In Appreciation of House of Games

House of Games recently has become our chosen programme to watch whilst eating our supper, Monday to Friday. We usually only watch one episode of 25 minutes. It is light, we can join in and there is unlikely to be anything that puts us off our tea.

I think it has a sort of liturgical function. It is the same thing at the same time every day. It follows a varied, yet strict format.

Four minor celebrities, with occasional space for a national treasure, answer questions over five rounds. The first round is usually for each player in turn and has a few easier questions to gift points and confidence. Other rounds are clever and reward different types of thinking beyond plain general knowledge. For instance an answer may have to be given backwards, or with the words in alphabetical order. The 16 rounds are repeated week by week, although the order varies. The last round each day is always the same - Answer Smash. Here the questions are in two parts and the end of the answer to part one is the beginning of the answer to part two. Contestants must only give the duplicated bit once and 'smash' the answers into each other. This gives answers such as Malcolm McDonald Duck or Ring of Fireball XL5. The jeopardy of Answer Smash is increased as it is the only round where a point can be lost for a wrong answer, thus allowing gaps to be made up on the leaders if they are over hasty.

This principle is extended on Friday when points for a win are doubled 1,2,3,4 becomes 2,4,6,8 and again allows gaps to be made up.

Groans greet any 'new' round like a new hymn in a church service.

Our knowledge of current TV, especially soap is poor. We are not good at identifying people from pictures. We do not know the names of today's pop artists although the programme digs back well into popular music's past.

We laugh at how poor these minor celebrities are at geography or guessing historical dates. The younger ones obviously think that inventions of the early twentieth or late nineteenth century could have happened in the 1970s or 80s. History is before I was born syndrome.

I like to imagine I take one of the chairs and answer that contestant's questions to see if I could win. I usually do OK.

Daily prizes are red, with a House of Games logo on a regular item such as a bread bin, salt and pepper shaker or rucksack. Each week the dart board and the wheelie luggage are popular. Weekly winners get a trophy. A couple of times per series there is a redemption week for those who did OK but won nothing in a previous week. And a champions' week for previous winners where the daily prizes and trophy are gold(ish).

Richard Osman has presented it for nine years but is now to hand over to Michael Sheen. The current logo is an avatar of Osman's face and each of the contestants is given a similar avatar - basically a black and white caricature of their key facial features.

I imagine that each week is filmed in a day with guests changing clothes between episodes and trying to remember to refer to yesterday rather than an hour ago. Osman's clothes change very little - white shirt, polo neck, polo shirt, blue shirt, always with jeans and jacket. He has good patter and can gently encourage the disappointing 'You've got a win in you this week surely?' He can also prick the bubbles of pomposity that occasionally break out, always with a twinkle in his eye. Things that need moving on from are moved on from professionally. It is the sort of consummate broadcasting I admire very much.

It will probably take Sheen a while to get his feet under the table. Like a new Rector in church people are happy with a change in personality but want to continue recognising the format.

We don't watch the programme live. It is all on the BBC iplayer so we just watch the next episode we haven't watched. Given that we have holidays and time away for other things it means our gap between series is shorter than the live watchers' experience.

I once laughed at our next door neighbours in Leamington, an older couple, when we realised they had recorded Big Break, as the Snooker Loopy theme tune was playing out of the window long after it had finished. Are we like them now? It's different, but I couldn't tell you how.

The point? You were expecting a point were you? I've told you about that. To humour you, how about this:

Writers have a complex relationship with repetition. Sometimes its rhetorical use can be extremely effective. I was tired. I was hungry. I was dirty. I was thirsty. I was almost out of hope. I was rescued. That's not my finest work but you can hear the effect.

But although I like some of the repetition in liturgy it is the tendency for it to change slightly by season that makes it effective for me. It is the theological equivalent of a screen-saver.

