I’m a little bogged down this week with a cold, four sermons (one Wednesday, two Sunday, funeral Friday), a few meetings and the like, but I did manage to get a golf game in this morning which was just the respite I needed–even if I played horribly.

Strangely, though, my most busy week also has me finished two books I’ve been reading.

I wasn’t overly impressed with Cloud Atlas. I could tell Mitchell almost wrote an amazing book, and that he has great writing skills and is a good story teller and all that, but I never bought it. I felt too much that Mitchell was showing off–like a good preacher who thinks, “watch me wow you with my preaching” rather than simply preaches the gospel.

For a change of genres, John Pritchard’s The Life and Work of a Priest was most enjoyable. Writing as the Bishop of Oxford (Anglican), Pritchard reflects on the duties of a priest in contemporary England. The hopeful account of the task of priests does acknowledge the contextual challenges of British church. For example:

• 20% of the UK population regularly or irregularly attend church
• 40% have had don’t attend but have had some church contact at some point in their lives
• 40% have had virtually no contact with the church

I’ll probably post more on Prichard’s description of a priest later, but overall I find his vision somehow realistic, doomed, and hopeful the same time. He’s aware of the church’s decline yet it doesn’t move him to attempt to reinvent the wheel. He’s aware of the emerging conversation, sees value in it, but views it very much from a traditional perspective in which change occurs slowly, thoughtfully, carefully. He sees churches closing, but he doesn’t freak out because he also sees faithful work continuing.

I’ll close with a spiffy quote:

“…to that extent a clergy leader is a liminal figure, living in the borderland between the Church and the world, the present and the future, inherited church and emerging church” (p. 103).