word | spirit | world | church
In the Old Testament, the Temple was a microcosm, a miniature copy of reality. We see this in the way it’s structured; it’s built as a copy of the Garden of Eden: a mountaintop land with trees. The Temple is on the apex of a mountain, it’s full of trees (the lampstands and the decorations),… Continue reading Church as Blueprint
As I write, Christianity Today have just published an article extolling the use of ChatGPT for Pastors in their preparation for preaching and Bible studies. It has gone viral for all of the wrong reasons. I am, as you’ll have picked up, committed to ‘cold takes’, so I’m naturally wary about deciding that you really… Continue reading Beginning to think about Generative AI
My last two thoughts for now on the Eucharismatic ‘manifesto’ that I sketched. Regularity and Form I’ve drawn a doctrine of the church that maps four encounters with God: Baptism, Lord’s Supper, Preaching, and Contributory Worship. It’s not wildly different from lots of Protestant versions, it’s essentially word and sacrament, with the charismatic addition being… Continue reading Two final Eucharismatic Words
It surprises many people I talk to, but it’s true that the more you do something the more you like it. Most of us assume that we keep things special by only doing them occasionally. There is a pleasure that comes from the occasional activity, but what we love we do. Our tastes are formed… Continue reading We Love What We Do
Technology changes our lives. That’s a truism, you wouldn’t find anyone to disagree. The disagreement comes when we speak of particular technologies—whether pesticides or automated looms or Bluetooth speakers—and the particular ways they change our lives. Then we need to add an extra layer, not only are there specific ways that technologies change our lives,… Continue reading The digital world shapes us
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
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