• Christmas Day Sermon 2012

    Many of you will be aware that I recently have returned from a big sabbatical trip to churches in Canada and the United States.

    I was there to learn and reflect and grow and I did that by making contact with the most interesting folk I could find in church life on the other side of the North Atlantic.

    Inevitably I spent quite a lot of time poking around churches over there and coming from this cathedral, I was interested in what cathedrals over there were up to.

    Which is how I found myself in the National Cathedral in Washington DC just a day or two after the American Election in November.

    It is a mighty building. Far bigger than we are but when I saw it, it was not looking its best. Still recovering from an earthquake which wobbled all its stonework, they have netting strung all across the nave to catch falling fragments. So you stand in this enormous church unable to look up and appreciate the great spaces.

    Unable to look up, instead I went down. For underneath the nave is a maze of twisty passages which lead (more…)

5 responses to “The Christian Year and Social Media”

  1. Jaye Richards-Hill Avatar

    I certainly agree with passive learning… I have called it ‘knowledge Grazing’ in a book I’m working on at the moment…. There’s a bit about this here… http://www.agent4change.net/grapevine/platform/2050-hungry-for-learning-knowledge-grazing-fits-the-bill.html

    And for the church, well, maybe the passive learning paradigm is good. You already post the vid of the sermon for folks to watch again and digest – the number of questions people ask you or points they raise with you about the sermon after watching it again would perhaps be an indication as to how much passive church-type learning is taking place?

  2. Margaret of the Sea of Galilee Avatar
    Margaret of the Sea of Galilee

    More especially the internet provides access to the 0.001% (probably less) of the population whose lives – like one’s own – revolve around these things. And exactly which stole who wore last Sunday to reduce everything to such an absurdity which of course is a Christian/liturgical idiosyncracy in itself. “It just encourages them!” as my mother would have said…

  3. Kelvin Avatar

    I’m not sure what you mean, Margaret.

    But you sound sniffy.

    1. Margaret of the Sea of Galilee Avatar
      Margaret of the Sea of Galilee

      That you can find people interested in your own Very Specific Areas of Interest…a good thing but of course encourages you in your idiosyncracies which is less good

      1. Kelvin Holdsworth Avatar

        Ah. I see why I didn’t understand at first Margaret. What I was suggesting was precisely the opposite of what you are saying. I think I learn about all kinds of things (spiritual and otherwise) that I never expected to learn through following interesting people online who have quite different interests to my own.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Conference yet again

    Yes, I know that you don’t want to hear any more about the conference. There is nothing more boring than people going on and on about a conference to people who were not at it. (SEC21, I am talking about you!) But indulge me a moment. This is what I have submitted to the Scottish…

  • Muddled links sorted

    I've sorted out the links in yesterday's post. They got mangled as I tried to enter them in a hurry. Both books recommended for anyone trying to understand what o­n earth is going o­n in the minds of those who tinker with liturgy.

  • New Book

    A treat. Richard Giles has another book out – Creating Uncommon Worship. It does for the liturgy what Re-pitching the Tent did for Church Buildings. It is deliciously caustic, wise and very funny and there are lots of pictures. Here is a taster (on whether or not to sing the Collect of the Day): “There…

  • Sunday's sermon

    In response to a comment by e-mail – no, the sermon posted o­n the website is not quite what I preached o­n Sunday. I had written it before going away o­n Thursday last week and before the Russian school atrocity.