word | spirit | world | church
I’ve argued elsewhere that the Sunday gathering is for worship, but as the priests gather in the Temple they find that the Lord comes to them. The occasion is worship, but we encounter God as he comes to us. As one of the four ‘events’ when God meets us as we worship him, Baptism is… Continue reading Water is Thicker than Blood
I have been blessed over the last year by the books Every Moment Holy that have come out of the Rabbit Room. These are two volumes of liturgies for ordinary moments of everyday life—written prayers about normal stuff and about the horrifically brutal stuff that sometimes happens to us. After writing about how social media… Continue reading A liturgy for social media
This article in the New York Times describes two tools that Facebook are developing for churches. Firstly, a subscription service, “where users pay, for example, $9.99 per month and receive exclusive content, like messages from the bishop” and secondly a prayer service “where members of some Facebook groups can post prayer requests and others can… Continue reading Commercialising Church
Facebook want to work with churches. Which shouldn’t surprise us, why wouldn’t they want to work with anyone they can show advertising too? The surprising bit is that some churches seem to want to work with them too. As has been widely reported, some very large churches and denominations want to collaborate with Facebook on… Continue reading Forging digital tools
If we believe James K. A. Smith’s work in his Cultural Liturgies trilogy, then we are constantly being formed by everything around us and the ‘liturgies’ that they tell us. Everything from shopping centres to televisions to motorways are influencing the way that we view the world. While I think Smith’s solutions are helpful but… Continue reading The liturgy of social media
We live in an age of expressive individualism. This is a bad thing. While any sort of individualism is a product of Christianity, the form of individualism we currently have that places my desires squarely at the top of the hierarchy of goods is deeply destructive to society, to individuals, and to the church. Once… Continue reading 5 Antidotes to individualism
The church calendar is anathema to our tradition. We wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Except for Christmas obviously. And Easter. And Mothering Sunday (though it’s no longer about Mother Church). But otherwise, yuck. Advent is about chocolate and Lent is the rankest popery. Ok, I’ve got that out of my system. That’s my… Continue reading Learning the Calendar’s Wisdom
Whether reacting against the formalism of ‘saying thank you’ before a meal in my youth, or the disdain of liturgy and repeated prayers that comes from my charismatic twenties, we rarely pray ‘grace’ before meals. I’m beginning to wonder what I’m losing from my own hang up. Thankfulness is a discipline that takes hard work… Continue reading Your table is a battlefield
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