Fr Luke Miller

Uniformed youth organisations are on the up. It is well known that Scouts and Guides would grow bigger if only they could find more adult leaders. The Boys Brigad e and Girls Brigade have development officers seeking to increase the number of Companies, and the Sea Cadets for whom I am the London Area Chaplain are seeking to expand the number of Units. In recent years the reformed and reinvigorated police cadets have grown to 5000 members in the Metropolitan Police Area from a standing start. Army and Royal Air Force Cadets and the CCF are also popular. BB Evening making Christmas cards with a local artist  Younger BB at the Advent Activities making decorations for church Despite the idea that young people are all laid-back and messy, it seems that tens of thousands of them enjoy what look like thoroughly old-fashioned organisations. Why might this be and what can the church learn from it? Sea Cadets at the Lord Mayor's Show Great Activities...

At the General Synod I wore my Sea Cadet Uniform for one day to draw attention to the great work done by lots of clergy and licensed lay ministers in uniformed youth organizations, especially the Cadets. The Church Times printed a picture of me speaking. Many Cadet Organizations seek Chaplains and it is a rewarding and enjoyable ministry which touches the lives of many young people in amazingly positive ways. In the Sea Cadets we say that we are #NeverOrdinary and that is certainly true. I was speaking on the new Church Representation Rules and welcoming the provision being made for  congregations of church plants to have representation in Synodical structures. You can see my speech here  starting at 22:42, and the text I spoke from is below. Of course what one wrote down is never quite what one says! It fell to me with the support of our indefatigable synodical secretary to steer through the London Diocesan Synod synodical representation for those worshi...

At General Synod earlier in the month I had hoped to be called in the debate on the Miscellaneous Provisions Measure (No2) - which all seems very dry but is quite important. Miscellaneous Provisions Measures gather up matters that are important enough to need legislation but not important enough to warrant a Measure on their own.  I wanted to speak about Clause 6 on the appointment of Quinquennial Inspectors. Had I been called this is what I was going to say: Quinquennial inspections of churches are of crucial importance. They help churchwardens, PCCs and all those in the parish who bear the responsibility for care of churches. They also support archdeacons in our support of the people at the sharp end to whom we must all be enormously grateful. The Quinquennial Inspector is ideally someone who has a deep knowledge of the of building they are inspecting. A person who knows how to nurse a concrete structure into its 80th year as the reinforcement corrodes...

S Andrew by the Wardrobe is host to an Indian Orthodox congregation. They cast petals on the ground on their Palm Sunday procession. Seeing them there as I came home yesterday put me in mind of a poem of S Therese of Lisieux, An Unpetalled Rose The text is here . The poem meditates on the first trembling steps of the child Jesus, beginning with what seems the sentimental desire to unpetal a rose 'So that your little foot might rest ever so softly on a flower.' The wobbling attempts of the toddler are but the first steps on the way of the Cross. The poet realises this as she suggests that her life should be unpetalled; not standing proud like the flowers in the vase, but unpetalled and cast on the processional path: 'The rose in its splendor can adorn your feast... but the unpetalled rose is just flung out to blow away... like it, with joy I abandon myself to you." So often we want to be heroes of the faith, obvious in our devotion, strangely selfish in our ver...

The City New Year service at S Michael Cornhill  is attened by the Lord Mayor in full regalia. It is one of only a few times in the year that the Lord Mayor wears the ' Collar of Esses ', a livery collar which, though repaired and remade, goes back at least to the reign of Henry VIII. It is extrarodinary to contemplate the nearness of the past when such an item is in use. It gives connexion with out predecessors and is a tangible link with those who have gone before. Of course the thing is that human history is not that long. near the entrance to the British Museum is the ' Battlefield Palette ' about a century older than the Narmer Palette , which is the document with which written Egyptian history begins. It is about 5,000 years old. Not a very long time in the scheme of things. There has been a church on the site on Cornhill for a good proportion of that time, the first one having been built on the edge of the Forum of Roman London. The Battlefield Palette ...

The chalk on the Epiphany is one of those things that some people know very well, and others have never heard of at all. The wrting of the traditional names of the magi on the lintel of the door is a way of marking the home and offering a symbol of Christian hospitality. It is also a little act of witness. It even works if you have a double glazed front door rather than helpful brickwork as you can write the words on a paper and put it up inside the glass.

As Advent draws to a close my Twitter feed is full of contrasts. From Elanor Parker there is this beautiful reflection on Our Lady in Advent, full of biblical and Anglo Saxon text and imagery. 'How rightly all speech-bearing ones throughout the world address you and say, joyous in heart, that you should be the bride of the best Gift-giver of the skies.' An Anglo-Saxon reflection on Mary, peace-weaver and the door in the wall between the worlds: https://t.co/5dK5A52Guf pic.twitter.com/H3295Mfd1N — Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) 23 December 2017 Then there is the Christingle Selfie Station at Christ Church Southgate. Thank you, yes the Christingle Selfie Station is always a hit with all ages :-) pic.twitter.com/tcBbnmkK83 — Christ Church S/gate (@ChristChurchN14) December 23, 2017 This surely is the thing about incarnation. It is for all cultures, high and low, and for all people rich and poor.  Meanwhile there are also tweets about people getting engaged ...

Carol services are an extraordinary mission opportunity. In the course of any given December the churches of the City of London will see at least 500 Carol services. Some of the churches are doing 23 services in the course of 18 days. The same pattern is true across the West End. One of the larger parish churches has 25,000 go through the doors, and the five churches in Trafalgar Square and along the Strand will see 100,000 visits during the course of the month. We have an Anchor: Old RN College Chapel As I have written elsewhere , there are two sorts of time in this season. Internally the church waits w ith hopeful expectation in the subdued light of Advent. Externally we anticipate the celebration of  the feast,taking the opportunity to share with the world the joy that God is with us. In amongst all of these many services I had a hand in the organisation of the London Area Sea Cadet Carol Service. In the magnificent setting of the Chapel at the Old Royal ...

Today in the Diocese of London we welcome Bishop Sarah Mullally as our new Bishop, though of course she won’t start for a while yet. We all have the framework given both by the London Plan and by the Five Guiding Principles Five Guiding Principles  which will allow us to continue to work together under the Grace of God for the growth of the church in faith, love and numbers of those believing. I have always served as far as possible in the mainstream; my wife is a deacon (she has no problem with the ordination of women to all three Orders), so I can hardly avoid the issues. Archdeacon Rosemary and I have worked together these last two years, and our article in the forthcoming edition of New Directions offers a report of a public reflection we made at the City Deanery Chapter earlier in the year. The experience has changed us both. There are only four traditionalist archdeacons in the country. In fact Bishop Sarah has this all too uncommon experience in the diocese of Exeter....