The Church Times Podcast The Church Times

Can organs (and organists), choirs, instrumental music groups, and praise bands exist in harmony?

This question was considered by an expert panel at the first Church Times Festival of Faith and Music in York (News, 3 May), held in partnership with the Royal School of Church Music.

The panellists, who all have experience of traditional and contemporary styles, were:

Peter Asprey, Director of Music at Holy Sepulchre London, the National Musicians’ Church in the heart of the City of London.

The Revd Pete Gunstone, Minor Canon for Worship and Nurture at Bradford Cathedral.

Tom Bell, a freelance organist who is also Director for the North of England, North Wales, and the Isle of Man at the Royal College of Organists.

Find out more about forthcoming Church Times events at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events including the Church Times Festival of Preaching in September: https://festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk

https://faithandmusic.hymnsam.co.uk

Picture credit: Duncan Lomax

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the Revd Dr Isabelle Hamley is interviewed about Struggling with God: Mental health and Christian spirituality, which she co-wrote with C. H. Cook and John Swinton. The book is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. She is in conversation with Sarah Meyrick.

Anne Holmes has written this month’s book club essay about the book. Read it at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/books-arts/book-club

Struggling with God focuses on the mental-health challenges facing Christians, and looks at how these issues relate to spirituality, prayer, and church life. This is an accessible book by three academics. The authors address the stigma attached to mental health in church communities, and look at the problems arising from some church settings in which mental health is connected with a lack of faith. Each of the six chapters ends with a biblical reflection with questions for individual or group study.

Struggling with God is published by SPCK at £14.99 (Church Times Bookshop £13.49); 978-0-281-08641-2. https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780281086412/struggling-with-god?vc=CT509

Dr Hamley, who is the Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, is speaking at the Church Times Festival of Preaching in September. https://festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk

Sarah Meyrick is a novelist. Her latest novel is Joy and Felicity (Sacristy Press, 2021).

The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk

Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup

Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, is interviewed by Francis Martin about her visit this month to Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

Since the “awful atrocities” committed by Hamas on 7 October and the subsequent “horrors of the war in Gaza”, she said, “there has been an absence of a focus on the West Bank.

“One of the main points of my trip was to go to the West Bank, to listen to the voices of Palestinian Christians, to see how things are for them in the light of all that's been going on since 7 October, but being acutely aware that things have been going on for years and years.”

During the visit, she met the family of Layan Nasir, the 23-year-old Anglican who has been detained by Israel since April. “We are praying and speaking out loudly in the hope that, when her case is heard, when the review happens at the beginning of August, that she will be released back to her family, who simply want her home.”

Her itinerary also included a visit to the Military Court attached to Ofer Prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah; a visit to the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem, where Christians are trying to protect their land from development; and prayer in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Bishop also had conversations at Hebrew Union College, in Jerusalem, with Rabbi Dr Michael Marmur, of Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Archbishop in Jerusalem, Dr Hosam Naoum.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

This week’s episode is brought to you from Edinburgh, and features a conversation with the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Most Revd Mark Strange. It was recorded on Saturday, 15 June, at the conclusion of the Church’s General Synod meeting.

The Primus spoke about the General Election campaign and Christians’ involvement in politics; the situation involving the Bishop of Aberdeen & Orkney, the Rt Revd Anne Dyer (News, 24 May); the Synod’s motion on the war in Gaza; mission in the 21st century; and his hopes for Scotland’s national football team at Euro 2024 (it was recorded the day after Scotland lost to Germany, but before the 1-1 draw with Switzerland, which kept Scotland’s hopes of advancing past the group stages alive).

During the conversation, Bishop Strange was also asked about non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and he said that he had no knowledge of their use in the Church. Subsequent to this, the SEC sent the Church Times a statement, which said: “Non-disclosure agreements have, on occasion, been entered into in the past in the Church. HR processes are handled at the appropriate level within the Church, and therefore the Primus would not normally be involved.”

Read the report on the use of NDAs here and detailed coverage of the Synod meeting in this week’s Church Times (21 June), in print and online.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

Stewart McCulloch joined Christians Against Poverty (CAP) at the start of the year as its new chief executive. He previously led the charity Stewardship.

CAP’s latest report says that 46 per cent of its clients have considered taking their own life as a way out of their debt, and nine out of ten have reported having sleepless nights from financial anxiety (News, 24 May).

On the podcast this week, Francis Martin interviews Mr McCulloch about the findings of the report, as well as how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting CAP’s clients. He also explains how CAP works with churches, why the charity is unapologetically Christian in its approach, offering clients prayer and invitations to church, and he calls for politicians to do more to tackle debt.

“Our clients are our neighbours, they are friends of friends, they are the people amongst us, and so it’s a really transformative ministry in so many different ways,” he says. “It’s never just about the finances, because it’s about the social isolation, it’s about the anxiety, it’s about the spiritual poverty as well as the material poverty.”

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

The best-selling novelist Karen Powell is the guest on this month’s Book Club Podcast, where Sarah Meyrick interviews her about Fifteen Wild Decembers, which is this month’s choice.

Michael Wheeler has written an essay about the book in the 7 June edition of the Church Times.

Fifteen Wild Decembers is a re-imagining of the life of Emily Brontë set against the wild moors of the author’s beloved Yorkshire — the same wild landscape that inspired her best-known novel Wuthering Heights. The book’s title is taken from Brontë’s poem “Remembrance”, words spoken at the graveside of her past love — “Cold in the earth — and fifteen wild Decembers”. She, too, like her lost love, ends up living a short life. In this first-person narrative, we hear Emily’s account of the domestic struggles that she has with her siblings from schooldays to adulthood, and the long journey to publication of not only her work, but that of her sisters, too.

Fifteen Wild Decembers is published by Europa Editions at £9.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.99); 978-1-78770-545-6.

Karen Powell grew up in Rochester, Kent, and now lives in North Yorkshire.

Sarah Meyrick is a novelist. Her latest novel is Joy and Felicity (Sacristy Press, 2021).

The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature: https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk

Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup

Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader