I'M sorry to have to confess that I've been keeping strange company again. All the clergy in the diocese of London were called to a Sacred Synod at the Low Church shrine of All Souls, Langham Place - next door to Broadcasting House.

The church was packed full. It was billed to start at ten-thirty, but when I got there at about twenty-past it was already in full swing. The conductor was on the rostrum conducting the orchestra in the sort of sub-Lloyd-Webber sounds that seem to have taken over church music these days. The clergy were belting out what the programme called the gathering songs. Homogenous musical pap. Sentimentality set to a tired rhythm. And the cliched modern hymns written by tin-eared rhymers:

The glory of Jesus majestic to see

Up high on a mountain transfigured was he.

Di diddle di diddle di diddle di dum. Reminds you of those songs of our misspent youth concerning ladies from various parts of the country. Other songs were just embarrassing:

All within me falls at your throne.

It suddenly struck me that I'd come across this conductor before: he features a lot in that production of Michael Saward, Hymns for Today's Church. In this book there is a hymn which begins, Lord be with me in my depression which surely ought to be re-titled, Who would true valium see.

There was the conductor leaping about on the podium trying to get the 300 parsons to sing up. This sort of thing is meant to be cheerful, but it doesn't work. The glee was so lugubrious: his expression was like lust recollected in impotence. Imagine the face that Mr Sowerberry, the undertaker in Oliver Twist, might pull upon learning that he had just won the National Lottery. Given the wall-to-wall carpeting and the soapy music, the effect was of a pop concert in a crematorium.

But these trials were only a prelude to the real horror: The Presentation of the London Challenge Video. Towards the end of one of the prayers, a white screen slowly descended and obscured the portrait of Our Lord which forms the reredos. Think of the lowering of the safety curtain at half time in the Christmas pantomime at the Sunderland Empire circa 1958 and you'll have it about right.

Instantly, there was a loud blast of heavy rock music and the video began. It was supposed to be a tour of what the churches are doing throughout the diocese. In the whole presentation there wasn't one extract from a traditional service - not a single, recognisable gobbet of religious sanity.

I couldn't believe the Gradual Psalm. A female singer stood on the rostrum and crooned verses after which we all crooned back the syrupy chorus beginning, Remember, remember.... Interminable. As the kids say, Boring. Without spiritual, intellectual or musical value. Remember, remember, what? I could only think, The Fifth of November. Oh for a barrel of gunpowder to see off this lot!

If you think all that's unbelievable, try this. The church authorities who arrange all these barmy conferences have suddenly become worried about the strain they might be putting on the clergy. They tell us not to be afraid to refuse to go on them. So they have invited us all to yet another conference entitled, "Saying No With Confidence". You couldn't make it up, could you?