October
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Rev’d Dr Tim Stratford will be visiting St. Hugh’s on Sunday 8th October and again on Sunday 26th November. On each occasion he will preach and preside at mass. Before becoming Archdeacon of Leicester in 2012 he served as a parish priest in Kirkby, an outer estate in Liverpool. It will be interesting to hear him speak about his experience as a parish priest working in this context which we might expect has many similar challenges to our own context here in Eyres Monsell. Archdeacon Tim has a particular interest in liturgy and is a member of the Church’s 19-strong Liturgical Commission which drew up a new wording for use in services of Baptism. He was part of a group of clergy from Liverpool who wanted the service to be made easier to understand. The Church has been accused of "dumbing down" after trialling the new wording for christenings in which parents and godparents are no longer asked to “repent of their sins” and “reject the devil”. The Archdeacon has recently told the Telegraph: “I think there are questions over how the word ‘sin’ is received. There are two ways it crosses people’s mind instantly: one way is, it’s all about sex. The other way is, it’s all about cream cakes and eating less.” But he says, “We are talking about something that is much bigger than that. The issue of sin is the way that self-centredness pervades an awful lot of who we are and what we do.” He also defended the cutting of the reference to the ‘devil’. “The devil is a very strong image and the image that will cross people’s minds is probably a little red creature with a pitchfork and pointed ears because that’s what popular art has done to the devil.” He said that when serving as a parish priest “on an outer estate in Liverpool” he could see that some “phrases and poetic sentences” in the baptism service were not being understood properly and the clergy wanted the messages to be “communicated more strongly.” Forthcoming Services and Events.
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