Even when the the sun set on this fleshly pagan paradise, I rested not, continuing my labours in unquenchable faith that eventually someone would listen to me. And so to the nightclub.

It has been remarked upon - though I say it myself - that my dancing is testimony to the fact that I have not squandered much of my time in this Godless activity. You have to try to fit in though. I spent several evenings at Sister Maureen Crank's dance workshop earlier in the summer though, and I think it paid off.

So, concealing my ecclesiastical garments under a kagoule, I mingled among the multitude, raising my hands aloft in what I believed to be time to the music, handing out copies of "But I Never Thought I'd Be Damned for Wine Gums!", and The Collected Proverbs of Rev Gerald Ambulance - remembering this year not to take any sweets of anybody.

At last I returned to my little room to receive the Lord's blessing of sleep to empower me for another day's spiriual warfare.

Ah yes, what a mighty time of ministry that was. I must acknowledge what a deep joy & blessing it was to have me there.
And I also was enriched, in a very real way, though the figure wasn't what I'd expected.

The important thing is that I was able to bring a little light into the darkness of the tousle-headed, teepee-dwelling lives of those quasi-Christians - though in retrospect probably not as much light as darkness they brought into mine. So I won't be back in future unless it's to do book signings.

I tell you - he's just like you'd think he would be - only slightly taller.

Dear Gezza, as I have probably been a Christian longer than you've been alive (803 years so far if you count past lives) I am going to unflinchingly split my infinitives and put your spiritual welfare before my own personal feelings. (Otherwise I wouldn't be speaking to you after some of the things you've said).

I am concerned. Your above remark displays that you have a huge crack opening up in your theology. To respect people who choose to go naked in public as 'trying to get back to before the Fall' is as insidious as respecting people of other faiths 'because they know God'. This can only lead to an erosion of your faith. Believe me, nudists ('naturists' as they call themselves) are Big Trouble. I went topless in Yugoslavia for two weeks (only on the beach, of course) in 1984, and conflict broke out not long afterwards. In fact Petrovac, where my shameful acts took place, was in the news the other week after a fresh outbreak of hostility. I rest my case.

I know you are seeking members for the church. I know you seek to keep abreast of modern trends, but Gez, put yourself first for once and flee.

BTW I notice several references to 'needing sleep', feeling slightly despondent that you're rarely around to see the fruits of your ministry, and hiding your cassock under a cagoule. Are you suffering from burn-out?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ultraspike:
Could an Anglocatholic tat queen ever happily coexist in the same body with a hands in the air Spirit worshiper? Please help me.

---

I could swing both ways.

But not with these guys ....

Anglo-Catholic Charismatics

Amen! Behold, Brother Wibblethorpe, I saw the dove of anointment descend upon thy head and deposit a rich blessing.

Reverend Father Gerald, if I too want to minister like you with the associated potential for book sales what should I do? Did you go to seminary, or would buying a copy of 'My first guitar chords for praise and worship' be a better direction to take?

Ah, Sibling Wibble, my path to the top has been a long and hard (but of course deeply joyous) one.
It was in my late teens that I first heard, clear as the crystal sea, the call of God.

It was after the youth club disco, which I had been sitting outside for three hours (partly on conscientious grounds and partly because the only time I ever tried dancing I was lept on by the St John's Ambulance and held to the floor in the recovery position) experimenting with the possibilities of transubstantiating snakebite.

And behold an infallibly spooky voice spake unto me, saying, "Go into the world Rev Gerald, and reach out to them with my love."

I followed this instruction to the letter, and ended up in Peckham Juvenile Offenders Care Centre. And while I was there, behold, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying "OK I can see I'm going to be a little more literal. I forgot you were a fundamentalist. How about 'Preach the gospel'?"

So this was the path I followed, in a part-time, amateur, non-famous way for years.

I felt the call of the Lord to serve him full-time about the same time as I was sacked from the Department of Social Security for laying hands on the unemployed.

So I did indeed enroll at a seminary, the Bangor Indoctrination Institute. But in my first term there I was forced to reprimand them for being unable to tell me anything I didn't already know from reading the Bible.

So in the vacation they all went away and found out some more, which they came back and taught us in the spring term. I was then forced to denounce them all as notorious heretics for teaching us things that weren't in the Bible.

Pausing only to call down fire from heaven upon that forsaken pit of desolation, I returned home and developed my tract writing ministry.

My first anointed outpouring, So You Don't Think Ezekiel was a Pre-Tribulationist?, now universally recognised as being a bit heavygoing, was not the worldshaking blockbuster you'd expect if you're familiar with my later work. But I learned a lot from the experience.

quote:

---

And what does one do about the inevitable temptation to use the time as God's guidance to lie in, then laze about drinking tea and evangelizing over a few salacious Sunday Newspapers? I know I give in to this one every time, especially with other church-goers...

---

I have been trying to court, as it were, one of the priests in my diocese. She insists that we are not of compatible orientations. I don't want to fall into the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all the covetous desires of the same and the carnal desires of the flesh, but I believe I would have more success in the courting ritual if I had more ostentatious tail feathers and gainful employment.

Would an avian-human relationship be considered abomination? I only ask because I want to remain unblemished between now and the time I am offered for sacrifice.

I was on my annual furlough in Aberdeen enjoying the beauty of God's great earth and blessing some of the local wldlife with my barbecuing ministry, when I came across a copy of a programme for the 'Aberdeen Charlies' (a local amateur dramatic society)'s production of Jaws.

And on p 11, under an advert for Ewan McSpewan's, "Brewed in a ditch for the lagerist with discernment", I saw this:

St Ursula's Pentecostal Reformed Church, Lewisham.
We are looking to appoint a new Youth Elder, to replace Brother Alan Mullarkey who has passed on after 47 years faithful service.
Certificates and training
Are not what it's about
Experience and stuff like that
Are also way way out
But if you've got anointment
You'll get the appointment.

(And if you don't know UK geography, it goes Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, France, the Ukraine, Kurdistan, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, London, Lewisham.)

You can imagine how excited I was to find a church with such confidence in the Lord that they advertised a post 500 miles away where no appplicants would ever read it apart from the one man miraculously selected by God!
And that man was me!

I immediately packed away my tent, shotgun and barbecue and took a one-way journey to Lewisham.

I found the church, with a grey suited man putting up a poster of a yellow young man saying "Don't have a cow, man, have faith in the Lord Jesus."

I cried, "It is I, the one predestined from before all time to take up the post of Youth Elder at St Ursula's Pentecostal Reformed Church!"

He said, "Pleased to meet you. I'm the new Youth Elder of St Ursula's Pentecostal Reformed Church."

They'd employed the wrong person! Hmm, tricky situation. What was I to do?

What we do want to know is how you're going to fix our agonies.

I am here to confess my sins. I was ensnared by the wiles of the Evil One, and lured to a thread of iniquity, with promises of nude pictures and talk of cup sizes by a shameless temptress.

Tell me, Reverend. What must I do to be healed?

quote:

---

a shameless temptress.

---

Wood Honey, that's the nicest thing a man has said about me for about... oooh, seventeen years!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nunc Dimittis:
So when are you going to address our problems and concerns again Gezza

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gill:
Sorry you're so upset. It's traditional at times like this to clasp the Distressed Person to one's ample bosom, but perhaps not, in this case...

---

We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, do we?

No, that's not loud enough. If we shout loud enough, God has promised he will again send his devoted servant Rev Gerald back to the flock.

So come on everybody, let us get together and shout HALLELUJAH!

Nude pictures, cup sizes, ample-bosom clasping and now....shimmying!!

What's a sinner to do?

We brought the burden before the body - and before the throne, it goes without saying (or went without saying, until I said it) with prayer, fasting and a real sense of prostration and impalement. We ascertained that it was God's will for the two rivals for the post of Youth Elder to go outside for a memory verse shoot out, members of the congregation calling out book, chapter and verse, the true Youth Elder of the church being decided by who could recite the verse correctly first.

You will not be surprised to hear that the best man won (me), even though my specialist subject (Levitical abominations) didn't come up once. I thrashed him (immediately after winning the contest) and cast him forth into outer darkness, from where it is just a short walk to the bus station.

As Youth Elder I wore a backtofront baseball hat, watched the less offensive moments of Top of the Pops and said "Cool" whenever possible, in order to reach out to the youth of the church and come among them as one of their own. Or I should say to reach out to the youth of the church and came among him as one of his own, as the only member of the youth club was a 32-year-old trainspotter called Nigel.

I swapped the baseball hat for a bobble hat, Top of the Pops for stamp collecting and "Cool" for "We are the knights that say 'Ni!'", and the Lord was with me all the way (as he had been with me all the time till then, and with everyone else too, in a very real way).

