- Do you have a decent church website?
- Is it up to date?
- Is it responsive – ie does it work on mobile phones?
- Does your own online profile feature your ideas and hopes and dreams other than a desire for people to turn up to church?
- Do you know what you are doing with twitter and facebook?
- Who could you learn more about social media from?
- Do you have a compelling reason why people should come to your church other than where it is or what denomination it belongs to?
- Can everyone in the church tell you in one sentence what that compelling reason is?
- What is your beginners’ course like?
- What comes after the beginners’ course?
- Do people like the preaching?
- Do people enjoy the music?
- Have you dealt with conflicts from the past?
- Are the people friendly?
- Do you have any new groups starting soon?
- Do you talk about making the world a better place?
- How will people experience joy if they come to your congregation?
- If someone from your past turned up unexpectedly at worship how would it make you feel?
- How do you identify newcomers and what do you offer them?
- What problems will arise if you do grow and how will you deal with them?
- Do claims that you welcome everyone stop you working at welcoming those who traditionally find it hard to find a home in church?
- Do you use language that is inclusive of everyone?
- How do you know?
- Is there any identifiable group of people that you can’t explicitly say are welcome because of how an individual or group in the congregation will react?
- Do you want to grow or not?
One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”
-
As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.
One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.
Oofft.
Previous Posts
-
Review – Orlando, Scottish Opera
Aha, my review of Orlando has now gone up at the Opera Britannia website. Rather late in the day, but I gather they have recruited someone new to get the reviews up much quicker in the future. Here is what I said: Rating: Scottish Opera – Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 14 February 2011 Scottish Opera’s Orlando…
-
Redesigning the Cathedral Website
I’ve been redesigning the Cathedral website this week. Forgive the fact that some of the rest of this post may be written in Geek. (I don’t speak pure Geek either more Demotic Geek). It may not look a terribly major revision, but actually it is. Although the look and feel are more or less the…
-
The King’s (and the Provost’s) Speech
OK – so I came rather late to this one. Spent an afternoon off yesterday in the cinema watching The King’s Speech. I guess that most of you have already seen it and are immune to my enthusiasm. Actually, I spent a fair portion of the movie with tears very gently streaming down my chops.…
-
Pancake recipe
Don’t forget my world famous pancake recipe: http://thurible.net/20040224/pancake_receipt/ Still going strong after all these years.
Leave a Reply