funky doo

'Contemporavent' Church??

ht to Banksy for this - this manages to make the point about much of our church consumer culture without being condemning...and great tool for discussion and reflection...

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Everything we do in church is weird

Check out this post with the above title http://clayboy.co.uk/2010/01/everything-we-do-in-church-is-weird/ which is such a true picture of how random some of our 'traditions' are - when we truly look at how others might view them!

There are some things at our new church that I have never seen done before in an Anglican church - and I've been in few of them! So we're waiting to find out what some of those traditions mean and generally feeling a bit as though we're still observing rather than experiencing or engaging...there's still time!

Clayboy has recently begun a new blog particularly looking at liturgy and worship (http://worshipandliturgy.blogspot.com/2010/01/good-worship.html) and his reflections in his main blog above, coupled with this new specific blog really make me think, wonder and laugh out loud.

We have been at our 'new' church now for 3 weeks - one before Christmas and 2 Sundays in 2010 and we're beginning to get the hang of it! We've got the Vicar and his wife coming round for dinner in February (oh, what to cook?!) and there have been some suggested involvements in baptism prep, marriage prep and evening services which we're praying and thinking about. It's against my usual inclination to get involved in activities in a new church so quickly, but it's important for Andy in his discernment process that he is exploring and working alongside the ministry team so that they can also discern his calling for the priesthood. Obviously, it would look a bit rubbish if he did marriage preparation on his own, so I'll be with him for that!

This week feels like the first week of term again - last week was weird! The snow just cripples everything and although I didn't get a 'snow day' as such with working from home, it was still a week of cancellations and different priorities. Nice to have a day of sorting and preparing today before some youthwork supervision tomorrow and Solid ReMix Labyrinth on Friday - I feel strangely ready for anything! Long may it last!

A Homecoming Litany

I've been preoccupied today with activities related to toddler life and preparations for birthdays - as well as the mundane housework and jobs which always pile up into the weekend.

Then I've sat down in front of Strictly (which I love) and X Factor (which I watch for youthwork related purposes of course!!) and had a sudden realisation that tomorrow is Sunday....and I feel woefully unprepared and somehow I wanted to rectify that...so I returned to a 'starred blog' that I noticed this morning from Christine Sine's blog GodSpace and it totally wacked me back into the real world....

Hope it does the same for you and as we journey further into Advent and anticipation, be welcomed back into the homeland, the heart of the Father and be blessed in all you do.

Enjoy...

A Homecoming Litany – Christine Sine

The advent of our Lord is near and we long for his coming

We long for new light to shine where there has been darkness.

The advent of our Lord is near and we long for him to call us home

We long for new hope to reign where there has been death and despair.

The advent of our Lord is near and we long for him to appear

We wait on tiptoe attentive to all the signs of his coming

(Pause for lighting of the Advent candles)

God we have caught a glimpse of your Messiah healed world

And we long for its coming

We long for the place where all beauty comes from

The place where all life is renewed

God we live in anticipation of Messiah’s birth and the world’s rebirth

And we long for its coming

God we long to come home to your world of wholeness and peace

Home to your eternal world where love reigns over all

Isaiah 2: 1-4

This is a vision that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

2 In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all—
the most important place on earth.
It will be raised above the other hills and people from all over the world will stream there to worship.
3 People from many nations will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of Jacob’s God.
There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.”
For the Lord’s teaching will go out from Zion; his word will go out from Jerusalem.
4 The Lord will mediate between nations and will settle international disputes.
They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore.

God we long for your coming when you will welcome us home

Isaiah 25: 6-9

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine— the best of meats and the finest of wines.

7 On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations;

8 he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.

9 In that day they will say,
“Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

God we long for your coming when you will welcome us home

Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Hold your head high, rejoice in anticipation

Christ is coming calling us home

Home to the heart of God

Home to God’s living presence

Home to God’s banquet feast

Hold your head high, your redemption draws close

Christ is coming calling us home

He comes to redeem and renew

All that is broken will be made whole

All that is dislocated will be set right

Hold your head high, carry forward God’s healing

Christ is coming calling us home

To a world where truth and justice triumph

To a place where abundance flourishes

To a community where generosity flows

Hold your head high, Christ is coming calling us home

Calling to all of us, to all that will trust in his name

Christ is coming, calling us home

Into God’s eternal world where love reigns over all

AMEN

The Con of Christmas...hear me out!!

This post will also appear on the family blog here.

This has been a post in formation for weeks and I was never sure I felt brave enough to write it in a real way for people to see...but Bishop Nick Baines has got in before and dealt with the stick over the weekend...so I feel a bit like I'm jumping on the bandwagon - but hey, we all do that in the world of blogging!

So, check out Nick's post here Grumpy Bishop. He's recently published a book which I'll say now, just like all the media who have entered the scrum of interviewing him, I haven't read yet. But based on this post, he is from the same stable as me - if you'll excuse the pun! (Cos it was probably a cave!!)

My problem with Christmas (I love it really, don't get too worried!!) came with the arrival of M 3 years ago - her first Christmas didn't really matter as she was only 10 days old. But come her first birthday, followed rapidly by Christmas Day, it was very difficult not to get caught up in the assumption that Father Christmas would be visiting our house in the dead of night and delivering presents.

I love the idea and the legends of Father Christmas and the root of it's story in St Nicholas who was a 3rd century miracle worker, renowned for secret gift giving and whose feast day is this Sunday. But I have a problem with the commonly held assumption that Santa (who is a character developed by cartoonist Thomas Nash in 19th century America and then taken on by mighty Coca Cola), who in contrast to St Nicholas is a jolly, red faced, red suited old man living in the North Pole, are one and the same.

