Here’s the sermon I preached on the Road to Emmaus story.
5 responses to “Diocesan Synod”
-
I fight this every stinkin’ time I’m in church. The average age of our Vestry is 47, the eldest is 69 and the youngest is 28 (*waves*).
However, all I hear about is how we are a ‘grey’ church in fear of dying.
I think it’s too much trust in statistics and not enough in the power of the Holy Spirit. And I will beat that through their heads if it KILLS ME.
-
Conversations about mission that assume the Church is dying are bad enough, but at least the subject is being talked about. It’s worse when the mere idea of having a conversation about mission causes consternation and retreat behind the brocaded curtains.
If such a conversation is to get going at all, however, we need to be prepared to rethink radically our ecclesiology. It may not be strictly inevitable that decline will continue, but we need to be realistic about the prospects (such as they are) for future provision of ordained ministers and stipends to sustain them. All churches are facing a decline in these areas.
-
P.S. – I’m not leaving the Holy Spirit out of the reckoning, simply saying that sober and realistic thinking is one of the less trumpeted gifts of the Spirit.
-
I was feeling much the same Kelvin, I was starting to believe all the doom and gloom merchants and wasn’t looking forward to another 3 days of it. I didn’t really think it was the case but when the dripping tap just keeps on going eventually you start to wonder. LYCIG gave me the kick up the backside I was needing to stop listening to the negative and concentrate on the positive and there is lots of that about. If we keep talking about decline we will talk ourselves into it, we need to stop it now!
-
Mary Sue,
Perhaps some parts of our church are glad to be grey.
But seriously, while I applaud the resistance to ‘sociological determinism’ (i.e. decline is inevitable), I think we can also think creatively about our demographics before we chuck out the baby, or the bathwater. It’s time to recycle the grey water.
Some recent thoughts I had are here:
http://www.dunc.info/?p=94(I don’t know how to do that clever trackback thing…)
Previous Posts
-
Cute Guys at St Silas
The mystery worshipper has been to St Silas. Cute guys there, apparently. Read it all. Looks like it was the same reviewer who came to St Mary’s and reviewed us at Pentecost.
-
A Moratorium on Moratoria
Rather surprisingly, I’ve not said much about the Lambeth Conference since it closed. The truth is, we were rather distracted at St Mary’s at the time. People are still asking me what happened. What was the result? Well, the result was not as bad as it might have been. I still wish that our bishops…
-
Healthy Groups
I’ve been lucky enough to have had a couple of development days over the last month, working one-to-one with a facilitator. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is what makes a healthy group in a congregation. This is all rather relevant because, as St Mary’s grows, it seems inevitably to me that…
-
Gene Robinson Sermon – Audio Version for Dial up
Whilst I've been uploading things, I thought I would put another version of +Gene's sermon online. Again, this is an audio only version for those with dial-up and not broadband. If you've missed it the first time around, then here it is. I've also added this to the Audio podcast that you can find through…
Leave a Reply