With Nigel and his growing band of trainspotting converts leaving my tracts on trains at every station in the country, I soon became the most celebrated and anointed tract writer in Britain. (Only Chuck O'Loony of Alabama overshadowed me worldwide.)

This is what led to my first becoming a speaker at the annual Exegesis for the Common Man festival. At the same time I revolutionised St Ursula's with my anointed worship leading, and this is when my gift for song writing was first gifted unto me. (You will of course know the story of how I woke up in the middle of a sermon with the words and tune of "Oh God you are just really Lord" in my heart.)

All that remained was for the Lord to raise me up to be minister of St Ursula's, which he did when Rev Enoch passed sadly away in a freak eucharistic mishap. (Whatever rumours you may have heard in the national press, on certain scandalstirring Channel 4 programmes and from the police, he was accidentally transubstantiated as he presided, and had to eat himself.)

So there you go. Sorry, I can't remember your question now, but I hope that answers it.

Alas, my child, is it so hard to wait your turn in patience and humility? Or at least silence, which would be a perfectly acceptable substitute?

Let me tell you about Sister Pat Mallard, who repeatedly insisted on partaking of my ministry before her hour was come. In the end I had a word in the appropriate quarters and had her prematurely raptured.

Do we have a deal?

My Dear Ham (how delightful to hear a biblical name round here for a change)

What a shame, my spirit was with yours right up to the last paragraph.
But it would be unthinkable for me to go along with your utterly unspiritual attempt to deprive me of much needed financial resources for the extension of the kingdom.

Again, you had me with you right up the last sentence.

(I have to say I am entirely unacquainted with the meaning of the term "stud muffin", but I have a shrewd suspicion that I should keep things that way as long as possible.)

Wondrous though the idea is of populating the world with a holy army of the sons of Gerald, it would be completely against the calling of celibacy into which I have been most gloriously dumped.

Do not be downhearted though, for if I were to take unto myself a wife, your attitude of biblical submission and veneration right up to but just short of idolatry is exactly the kind of righteous quality I would look for above all the attractions of tea-making, jumble sale organisation, and errm, studding muffins.

Oh yes, you asked about joining St Ursula's.

Please do come on Sunday morning. We currently meet, for reaosns I'm not prepared to go into here, in a disused nuclear bunker behind the car park of Lewisham Tesco's. We meet to bear witness in word, worship and wobbling* at the sacred hour of 10.30.
You ought to get there by nine though, because you'll be asked to complete a thorough discernmentographical questionnaire on your beliefs and lifestyle.

If you pass, you'll receive a warm welcome, a membership certificate, and a small three volume book on the kind of conduct, clothing, hairstyle, language, church attendance, sacrificial giving, obedience to your spiritual leaders, reading matter, friends, eating habits etc. that the Lord now expects of you, entitled The Meaning of Free Grace.

If you fail, then depending on the score you'll be either asked to leave so we can purify the building in time for the service, or burned.

Shouldn't it be "Sacrificed and eaten" rather than "eaten and sacrificed"? Sounds like we have to eat Coot, before she is sacrificed. And, personally speaking, Rev Gezza(belle), I'm not one for raw birds, whether or not they have bathed in the Chalice before administering it.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rev Gerald Ambulance:
When God writes something, he has to express himself plainly and use every word literally so as not to confuse fundamentalists.
I however am allowed to use figures of speech.

---

My very dear Rev Gerald, that comment was utterly, utterly wonderful. I would not be surprised if someone 'nicked it in the service of Christ'.

bb

[fixed UBB]

On the one hand, this is clearly a Good Thing, inasmuch as the Rev. Ambulance will now be able to correct his own posts when the voices in his head become too loud and he becomes confused as to which of his multiple personalities is in charge.

Perhaps now he will be able to keep his sock-puppets straight, though tomb is not particularly Hopeful.

Moreover, in examining the Rev. Father's recent posts with a querulous editor's eye, tomb notes that such power has not persuaded Mr. Ambulance to correct his spelling--never one of that cleric's strong suits.

tomb would point out to the rest of the Ship that this is a strong indication of a profound character flaw: Sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, after all. Ambulance seems to be afflicted with it in spades. No doubt, he's out celebrating his Elevation by purchasing himself purple underwear trimmed with lace and can't be bothered to fix his typing.

We shall see if such authority makes the Rev. Fr. a better person. Anyone for a small wager?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rev Gerald Ambulance:
...

