat ‘em, Silent Lights will sell you stuff such as doves, angels and nativity panels.

If you think the lights will be the death of you and you want to ponder a bit about how you will eventually shuffle offstage then here are some of the players. The Natural Death Centre is a place to visit to organise environmentally friendly funerals. The Eco-funerals address links to an organisation called Arka Original Funerals so it is a business. They offer to help plan funerals for you with as many trimmings as you wish. Ecoffins will sell you an environmentally more friendly coffin or urn and give you information about the carbon footprint of your funeral. Ecocoffins are similar and make claims about the non-leakage of their products, a matter which hadn’t bothered me until they reassured me that it shouldn’t.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone tescoed online green shopping. Still, the Ethical Superstore is quite good so you might like to visit and get all your Christmas gifts from one place. Meanwhile Tescos will sell you energy-saving Christmas lights.

If you are hard-pressed for ideas for lessons (school or Sunday work), Youth for Christ’s School Resources Archive and Exchange is worth a browse. It used to be called The Talking Donkey, which was much cooler but probably no-one found. Schoolswork also looks like it may be helpful. ‘Schoolswork.co.uk are a group of Christian schools workers who are passionate about making a difference in the lives of young people through work in schools. If your vision is to do the same, then come and join in. Once registered, you’ll be able to contribute to our Community Blog.’ Dare2engage is, ‘For chaplains, teaching staff, youth workers and all those wanting to make a Christian contribution in 6th forms and FE colleges.’

For Bible resources, Lifewords has evolved from Bible agency, Scripture Gift Mission. In their words, ‘Our passion is to see individuals and communities transformed, by helping people to engage with God’s Word. Lifewords exists to equip you to reach your world with the life-changing power of the Bible's message.’

I find that playing clips of adverts is often a good ice breaker or even quiz question. You will find hundreds of adverts archived by Andy Savage at Absolutely Andy.

If you want to read a newspaper for research try Paperboy. This search engine will point you towards local papers all over the world. Slight disadvantage is a very busy front page. Migraine easing off now.

Now, have you had a computer disaster? Accidentally deleted your work or suffered a power failure? Hack College has a list of things you can do to recover a lost word document. Follow links back to their home page for other interesting articles. Asknerd is a nice little site where you can get non-technical answers to technical questions.

Some blogs to browse. The Bishop of Buckingham blogs at Bishop Alan. He updates most days and there is a nice ‘thought for the day’ sort of feel to it. The Bishop of London has a blog and will accept emails with nagging doubts and tricky questions. Ask him what colour his boxers are. Go on. I dare you.

Custardy is always good for a bit of theological thought although the author identifies himself (pretty sure it’s a him) by picture not name. Trinity, Cheltenham and New Wine worship leader Neil Bennetts blogs at thebabyandthebathwater – great for him and rubbish for my spellchecker. He writes pleasingly and vulnerably. Doug Chaplin is a minister from Droitwich Spa who blogs at Metacatholic. He describes what he does as ‘reading scripture in a post-thingy world’. The content is better than the strap and the daily scripture is in Greek.

Birmingham Diocese have an interesting attention grabber at Signs of Faith. It’s still under construction. Not sure how they will attract the ones they seek but good luck to them. Click on the dog, the salt or the fish for brief explanations of the image and links to more detail.

If you want to waste time usefully this month then go to Freerice where you get to play a word game. The better you do the more they donate to help end world hunger. I donated 280 grains researching this article. I learned some new words too.

Previous months at my blog.