Colourful Dreamer

This Sunday I am not preaching a traditional sermon. I tend not to on big days like Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday and Christmas. I tend to offer ways for people to engage in the story of that day in different ways. Why? I suspect that I have already blogged about this somewhere. But, briefly, there are two reasons. The first is that a long time ago I went to a youth ministry conference in Oxford, England (the inaugural Studies in Youth Ministry Conference in 1995) where Bob Mayo presented a paper on using scripture with young people. It came out of his experience of missionary work overseas and in Eastend of London. Basically he said “tell the story and shut up – let them work out what it means for them”. There was more to it than that but he did encourage us to trust people to engage with the story and to work out its meaning for them. Some were outraged – they might get it wrong. He replied that we do a lot of the time and don’t even know it. So why keep on passing on our w...

As I said in my previous posting we did something a little different yesterday at church. Hence no sermon notes this week. And then last night we held a Taizé service based around the Stations of the Cross. Our previous Taizé service had nearly 20 attend. Last night we got to 5, eventually. My wife, who had done most of the work wondered before we started, if we just flag what was organised and if we just sing some Taizé   songs. I said no, let’s do it even if there are only 3 here, which there were at that point. This caused me to reflect on my approach to preaching and to worship. Both come out of my youth ministry days, and in particular Dr Bob Mayo at the first international youth ministry conference and the work of Pete Ward. At the conference Bob’s suggested that in evangelism, instead of trying to explain the scripture stories we need to tell them and then shut up. We don’t need to explain them, we don’t need to help people work out what they are about. Just let...

I really enjoyed the whole Easter journey this year. Our vicar got sick on Maundy Thursday, and I ended up doing all the Easter services, which I really enjoyed, even if I lost my cruisy Easter break. It was nice to journey, first from Palm Sunday, and then through the holy week (including a service of prayer and confession on the Tuesday night) and a Seder service and meal (including foot washing) on the Thursday night. This was my first service, and I then went on to "take" a reflective service on Friday morning and a Tenebrae service on Friday night, using PowerPoint and based on the Stations of the Cross. Really powerful. Then the service of light on Saturday night, and the two celebrations on Sunday, for which I wrote the sermon/poem below. This sermon was inspired by a sermon two young people in our Diocese preached at the closing service in the Cathedral for our Top Parish weekend. They prepared really carefully, and delivered it dramatically, constantly interacting bo...

It has been awhile. I have been pondering this comment and question from Ben. I think it is a great question, and I am not sure I have any easy answers. BTW - following on from your thought about having large chunks of scripture read out in church and re-installing that in our evening community I can report back that people have really taken to it and it's become a highlight of the service for me (and others I suspect) and as an aside to your post I have come across one recent frustration and that is people who say that they want "deeper teaching" in the service. As we explore that idea more I discover that they want more teaching on peripheral Scriptural themes rather than just constantly hearing the central gospel themes. My frustration comes when I don't feel like they/me/we have really got a grasp on "living out" as opposed to just "knowing" those central themes - do you keep banging away until people seem to get it and live it? Do you move on ...