Sunday Supplement: Pragmatism!

Sir Richard Arcos here: With the fragrant Lynette Madison busy working her pretty fingers to the bone in the call centre of doom, it was down to me to pick the church again this week. I chose Castle Hill Community Seeker Fellowship in Woodbridge, Suffolk, as I had heard that it was seeking to make the Gospel relevant to the needs of modern men and women. Tis time I took Lady Louise Vaughan, another of my daughters, with me. Her son, Lord Ambrose, lives fairly nearby, at Mainstone Castle, so she hoped to make it a family visit at the same time. We arrived early and were ushered into a huge parking lot. At the door, we were handed a voucher that we could swap for coffee at the nearby fast food outlet. We later gave these to a tramp, who turned them down, as even the tramps in Woodbridge have good taste.

Inside, we discovered that the church was doing a themed day, in this case the theme was the circus, and the pastor and deacons were dressed as clowns. My daughter was less than impressed, especially when one of them squired her in the eye with his buttonhole. For my part, I disarmed him before he could do the same to me, then apologised and said that I was a delusional old man who thought he was Batman sometimes and that I had mistaken him for the Joker. He looked at me as though I was mad. Which was the general idea.

The children were led out of the service and encouraged to paint and what have you, while afterwards the young people went to the pub for a large lunch. The sermon was all about how Jesus will be there for you when you need him, which is all very well, but we were never told exactly why we needed him, and the whole left one with the idea that he was asort of imaginary friend. Since I had more thanenough friends at the age where one can have an imaginary friend, this impressed me not at all.

I did ask the ringmaster (sorry, pastor) why I needed the Gospel of Jesus and he said something about a fulfilled life. At which point I told him that my life is pretty much fulfilled, thank you very much. I am married to a wonderful woman, have lots of money, a great house and many grandchildren. He made like a guppy, so I tossed him a handful of fishfood.

After which we were thrown out. At least we didn't have to turn to the person next to us and tell them they mattered.