Yet Another Letter

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The Reverend H Hareshol
St. Johns Church
c/o The Team Vicars
Peace Avenue
FG6 3GN

Dear Vicar,

After the recent meeting of the Parochial Church Council I feel that you may have misconstrued some of the issues raised and hope that this letter may help you to resolve the situation.

Although Ms. Brotherton is undoubtedly a highly qualified social worker I find that her counselling of the congregation after every mention of Satan makes the service overly long. Perhaps she could use the tambourine practice room for this purpose, after you have given your final blessing.

Whilst on the subject I wonder if it would be possible to avoid mentioning the name of Jesus during The Eucharist. Although no one has greater admiration than I for the fervour of the 'born again' members of the congregation I do think that the composer Handel has already written the definitive version of The Hallelujah Chorus and the copyright should remain with his heirs and successors.

With regard to my comments about your rallying call of 'The Church For The New Millenium' I meant only to say that your crusade for 'bums on seats', although in the true Christian tradition, could be misinterpreted in these days of popular access to American television programmes.

On the question of the space available in the aisles it would be helpful if your young lady curate and her assistants were more aware of some of the church customs. Several worshippers have mentioned that the bringing in of sheaves is normally confined to the The Harvest Festival and should not be used as a weekly accompaniment to the tambourine and guitar ensemble. I hasten to add that they do not wish to cause trouble and have no desire to be summoned to the Monday evening 'bible awareness' classes conducted in secrecy by that earnest young man from the university

I wonder if you could see your way to having the talking in tongues session separate to the communion service. Apart from making progress difficult for the servers the number of people writhing in the aisles during the collection has led to a sharp drop in the Font Renewal fund and will, I believe, delay your plans to divert the river into the church for the proposed mass baptism services.

Finally I must mention the giving of ' The Peace.' Although I agree that in this day and age a mere handshake is not enough, the partial disrobing and exchange of body fluids practised by the more charismatic worshippers may possibly be misunderstood by members of the older generation. It was possibly because of this that the bishop on his last visit felt compelled to embrace only male members of the congregation.

Yours in fellowship,