PRESS ADVERT: BECOME A CHRISTIAN AND RISK.......

Cranmer’s Curate has noticed words such as 'thriving', even ‘dynamic’ appearing in church press advertisements from Conservative Evangelical churches and church plants looking to recruit staff.

Your curate recently saw an advert from one such large church in the south of England which mentioned the size of its congregation, the number of staff it employs and the financial value of its premises.

These adverts have inspired your curate to construct one for a person already in a secular public-sector profession, such as the police, or medicine, or teaching, or the civil service or even the armed forces, inviting them to become a Christian.

BECOME A CHRISTIAN AND RISK:

· Being subject to office gossip that you’ve turned into a ‘nutter’ after telling a colleague about your new-found faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God

· Being forced to go on an equality and diversity training course for offering to pray for a colleague during a coffee break

· Receiving a written warning from your employer after giving a colleague a copy of Mark’s Gospel during a coffee break

· Losing your job after an e-mailed prayer letter from your home computer, in which you quote some New Testament verses from St Paul’s letter to the Romans (1v26&27), is leaked to your employer

· Having your wife or husband walk out on you because they can’t take the pressure of the flak you’re getting

· Going to jail under homophobic hate speech legislation after your e-mailed prayer letter is passed onto the police by your former employer.

Of course, it's not the most dynamic of adverts. Cranmer's Curate doesn't do power-point.