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Caption Competition
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Entries must be received by Friday 22 June.
Here are the winners from our last caption-competition photo:
george frostgeorge frost
I am your Father (Paul Taylor)
No, I’m not your father, he art in heaven (Tom Page)
FOR reasons that remain mysterious to us, this week’s photo prompted a deluge of references to archdeacons:
- The Archdeacon’s Visitation took on a whole new dimension (Dave Bishop)
- The Reverend Heddle dreaded visitations from Archdeacon Palpatine (George Frost)
- Archdeacon Darth decided to dress like his namesake (Chris Coupe)
- The Archdeacon sent an enforcement team as the windows clearly didn’t have list-B approval (Andrew Greenhough)
- The Archdeacon had arrived to escort Jeremy to his Clergy Discipline Panel hearing (Alexander Faludy)
- He was prepared for the Archdeacon’s Visitation (Michael Doe)
- Now, Archdeacon, we’re going to get a lovely Visitation Report, aren’t we? (Martin Miller)
We knew that attendance and finance were problems for many parishes, but we didn’t know it was this bad:
- The Diocesan Encouragement Team were rounding up all those who had failed to provide October attendance figures (Edward Mynors)
- The Diocesan Board of Finance came to collect the parish share (Bob Weldon)
Some readers suggested that parishes might be strengthening their defences against invasion by alien forces:
- The HTB church-plant was not universally welcomed (Richard Barnes)
- HTB insisted that the new church plant was not a takeover (Michael Doe)
- The Vicar of St Luke’s was determined to deal with the Evangelical takeover, once and for all (Michael Gibb)
- The last pockets of Messy Church had now been eliminated (Patrick Irwin)
Perhaps the General Synod’s relaxing of canonical vesture requirements had been interpreted too imaginatively?
- The new outfits for the altar party have met with a mixed reception from the congregation, but the Vicar seems pleased (Jane Dobbie)
- The Curate and the Readers decided on alternative ‘robes’ as it was the fourth Sunday in the month (Chris Coupe)
- The newly ordained assistant curates took a relaxed view of Canon C27 (Derek Wellman)
- The General Synod’s discussion on future clerical attire demonstrates aptly the turning from darkness to the light (Gary Crellin)
This could, of course, be a new way to spur congregational giving:
- Would you like to donate to our roof fund? (Heather Gregg)
- Fr Michael had a cunning plan to convince parishioners to meet their diocesan share (Philip Baxter)
- As contributions to the collection plate reduce, Fr Higgins decided to take matters into his own hands (Neil Gow)
- A Gift Day with a difference (Valerie Budd)
Some entries from Star Wars devotees, conversant with the scripts:
- If you want to see your vicar again. . . (M J Leppard)
- We find your lack of faith disturbing. . . (Stephen Taylor)
- Fr Higgins smugly knows that Lord Vader will never find his lack of faith disturbing (Neil Gow)
- V: ‘May the force be with you.’ R: ‘And with you, too’ (Tim Egan)
- A long time ago, in a parish far far away (Adam Ransom)
And some other entries that we enjoyed:
- Come on, Luke, Daddy’s here for your baptism (Kim Styles)
- The Vicar introduced the new parish safeguarding team (Mervyn Cox)
- An embarrassed Vader was regretful that he had not received the ‘white evening wear only’ memorandum (Guy Platten)
- I’ll never turn to the dark side. You’ve failed, Your Highness. I am an Anglican, like my father before me (Mark Inglis)
- It was a quietly disappointing hostage situation, but Darth was going to run with it (Russ Bravo)
- Predictive spelling added a new twist to traditional tarts-and-vicars parties when it replaced ‘tarts’ with ‘startroopers’ (Edward Mynors)
- The Revd Luke was aware that it had been many light years, and in a galaxy far far away, since the feast of St Arwars had been celebrated (Michael Foster)
- The Vicar realised that there must have been a mistake in the advert for Three Wise Men (Dawn Rowley-White)
- ‘By faith they turned to fight the armies of the aliens’ (Hebrews 11.34). ‘Good luck with that, Father!’ (John Saxbee)
- I’m just a simple priest trying to make my way in the universe (Nicola Busby)
- Luke should have known the dress code for a May the fourth induction (John Radford)
- The Vicar is very imaginative when it comes to finding ways to increase church numbers (Lynda Sebbage)
- Not many churches need to keep people out (Vicky Lundberg)
- For goodness’ sake, I said ‘Saith the Lord,’ not ‘the Lord Sith’ (Isaac Leaver)
- So this is ecumenical! (Lawrence Brazier)
- The Revd Matthew Groundwalker takes up his new appointment as chaplain to the Imperial Fleet (Andrew Wilkinson)
- The new forces chaplain wasn’t expecting quite this deployment (Gary Clink)
- The Vicar had decided to deal with those parishioners who had described their religion as ‘Jedi’ at the last census (Stephen Disley)
- Don’t worry, he’s quite harmless: he just likes dressing up (Tim Livesy)
- The recently installed Vicar of St Luke’s cut an understandably nervous figure after a visitation saw his new building plans scuppered by the DAC (Darth’s Advisory Committee) (Che R. Seabourne)
- I knew it was a mistake to let the vicarage during the interregnum (Ian Barge)
- Clearly, the Anglican concept of the Church Militant is more than the Swiss Guard and the Sally Army (Richard Strudwick)
- The Church Militant, Old and New (Bridget Swan)
As always, the winner receives a prize of Fairtrade chocolate, courtesy of Divine: divinechocolate.com.