Scudweasle Scrinemort, the Demon-in-Chief of the Aniti-clerical Offences branch of Eternal Torments R Us, who I hear was planning to take your case himself in the event of your decease.

---

My dear Fr. Ambulance,

tomb admires your efforts to imitate C.S. Lewis's naming conventions for demons, which he so masterfuly exhibited in his Screwtape Letters. Lewis possessed a splendid mixture of Wit and Learning.

Alas, reverend sir, you possess neither.

tomb

quote:

---

word, worship and wobbling*

---

Will Wibble wobble?

And at tescos is it customary to be naked - it is a bit cold at the moment ...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rev Gerald Ambulance:
...

You ought to get there by nine though, because you'll be asked to complete a thorough discernmentographical questionnaire on your beliefs and lifestyle.

If you pass, you'll receive a warm welcome, a membership certificate, and a small three volume book on the kind of conduct, clothing, hairstyle, language, church attendance, sacrificial giving, obedience to your spiritual leaders, reading matter, friends, eating habits etc. that the Lord now expects of you, entitled The Meaning of Free Grace.

---

Good laud! I've figured it out. You're Betty Bowers in drag!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Beenster:
Will Wibble wobble?

---

He will do no such thing.

While I'm here can I ask the Reverend which hairstyles his Lewisham fellowship find acceptable? You see I need to get a new one soon so it's a good a time as any to seek the Lord and his anointed ministers on the subject.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rev Gerald Ambulance:
Nunc
*falls to her knees exhibiting perfect contrition*
Forgive me father, for I have sinned...
I was wrong. You are a sane individual, well balanced, right on the Royal Telephone direct to God, and I have made an error in saying you should spend a millenium in Purgatory.
I should have said you will be going straight to Hell; your ministry merits infinitely more than Purgatory, and I truly believe Hell is the place for you to continue this admirable work in the Lord's Service.

Hmm. Not exactly what the phrase 'perfect contrition' brings to mind for me. More sucking up and less damning is I believe more usual.

---

No no no no no NO!!! You, my dear Rev Gezzabelle have misconstrued my meaning completely. You ministry is Hellish - wouldn't be in Heaven if it were not? Therefore, to say your ministry is worthy of Hell says a great deal.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Beenster:

Will Wibble wobble?

---

No, it is Weebbles that wobble, but don't fall down.

While others may mock, I see from your wise responses you are indeed Speaking in the Spirit (gin most likely) and thus present you with my problem.

I, as a salty seadog, find myself attracted to all manner of maritime adventure series, such as "Hornblower" and "The Love Boat", and am compelled to tape them while at work.

While this in itself is not of great concern, I find myself stealing neighbours pets and sacrificing them to Baird, Farnsworth, et al, as my way of thanking them for the gift of television.

Blessings on you "Mr" "Lewis" "-" "Smith", for your kind words.

May I in turn congratulate you on your recent apostasising from your ministry of singleness.

And I am pleased to hear that you have managed to lay down your biblical authority as a man by insisting that your surname goes first in the new-age amalgam that you call yourselves by.

In response to your unspoken desire for matrimonial advice, the most important thing is whenever she tells you to do something, do the opposite (or if there isn't an opposite, just use your imagination), then tell her you did what she said.
In the unlikely event that she ever challenges you, just say, ‘Who was created first?’
This has never been known to fail - or at least only in practice.

And never forget those three wonderful words that however many times you say them will never fail take you relationship back to where it belongs: "Where's my dinner?"

I wish to have your advice - I am of the view that the Church's existence is entirely contingent on Jesus Christ. However, this would seem to be a minority view, and that in fact the Church comes first. Can I be delivered of such apostasy?

I fear I am descending into the morass of sin, sexual and salacious. Did you not say that giving advice on these matters was one of your anointed gifts from the Lord? Please do not leave us to struggle alone. Though. We feel better that our shared fellowship information assists other shipmates in better meeting our prayer needs.

A matter more important than my previous problem of lusting after unattainable straight women priests has arisen.

The other day, my past Rector spoke on prayer. He said that the first thing he does when he wakes in the morning is to hold hands with his wife and pray together. I found myself needing to know whether he scratches his testicles before or after holding hands, and whether he prays with a morning stiffie.

Do you think he is to blame for placing a stumbling block in my path by sharing this personal information that preys on my weak conscience? Is it appropriate to seek deliverance from these thoughts, and what if any penance should be done?