Colourful Dreamer

Last Sunday (yesterday) my son Michael and I did a conversation sermon. It was the Diocesan Top Parish event, and the bishop thought it would be good for a young person to do the sermon. But for some reason he was not so keen to do it! So I offered to help him, and he thought that would be doable. So, we met and did a wee lectio divina thing on the gospel reading. We read it out loud once and named the words or phrase that stood out. Read it out loud again, and this time Michael listed his questions. We then went away and did some work on those questions. Then we re-met a day or so later and went through our answers. Then read the passage again and talked about what God might be saying to us as a church and as individuals in this reading. We then worked together to construct a conversation. We went away and did work on our respective bits. Then we rehearsed it a few times. It went well. It was a bit rough on occasions, but overall I was impressed by the model. I had never done this bef...

Last week I was at an Anglican Ministry Educators meeting in Wellington. Our guest speaker was Steve Taylor speaking about Emerging church stuff. There is a blog interview about this about to appear. As part of that Steve talked about some Lenten material he has put together around good practices. I really liked this. It reminded of the Irish Penitentials, which were about developing the virtues rather than penance for the sin. I have tried to approach Lent in that spirit this year Instead of just giving up computer games, I have thought about what virtue I wanted to build by doing that – spending time with my children. Instead of just giving up swearing at bad drivers, I decided to build the virtue of praying for peace for those who annoy me (bad drivers) – I keep forgetting this one. It has made all those silly giving things up for Lent so much more meaningful

Thanks Megan for this site. The mystery worshipper is worth a breif look at least. Off to auckland tomorrow for a Toru meeting, to do some more work on my worship for young people in an Anglican setting module. peace John

Here are my initial thoughts revamped through the comments of others. But I would really love to hear more comments. Really! Worship: Worship is about offering your whole body as a living sacrifice, so worship is engaging of allows/invites people to participate with their whole bodies § Worship is about action, so it is not just “what we do on Sunday mornings”. Worship is defined by a life that pleases, honours and glorifies God, it is a mystical encounter with the risen Jesus through our work with those around us as well as what happens on a Sunday morning (Michael Treston) § Worship is Trinitarian in scope – we’re encouraged to participate with the Son in the power of the Spirit in the worship that is already taking place within the inner life of the Trinity. This theological underpinning helps us not to ‘try too hard’ in the sense that it’s not all about us and how well the worship band are playing and the sound is being mixed. Of course that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ‘try hard’ to ...