Have a go at our next caption competition (above) and win a prize of Fairtrade chocolate!

Email your entries to: captioncompetition@churchtimes.co.uk

or send by post (postcards only) to:

Caption Competition
Church Times
108-114 Golden Lane
London EC1Y 0TG

Entries must be received by Friday 3 May.

Here is this week’s winner:

Ian NewtonIan Newton

I do wish they would get a move on. What they don’t realise is that an hour here for them is seven hours for us

Liz Lane

In our church, 40 per cent of the congregation is under the age of 20

John Appleby

A CANINE caption competition meant that we received many more entries than we had space to print.

• The only one wearing a dog collar was the vicar (Mark Parry)
• Don’t look now, but I think he’s wearing your collar (John Saxbee)
• Do you suppose we should have worn our dog collars? (Peter Hutchinson)
• Don’t look miserable because the Vicar has borrowed your dog collar (Brian Stevenson)
• Wot, no dog collars? (Richard Strudwick)
• It’s no use looking at me like that. I think you’ll find that the Vicar is wearing the dog collar today (Duncan Jackson)
• My collar may be in the vestry, but my liturgical paws is second to nun (Christopher Huxtable).

But that’s enough of the dog collars.

We know that church growth is all the rage these days, but perhaps some are showing signs of desperation?

• The Vicar was finding ingenious new ways to improve church-attendance figures (Mark Parry)
• Well, it was one way of increasing attendance figures (Vicky Lundberg)
• Bringing his dogs to church was one way the Vicar managed to swell his congregation (Lesley Cope)
• Unfortunately, dogs and clergy are not allowed to be members of the church electoral roll (John Radford)
• They only bring us along to lower the age profile of the congregation (Ray Morris)
• The congregation for midweek evensong had increased considerably from the usual one man and his dog (Mervyn Cox)
• Things were looking up. Gone were the days of two men and a dog (Mike Stranks)
• Even the dubious inclusion of the dogs on the electoral roll failed to make the APCM quorate (Valerie Budd)
• The Archdeacon wants to see more communicants in the register, and Labradors will eat anything; so that’s six, including me (David Griffiths).

Too much missional activity can, of course, produce unintended consequences:

• The locals felt hounded out by the newcomers (Peter Bacon)
• You’re sitting in my pew (Alison Rollin)
• What will they expect us to do when we come to exchanging the Peace? (Ben Woods).

This may all be the result of a misunderstanding:

• I thought you said we’d be doing a piece of bark, not Bach (Daphne Foster)
• This is not quite what I expected the Bach Choir to be (Jayne Drinkwater)
• The moment when you realise that the advertised ‘Recital of Bach’ was misinterpreted (Jon Williams)
• I love this organ voluntary. Is it Bach? No, it’s Mozart — K9 (Michael Doe).

Some other entries that we enjoyed:

• Rover: ‘I thought the sermon was a bit dogmatic.’ Bonzo: ‘Yes, but we stuck with it doggedly’ (Michael Foster)
• When the Vicar prayed for the paw and needy, the dogs were perplexed (David Nash)
• They say that all dogs go to heaven, but I’m not taking any chances (Philip Lickley)
• The Church of England is going to the dogs (Patrick Irwin)
• The sermon was a real dog’s breakfast (Alison Parry)
• The Bishop of Barking’s sermon was appreciated more by some members of the congregation than others (Derek Wellman)
• Father James definitely said Barking for the next united benefice service (Sue Chick)
• Is yours church-trained? You know what humans are like when they get put in an enclosed space (Russ Bravo)
• It’s you, Vicar, who is dog-tired (Janet Stockton)
• For the registers, he wondered if they were over 16 in dog years (Jeremy Fletcher)
• Who let the humans in? (Kate Carter)
• Shall we sneak out once they’ve all gone to sleep? (Janet Appleby)
• We are on a winner: I hear the refreshments after this service are often described as a dog’s dinner (Clive Deverell)
• These interminable ‘Human Services’ really are a dog’s breakfast, you know (Che R. Seabourne)
• I’m just here for the dogma (William Clocksin). 

As ever, the winners receive Fairtrade chocolate, courtesy of Divine Chocolate: www.divinechocolate.com.