Recently the phone rang, and a disembodied voice said.” Your Amazon Prime has expired, and we have debited your card with the £79:37p renewal fee. However, should you wish to discontinue this service press one …… “ I thought, “I don’t have Amazon Prime” and so put the phone down. But doubt set in as I asked myself whether I had inadvertently ordered Prime TV at a time when making a purchase. Readers who have bought things on-line, will know that Amazon make it easy – almost too easy – to accept free Prime delivery and unknowingly sign up for other services at the same time.
The caller’s number was 0031 232 770442, and so I rang Amazon to check if the call really had come from them. A heavily accented but charming young lady asked, “How are you today and what is your name?” Now, readers will know that I am charm personified with telephonic ladies, and so I spoke slowly and with a decisive use of consonants. Maria, speaking from her home in Columbia South America at two in the morning, was not at her best, but she did tell me that the phone number in question was not one used by Amazon, and that I was not signed up to Prime. As we bade farewell her confirmatory email popped up on my screen. At no time had Maria asked for any information other than my name, yet from her home in Columbia South America, she knew quite a bit about me.
Because the scammer’s number was still in my head, I googled to confirm that a range of 0031 numbers is associated with scams. I am, therefore, glad I had hung up and was not lured into giving them something to add to the data they already had.
But talking of data. I thought readers may want to ruminate on the difference between data and information and the distinction between information and knowledge. And to then place the words analysis and collation in between the emboldened/underlined words. If you get them in the correct order, you might then ponder what the processes of collation and analysis entail.
But leaving aside this diversionary clever stuff. Recently the Church of England announced a plan to create ten thousand new house churches in the next few years. What this plan means for the 16,000 existing church buildings they currently use is not clear.
I hope that before they decided on this target, they consulted those Protestant churches whose history of home worship long precedes the time that Henry Tudor wielded his axe. They aught also to have consulted non-conformist churches whose sacramental ministers, although deemed unacceptable to the C of E today, do have hundreds of years of experience in building Christian Communities from house worship. Indeed, the vibrancy of Christian fellowship in the Newent area is a testimony to the power of the original Christian Gospel Spirit today in those groups where it is less burdened by the mixture of canon and bureaucratic law. Some may even see it as God’s will that Henry’s axe fell at a time when the message of the Gospels had been bureaucratised out of proportion, and the spirit had become subservient to the letter of the law.
Few Parish Churches today are actually owned by the C of E. They were, sequestered – some say stolen – by the State when King Henry VIII destroyed the Monasteries and a new ‘English’ church very similar to the older ‘Roman’ one emerged.
Today’s Church of England has tried to find a way to separate its stewardship of the Parish Buildings from its obligations to the Gospel message, but no government will take responsibility for maintaining the ancient buildings. Subsequently the hierarchy has come up with a plan to reduce costs. By closing buildings, employing fewer coal-face workers and allowing a non-ordinal and sacramental role to laity, they hope to stay in business as a viable national influence. Will their plan work? no-one knows.
One answer, but not theirs, could lie in a dramatically less centralised form of organisation and a closer connection between the Priest and the Parish whereby a Priest agrees a payment package with the Parish/Benefice. Then; reform instead of being driven from the top would work from the bottom. By dramatically empowering the priest, the upward pressure for change would soon compel radical changes all the way to the top. In fact, that is the way Christianity all started.
But will this happen? Put a ring around your choice and then think about it.
Y / N
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