Audio-visual

Why just have one Annual Meeting when you can have two?

That's the joy of two parishes in a united benefice and today it was St James turn, just in time for the end-of-the-month legal deadline for such things.

The accounts were passed, the annual report was duly considered, the new electoral roll has gone up 55%, PCC members and churchwardens were elected, and Roger told us of plans for new audio-visual screens for the church, carefully sited so as not to disrupt the classical elegance of the building or to compete with the painting of the Ascension which dominates the east end, but with the potential to enrich our teaching and worship week by week, as we use the latest technology to tell the 'old, old story.'

As I told the APCM, I began my ministry as a committed user of the overhead projector. I well remember evenings in front of the telly colouring in acetates. Later computers and colour printers made the humble felt-tip redundant, and then, later still, data projectors and Powerpoint swept all before it.

I still have a drawer full of blank OHP acetates but I think they are now about as useful as a Flannelgraph (although a Google search suggests that even that piece of technology still has its fans).