New Director of HeartEdge

I'm very pleased to see this excellent appointment and will be excited to see how HeartEdge grows and develops under Heather's leadership:

'St Martin-in-the-Fields is delighted to announce the appointment of Revd Heather Cracknell as Director of HeartEdge. Heather comes to us from three years as Head of Development for Fresh Expressions at Church House Westminster. She will begin her new role in June.

Heather was ordained as Norwich Diocese’s first pioneer minister, and has served in traditional and new church settings. Her experience of new housing, outer estate parish, suburban and city centre ministry allowed her to equip churches across Norfolk to engage in mission as a diocesan Mission Enabler. After this she joined the national church team to establish an initiative helping churches start new missional projects, and advising dioceses on how to develop a ‘mixed ecology’ approach.

She lives in Norwich with her family and enjoys writing, paddle-boarding as well as wild swimming in rivers and the sea. For obvious reasons her level of enjoyment supporting her local football team hasn’t been quite as high this past season.

HeartEdge was founded in 2017. It is an international, ecumenical movement for the renewal of church and society. It seeks to advocate the 4Cs – commerce, culture, compassion and congregational life. With 1500 members, it is a presence on four continents. Its founder director, Revd Jonathan Evens, who has built up the movement to international recognition, departs St Martin’s at Easter to become Team Rector of Wickford and Runwell in the Diocese of Chelmsford.

Heather says, ‘I’m excited to be joining HeartEdge and building on the excellent work Jonathan and the team have been doing. HeartEdge is connecting with great churches and organisations and I know we will be able to learn together how to be the church God is calling us to be in these unprecedented times. We will need courage to try new things, humility to learn from what doesn’t work, generosity to share what does and curiosity to notice what the Holy Spirit is doing in our world. I can’t wait to get stuck in.’

Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields says, ‘Heather brings an ideal range of skills, experience, imagination and vision to this role. It is one of the principles of HeartEdge that God gives the church everything it needs. I look forward to enjoying how Heather brings the HeartEdge movement and the church as a whole to moments of joy as we realise the truth of that conviction. This is a happy day for HeartEdge and everyone who looks to it for inspiration and encouragement.’

Bishop Tim Thornton, Chair of HeartEdge, says, ‘I am very pleased to welcome Heather to this new role with HeartEdge. She brings gifts of leadership and enthusiasm and a very impressive knowledge of pioneering ministry across a number of denominations. She is completely in alignment with the values of HeartEdge, and I look forward to being challenged and encouraged by her and working with her as part of the team taking HeartEdge forward.’"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mark Hollis - A New Jerusalem.

The New Serious vs the Old Shallow

David Cox wrote recently in The Guardian about the emergence of the new serious. He argued that while 'Cinema still plays host to gross-out, farce and facetiousness; yet it is darkness, deliberation and doom that are doing some of the best business.' The Daniel Craig James Bond films and the Christopher Nolan Batman series are among the examples he gives.

He continues: 'Art galleries and museums attract record crowds. Uncompromising lectures on recondite topics have made TED a surprise internet hit. Some sports writers have taken a heuristic turn. Weighty public debates sell out, while people queue all night in the rain for tickets to literary festivals.

The Institute of Ideas has had to move its annual Battle of Ideas festival to bigger premises to accommodate growing demand, with more than half of those attending in their teens and early 20s ...

Phenomena such as these get less attention than complaints about low educational attainment, the preoccupation with celebrity or the supposedly mind-rotting effects of social networking. Yet alongside apparently relentless dumbing down, a new hankering for seriousness seems also to be emerging.'

Similarly, in the Visual Arts, some critics are beginning to react against the way in which 'Money talks loudly and easily drowns out other meanings.' Sarah Thornton - the “Seven Days in the Art World” author - recently announced she was no longer covering the art business with a "rousing list of reasons" and the influential American art critic Dave Hickey told the ... Observer ... that he’s had it with art criticism and the current state of contemporary art.

Thornton concludes that the subject is too corrupt to report on and Hickey states:

'Money and celebrity has cast a shadow over the art world which is prohibiting ideas and debate from coming to the fore," he said yesterday, adding that the current system of collectors, galleries, museums and art dealers colluding to maintain the value and status of artists quashed open debate on art.

I hope this is the start of something that breaks the system. At the moment it feels like the Paris salon of the 19th century, where bureaucrats and conservatives combined to stifle the field of work. It was the Impressionists who forced a new system, led by the artists themselves. It created modern art and a whole new way of looking at things.

Lord knows we need that now more than anything. We need artists to work outside the establishment and start looking at the world in a different way – to start challenging preconceptions instead of reinforcing them.'

Cox, however, concludes: 'In the real world ... our newfound seriousness has not cut very deep. The long-awaited crisis of capitalism has produced plenty of attitudinising, but profound discussion of how we might change our world has hardly been to the fore.'

Like Cox I'm unsure whether the new serious is a significance paradigm shift but, for what it's worth, here is my take on the old shallowness:

Hello! We are the shallow people,

reflections of our fitness ratings,

shining the surface of our existence,

selling our lives to seek significance.

OK! we are on heat, on fire,

hyper cool, yet full of desire.

Bad and wicked are terms of approval.

Bums and tums are there for removal.

Narcissus is our role model;

made in Chelsea, such a fit young man, 

lightly tanned and with a wicked four pack,

we know that he is Essex!

We are pissed off, falling over,

stumbling in the dark.

Drunk on celebrity chardonnay,

technology sated, intoxicated.

We think we are such foxy ladies

sexy, sultry sods.

We are hung over, hearing voices,

kissing the porcelain god.

We are off our heads,

out of our skulls,

out of our minds,

we decline.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adele - Skyfall.