To an extent, if you are reading this then you already are in some form of contact with the surreal world of parishLife, but this is a little summary for the casual visitor. This post was sparked off by the realisation that although I have had a Mastodon account for quite some time, I hardly ever post to it (err.. 9 months ago was the last time <shamefaced look>), so I have resolved to do better…
It is my considered opinion that the best youthwork in the land can the mediated through Facebook. The Sunday’s Youth Group has it’s own page . The beauty of FB is that it is not centrally organised, and the discussions, photos, comments etc. can freewheel away. Young people do this best of all, and Lou and I just hang onto the coat tails and use FB to remind everyone of when we meet. FB enables true non-geographical encounters with people, almost real-time conversations and between the times that we meet together, I think it bridges the gape between the personal and the impersonal. Nothing beats a face2face (worship, mass, youth group, evening prayer or benediction) but until we meet again before the Lord…
If you know me properly, you can always be my fwend. I personally tend to use Facebook status updates like Mastodon, and as I use the Flock browser, you can have a sidebar open which will continually update statuses (it also does it for Mastodon as well)
(names blurred to protect the innocent)
Mastodon
Mastodon has had a sudden upsurge in popularity recently, for reasons probably of celebrity (Stephen Fry on Jonathon Ross, I think) and all sorts of people have started “following” my previously non-existant Tweets. There will be more. My twitter name: frsimon
Youtube
You can find most of my video work on Youtube at: http://uk.youtube.com/user/simonrundell
You can download them using a program like Save2PC which is quite cheap, or try and access AgnusDei (see below) for better quality websites
Slideshare
Sometimes I just need to share Powerpoints, and so I use Slideshare. Mine are grouped together at http://www.slideshare.net/simonrundell
Parish Website:
There are a number of addresses for the S. Thomas Website but they all point to the same thing:
http://www.saintthomaselson.org.uk
or
http://www.thomastheapostle.info
both works. This has a lot of stuff about us on it, as well as links back to the parishLife blog (which is here), lots of photos of recent events and all the stuff that’s fit to print/download.
Blesséd
The innovative sacramental alt.worship community that is Blesséd has a Facebook group and a website at www.blessed.org.uk
Agnus Dei
This is the sticky one for me, as this site hosts all of my production quality (which means MPG-1) videos, Bacuse of their huge size (100Gb or so), I have to host them on my broadband which so far has been a maximum of 1.5Mb aDSL (an upload speed of 288kbps) – sloooooww and increasingly unreliable – thanks Pipex. The server can simply disppear or I have to turn it off if we need the bandwidth for our own work (two teenagers, a wife teacher-traning and myself). I apologise for this. Later this week, I plan to move to cable, and hopefully this will provide better bandwidth and more consistancy. Although the interface is basic, and the videos huge (average size – 30Mb or so) you get the full videos we use in Blesséd worship and my teaching / children’s / youth work.
iPriest.org.uk / frsimon.org.uk / rundell.org.uk
These exist, but I don’t actually do anything public with them. Rundell handles our email (I have had that domain in 1998); iPriest handles much of my development work and testing
Is that all? If I find any others, I’ll let you know.
Dear Fr. Rundell,
As I said in an email message to you the other day, I have richly enjoyed and forwarded several of your posts/homilies. I greatly admire and value your insights as a Christian in today’s world. I have also just read extensively the many pages posted on your St. Thomas website. I myself happen to be a committed Missouri Synod Lutheran. And our two denominations share many beliefs beyond those truths articulated in our common creeds and the centrality of scripture, particularly the sanctity of life and our shared duty to reach out to the “widows, fatherless and aliens” all around us.
However, upon reading the apology for homosexuality on your website, I find an absence of your generally excellent logic and refreshing viewpoints. I respectfully suggest that the points of the refuting arguments you make referring to both OT and NT Scripture condemning homosexuality are essentially red herrings to more essential and central truths and teachings contained in those passages. To wit, as for logic, one could say that a serial rapist or murderer can’t help what he is, and thus that not only he deserves forgiveness (he certainly does), but also that his behavior must be somehow sympathetically understood or minimized. And the “victimless” argument for consenting adults is just as weak since such a rationalization could be applied to many other sins.
To be quite frank, I simply cannot comprehend God calling the act of a man who inserts his penis in the anus or mouth of another man, or a woman, or an animal, anything less than unnatural and truly a perversion. Think about it, if only from the biological and hygienic perspectives. Unfortunately, all those acts as well as much more known behavior even more gross (I would call detestable) are routine in the homosexual community.
I’m sure you’ve heard “Hate the sin, Love the sinner.” To me and my denomination, that’s the guiding principle on this issue.
In Christ, James Helbig