It makes me poor at saying 'I love you' and always looking for other ways to put it. Turns out people prefer the mantra to word-play. When I say it, because I perceive that the other person will appreciate it, it costs me. My life is an internal monologue of Just a Minute and that loses points.

On Easter Sunday we use the versicle and response:

Priest: Christ has risen!

All: He has risen indeed. Alleluia!

I dislike it. I want my affirmations more nuanced than that. As a famous piece of spoof liturgy once said:

Priest: Christ is risen

All: Quick, sit down, he's starting

That service would have my attention.

Welcome News

Good morning and welcome to St Whatsits on this beautiful spring/summer/autumn/winter morning.

Good morning and welcome to St Whatsits. It's a (dull/wet/miserable/god-forsaken) day out there but we have a warmth of fellowship in here.

Heard those? I have a bit of trouble with the gushy sentimental opening line of a church service - well intentioned I'm sure - which suggests it is wonderful to worship the Lord on a day when the sunshine lifts our spirits or that the worship is an antidote to gut-sapping weather.

My problem? My spirit is not particularly bound to meteorology. Granted this England has provided consecutive weeks of summer greyness, which is the teensiest bit depressing although mainly because I like shorts and T-shirts. Other times I am longing for rain after weeks of drought and the 'beautiful summer morning' line feels insensitive. And when I have hay-fever I want the weather outside to be frightful and the fire so delightful and I don't care who disagrees.

So many more things than weather come into a church service with me and affect my capacity to worship. I'm a big fan of 'Good morning and welcome to St Whatsits' followed by a singable hymn/song and a few minutes for the liturgy to do its work. Then I might be able to get in touch with how I actually feel, regardless of the rain and its sweet memories.

And I don't know where you put the notices either.

Special Easter Greeting

Courtesy of the Campaign for Real Liturgy ©, here is the Easter all-age opening we used at Trendlewood Church:

Leader: Alleluia. Christ is risen.
All: You say that every year.

Leader: You're supposed to say 'He is risen indeed, alleluia'.
All: No-one says 'alleluia' these days. You're so out of touch.

Leader: So what do you want to say?
All: Jesus is alive. Yeah!

Leader: Really?
All: No. We're not that trendy.

Leader: Big up to Jesus init?
All: Now you're being silly.

Leader: OK, you're in charge.
All: Let's just start with a moment of quiet.

Leader: OK.
All. Shhh!

It led into a very good, and well-observed time of silence. The Campaign for Real Liturgy is delighted to have its material stolen, adapted and unacknowledged. Which pretty much makes the whole © thing a waste of time eh?

The Language of Theology

I once asked my friend Mike, a chemist at the time not a minister, to explain the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats. I then got him to do it as a talk illustration by speaking in a way no-one would understand. He did a good job. The thing is that he was also able to explain the difference in language we could all understand by removing, or explaining scientific terms.

I have listened to the many scientists involved in the experiment to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang using the CERN particle accelerator. What comes over is not so much an understanding of exactly what they are doing, what they will observe and how but the sheer excitement of it all, to them. Countdowns in Bond-villain accents, applause and champagne all communicate that this is important, exciting and difficult.

For those of us who feel that we already have a good take on the meaning of life, so that this simply adds to the sum of human knowledge about it, it is a lesson. Perhaps more excitement, applause and champagne would convince people we were serious.

The language of theology, although sometimes necessary amongst initiates for the sake of clarity, is not an easy one for outsiders to follow. The language of excitement is.

Sunday. 10.00 a.m. 'Welcome. We are going to be in touch with the creator and sustainer of the Universe in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...'

I can almost hear the pop of the champagne corks now.

Trust

Wonderful occasional joy and mirth is caused by misprints or misalignment of projector and screen. Today a sudden alteration to the aspect ratio meant we lost the left hand letter of every word in our liturgy. There was much to enjoy but above all else there was this, a new Yorkshire prayer of humble access:

e do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord
rusting in our own righteousness

Indeed we don't. As my old school song used to say, 'Die of service not of rust.'

Liturgy

I know that all churches are liturgical. We all end up with our patterns of doing things. My own morning congregation of Trendlewood is pretty informal and relaxed but we have a three part pattern of worship, word and wesponse (sorry) most weeks so we are liturgical.

By and large we don't use much written liturgy but we do have something most weeks, often confession, creed or intercessory prayer which we say congregationally. We also have a bit of simple communion liturgy which involves repetition so the children get it even if they can't read yet. Next week we will have a baptism and we will use a set form of service for that, albeit punctuated by charisma and wit from the minister - well I like to think so anyway.

Sometimes I have heard services which use a lot of versicles and responses described as 'high church.' I think I ought to send people using such descriptions to a proper anglo-catholic shrine so they know the difference. In fact I wonder if we ought to add to our increasing catalogue of special Sundays a 'Go somewhere else and experience it' Sunday. We'd have to do it over two weeks or there would be no regulars to welcome the newcomers.

Still, what I wanted to say was that yesterday I led two services at a local church which prides itself on doing 'proper anglicanism' and so does everything by the book, including seasonal extras and all.

I presided and spoke at a spoken 8.30 a.m. communion, (order two in contemporary language) and at an order one evening communion. For this I dusted off my robes and borrowed a stole. These two services were from the Church of England's official contemporary prayer book Common Worship.

I have been reflecting on this. I have been a member of the Church of England since well before Common Worship was introduced and in that time have preached and led worship at a vast number of services around the country. This was the first time I have done that at a service where every member of the congregation had a copy of Common Worship in their hands. I am an intelligent man (stop sniggering) but I had to really stop and think as I made my way through the various seasonal variations, tried to remember what I had been told about when the choir would be singing responses rather than us all saying them and kept in mind the faces of the people in the congregation I had been told would want wafers not bread.

How on earth would it feel to be a stranger/newcomer/unchurched at this? In fact the 27 early communicants all looked more familiar with the material than myself and in the evening the score was ministers 2, congregation 8, choir 10. Was it wrong of me to pray, 'Please Lord let no-one new arrive?'

I wanted to invite everyone back to mine for a drink afterwards although the 8 congregants had managed to avoid sitting in each other's sight lines so well I suspected that they might not be at home sharing a lounge with other carbon-based life forms.

I did manage not to snigger (at least until later) at the Bible reader including the 'good news of Jesus' resignation' and Asia being pronounced to rhyme with Hezekiah. Well done me.

I quite enjoyed it. As a way of using private worship time I would have been content. But public worship? Would it have been understanded of the people? This liturgical ship is sinking isn't it? Whadderwedo?

Anglicanism

The service I attended in the last two hours began with the line, 'We sing hymn Number 6 omitting verses 5 and 6.' Now that's a proper Anglican introduction, better even than:

The Lord be with you
Ay up he's started

and

There's something the matter with this microphone
And also with you

and

Lift up your hearts
And up yours

St Brendan

Enjoy Mark Berry's (Way Out West) St Brendan meditation, especially the responsive liturgy.

Campaign for Real Liturgy (CRL)

Have been a member of the CRL since Bob taught me:

Minister: The Lord is here.
People: Ay up he's started.

Which I published in full in Drama Verses Sketches (CPAS 1999) page 38.

I now formally induct Jo Barfoot into the CRL for this effort (when she should have been working or moving house or both).

This is the North London version of the Confession:

Minister: Merciful Lord, we confess that we have failed you.
Congregation: An' you gotta problem wiv dat?

Minister: God says: Yeah, I gotta problem wiv dat. You people fink you so clever, just look at the mess you making ovit.
Congregation: Sorry, innit

Minister: We confess that we have sinned against our neighbour.
Congregation: Yeah, bu' you don' know what she like.

Minister: God says: Course I know what she like. I'm God, innit? You gottago and sor' i' ou'
Congregation: Sorry, innit.

More like this please.