In the name of the Father and of the Son and the liberating, loving, life-enhancing Holy Spirit. Amen.
Many of you will be aware that I’ve recently been on holiday and that this is my first Sunday back following several away relaxing by the Mediterranean. I enjoyed reading and chilling-out by the pool. In all my prayers and devotions each evening, I prayed that the Good Lord would transpose the sublime sunshine from the Med up here to Glasgow.
And lo! See the power of prayer. (more…)
Thank you Kelvin
What a read, I really enjoyed it, all of it. You have touched on the 3 things that I too have been wrestling with.
Liturgy , turning up to be counted, and being open and real with our peers and counterparts.
Hmmm I wonder if those aspects of being church in this post pandemic implosion of society will somehow be a catalyst to become braver clergy and have proper discussions about what matters to Gods church in its own context. Can we be diverse and not divided, can we lock into our heritage and yet be able to change too. Can Branson pickle save us. X
Great stuff, Kelvin!
Good points well made. We find some church members, who organise a community lunch on a Wednesday, then regularly say ‘we won’t make it on Sunday’. Seems the wrong way round – attendance on a Sunday should come first.
Reading this made my day and contributes to my celebration of the season! Thank you!
Reading this, I feel like it could have been written about me. I couldn’t have been more deeply involved with my church (felt deeply rooted in the weekly liturgy, sat on the PCC, led on diversity and inclusion, set up online streaming for the first time during lockdown), yet I haven’t been back in two years. There is definitely an element of that link of continuity having been broken, and it’s up to me to make the effort to reforge it again. But the anger is also real, and hard to pin down. When somewhere no longer feels like home, when you feel excluded (even when that person was responsible for leading on inclusion!), how do you find the courage to return? When the link with spirituality feels more present in other places (even when I used to absolutely value liturgy, the Eucharist, the community), how do you find a way forward? Too much thinking, and not enough getting on and doing, perhaps…
Wow–this article is not only thought-provoking, and, to someone who’s a church-goer, extremely easy to identify with, but also entertaining and therefore all the more memorable. As one whose parish church (in San Francisco’s notorious Haight Ashbury neighborhood) nowadays gets about 15 people in the congregation on a “good” day, I do often wonder whether we’re ever going to bounce back from this expletive-deleted pandemic. Personally, I have no choice: I am, on the aforementioned good day, 50% of the alto section, and on other days, 100% thereof. All you folks out there don’t know what you’re missing–except, of course, those of you who are watching on your home computers.
Well said, Kelvin Perhaps we clergy don’t stress enough the fact that the Host at our worship is not the clergy, but the Incarnate Son of God; who empowers us to the extent that we are willing to be empowered for daily life and work. I still think of that lovely phrase “Turn towards HIM and be radiant”. What a thrill!
Yes,I still wonder if we have counted all those spiritual communions
My church (suburban, evangelical Anglican in Birmingham, UK) took a long time to really recover from the lockdown and subsequent fears, but seems to be close to its pre-shutdown numbers again. What my wife and I noticed was that for quite some time the congregation was largely made up of its elderly members – ie those who are not perhaps so nifty with the electronic gadgetry of our age and, also, those who most wanted company. Younger families took a lot longer to return, but are now coming out of the woodwork again.
One interesting point is that my old church reported a big increase in deaf people watching their zoom or youtube services, because one of the congregation provided signage at the front. Their new found audience felt greatly enabled to join in when they may otherwise never have done so. Is this something worth thinking more about?
Tilly (the Cat) has hairball trouble. Well, I have trouble with it, she doesn't seem to care. We have been given Hairball Mixture which comes in a tube. The packaging suggests that you offer it to the cat on a spoon. Well, madam enjoyed that little charade. The alternative suggested is that you rub the…
I've started to prepare the Christmas services. Every year prior to this one, I have been caught out and ended up getting everything sorted out far too late. This year it will be different. I have a hunch that the choir are going to want to sing the Shepherd's Pipe Carol at Midnight Mass and…
I'm racing to get through From the Holy Mountain before the book club meets tonight. I last read it when I was going off to Egypt in 1997, just before I was ordained deacon and I had forgotten how rich a read it was.Part of yesterday was spent doing open heart surgery to a computer to…
I've been listening to the most amazing Armenian Chant on the web – beautiful, measured, holy. What a long way we are in the UK from the liturgical form which we need. Chant has never, ever been more popular and yet all that most people get fed in church in Scotland is the Victorian Dirge…
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