Mother Superior Dancing Queen

I began liturgical dancing at the age of 12 and my first teacher was Mother Superior Norma. With a name like that we thought that she must have been voted the best mum in town and that her reward was to wear a table cloth on her head and teach liturgical dance. She really could move and particularly enjoyed the work of the English Ensemble, Queen.

Her only weakness was occasionally falling asleep while teaching us, most times mid sentence. When this happened, as we were well trained, we would keep practicing the dance moves until she woke up. Unfortunately this quite often would take up to 6 hours. To this day I still find myself shaking uncontrollably when I do the 'skipping, swish arms back and forth, nod head' move.

I found out later that the falling asleep was really a bad habit for Mother Superior; once she was allowed to wear a tracksuit, the instant sleeping ended.

The Dancing Archbishop

Few people realize that the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (or Willsta Wiggle Hips as we called him) used to be part of a very progressive liturgical dance troupe. It was back in the early 1980s and he was Priest of the Welsh Parish of
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. We were in town performing an interpretation of the Flood narrative, and aside from getting very wet (we used a lot of water), he was taken by the freedom of dance and joined on the spot.

He didn't stay in the troupe for very long as he had the tendency to make up his own interpretation and go off by himself in the midst of the dance. I also recall one famous performance where his role was, through the use of a swirling ribbon, to gather all the dancers into a unified group in the center of the stage, which he failed at spectacularly. The problem was he talked plenty about getting us all together in the center, but everyone knew his heart wasn't in it - he always preferred us all over the place, doing our own thing.

All the same he will be remembered as the only dancer I worked with who used two and a half cans of hair spray to model his hair, and that was just his eyebrows.

Churchianity Volunteer Management

My liturgical dancing takes me around the world and as such I get to meet some amazing people. Recently I had the chance to chat with noted Churchianity Management guru, Bernard Oofnut (see image on right) on his famous Church Volunteer Management Model.

FD: Thanks for your time, you are an important and busy man.

BO: Agreed.

FD: Tell us about your model.

BO: Well I have several degrees from the best universities and have written three best seller books including: Get off your pew and be like me which is available through Amazon for $16.95; though for a limited time if you purchase 100 you get a 5% discount.

FD: Err thanks, getting back to your model.. tell us about it.

BO: It is called the Battery Church Volunteer Management Systems Approach Model or BCVMSAM for short or if you like even shorter acronyms, BCVMSA. The basic idea is that you view volunteers like batteries: once the volunteer is tired, or 'used up' then you discard them, or to be more gentle about it, move them on.

FD: Move them on?

BO: Well I discerned that one of the major issues in managing volunteers was when they burnt out they became useless and their performance dropped.

FD: Wouldn't it be better to manage them in a way to avoid burn out? Give them regular breaks, encourage them with presents and acknowledge them in front of the church?

BO: (Laughs) They are only volunteers, we are not talking about real staff here.

FD: So what are the challenges with your Battery Model?

BO: BCVMSAM thankyou. The main issue is having a good supply of batteries to keep the ministry going. This requires the application of the Guilt Method which I devised. This involves making sure that the congregation knows membership has to involve a role in the church. We don't just want people coming to church to be fed. Church isn't about listening to God and sharing within community, it is about doing work, being busy.

FD: You have some interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

BO: Agreed.

For more information see: www.BatteryChurchVolunteerManagementSystemsApproachModel.com

Big chairs are the cool way to go

Now that every church is certain that the only path to success is by having a Mega Church, a number of companies have sprung up to meet this new demand. One such company is SCS (Small Churches Suck) who provide specialist furniture specific to Mega Church needs. SCS CEO, Bob Chuckpants states,

We at SCS understand that small churches suck and do all we can to provide the successful church with all the furniture they need to be cool and have lots of people attend and stuff.

The big hit for SCS has been the range of very cool Mega chairs for the Mega Church. Known as the 'Big Dreamer' range they come in 38 colors and all include an image of the senior pastor on the back.

image of CEO Bob sitting on one of his dreamer chairs (courtesy of SCS).