8th Week: Love Oxford

It was a first for Oxford: Forty churches joining together on a gloriously sunny and hot Sunday morning to worship God and declare His name to the city. The stage could barely hold all the leaders of the churches; the crowd of worshippers stretched back almost to the Bodleian, and easily from Baliol and Trinity to the shops across the street. Just a few yards behind the stage, the cobbled cross where Bishop Latimer and others were martyred; today, Anglican, Catholic, Baptist and more joined together in one voice to celebrate God's love.

I managed to drink a litre of water in about an hour - that's a lot. Charlie invented a new theological term - "prophetic ambiguity" - while purples and reds are "the rainbow God wants to see" (in a rather funny introduction to the offering - though I was slightly worried it wasn't as tongue-in-cheek as we all took it to be!)...

Vaughan Roberts was completely on song as he preached the Gospel - "We preach Jesus crucified" - as was OCC's Steve Thomas - "You need more notes for a short sermon than for a long one" - and Martyn Layzell was as spot-on leading worship as ever (although, in a dramatic break from tradition, only one of the songs we sang was written by him!). He couldn't help but deviate from the service plan though (I always said they needed a screen... and me operating it... ;-) ) for the chorus of "How great is our God, sing with me..." - but, what better words to worship God to - He is great!

A slight rewrite of the words to Father of Creation allowed us to sing "Let your glory fall in this town, let it go forth from here to the nations..." as opposed to the usual "room". But we couldn't sing that outside anyway, could we? Standing on Broad Street, singing On Holy Ground's "Where saints have walked this road before / Carried their cross through heaven's door" took extra poignancy.

OICCU President Greg Tarr read from 1 Corinthians, and Martin Smith's call to "Open up the doors and let the music play / Let the streets resound with singing" (Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble) was just the right choice of song to close with. Well, almost close with, followed by a unique arrangement of Amazing Grace (because, you know, no Christian gathering is complete without it...)

Plenty more I could blog about, but it's tomorrow already and I have less than seven hours in which to sleep. Plus a tute arranged for tomorrow without me having done any work for it... and less than 37.5 hours until my first exam... eek...