The titles Father Christmas and Santa Claus seem to be interchangeable - indeed in the North East where we used to live, Santa is often Santee (try it with a Geordie accent!!)

But the roots of these characters - fictional, historical, the stuff of legend, whatever - are very different and portray different aspects of the Gospel and the Christmas story. Whilst I am not going to go down the extreme line of saying the whole thing is a lie and Father Christmas can't possibly visit every house in the world in one night etc., I am going to make sure that the traditions we have and the story we tell is faithful whilst also being magical and not ultimately confusing to a 6/7/8 year old in years to come.

Ultimately - I want M to understand that she receives gifts, not because she has been a good girl, but because we love her and because we want to celebrate the wondrous story of Jesus' birth and his life given out for her and for us. It always has everything to do with GRACE - and giving gifts is not because we are good, but in fact the opposite - but we are LOVED, by God and by one another and so we can bless one another...that is our call as disciples.

I HATE it when people ask small children whether they have been good this year and if Santa is going to come - of course they haven't been good...they are small children!! But in our house, M will get a small stocking of presents, outside her door, from us to open in bed and Father Christmas will have visited the house overnight - drinking a bit of something, scoffing a mince pie and maybe leaving some gold coins as the original St Nicholas is said to have done. All her other presents will come from us - real people who love her and know her and want to be part of the pleasure of giving gifts as she is in the giving of gifts to others.

 

Ok, so that's the Santa bit done...

Now a quote from Nick Baine's blog, referenced above: Now, some commentators say that Christmas is about sentiment (feeling), nostalgia and ‘magic’. They say that simple carols are great for children to begin to learn the story. Absolutely right. But the people arguing this are not children, but adults who want to stay as children when it comes to matters of God and faith and so on. Think like a child when you are a child, but, for goodness’ sake, grow up when you are an adult.

 

I find it ironic that for the rest of the year, a majority of our population want nothing to do with Christian tradition in any way but suddenly at Christmas they become hugely defensive of anything being different or changing or being criticised. The depth of understanding of what Christmas and this huge celebration are really all about is missing - and I see 2 reactions as I go about my work and experience life.

Some churches and Christians do nothing to celebrate Christmas...no carols or Christmas services or trees or anything which is vaguely pagan or rooted in tradition - everything just carries on as normal until the BIG DAY. Missing out Advent, in my opinion is the real shame here...but that's another issue! 

On the other extreme, there are many churches and Christians who do everything traditionally and don't question 'why' or whether it's helpful. I remember one of my first parish posts and the whole of December being taken up with either visiting or hosting Carol Sevices or nativity plays - by schools, Townswomen's Guild (yes seriously!), nurseries etc. You did want to tear your hair out by the end and it had slightly lost it's magic in the repetition.

 

My reaction is to try and do something in the middle - I love Christmas carols but hate Away in a Manger and the 'How silently' verse of O Little Town of Bethlehem. Mary was NOT silent in labour, OK!

We'll be having a tree even though it stems from pagan tradition...(!)because it forms a focal point in our home for Christmas celebrations and it is a precious family occasion to buy the tree and decorate it. We will feed people, host people, visit with people - mainly those we know or are related to, although when M is older we endeavour to be spending time with those who don't have the advantages of Christmas traditions and family that we are blessed with.

 

The difficulty of taking an extreme reaction to Christmas traditions and popular culture is that you get bah humbuged by everyone else...which is difficult to take, in what is supposed to be a season of goodwill after all!! But if we Christians can't communicate seriously the true meaning of Christmas, then how can we expect those who only take part in the traditions once a year to really know what we're all about??

+Nick continues: The ‘magic’ of Christmas is fine – up to a point. But ask any clergy and they will tell you about the ways in which Christmas is hard for many people and how the ‘magic’ makes it harder. It is for them that the reality of Christmas hits home: that God has not remained a million miles above contradiction, but opted in to the muck and messiness of the world and meets us where we are – in the vulnerability of the baby in Bethlehem. To tell that story is not to be miserable – but the opposite.

I am just not prepared to encourage people to live in a fantasy world, but doing my job as a Christian bishop in calling people back to the original story. Grasp it – and then celebrate hard and fully. I’ll be belting out the carols and watching the nativity plays along with the rest of them. But I will also be living in the real world and engaging my brain.

+Nick - I'm with you. I'll be doing mobile carolling on 20th December, going into London and experiencing the Christmas lights and soaking up the excitement. I'll be making mince pies and sausage rolls and wrapping presents and sneaking about on Christmas Eve, stopping Andy from squeezing presents and we'll probably be eating and drinking too much. But I hope in the midst of all that, I'll be reminded of why we get to celebrate this amazing event - because it changed the world, it changed my world and I want it to change the world of my daughter and her friends and our families and our community because we tell it how it really is...if you take the 'text' out of 'context' - what are you left with??

Comments awaited!!

Advent thinking, ideas and resources...for YOU!!

 I'm having an at home working day - which is not feeling very sensible as I have builders in and out fixing my chimney and roof where the felt has gone...but I'm getting lots done, snuggled in my hoodie and slippers in the dining room with the fan heater and fire on while the front door is wide open for the ins and outs...ho hum!

I'm getting ahead on various bits of preparation for youth sessions over the next few weeks up to Christmas and also for some training on 8th December and the Labyrinth in Chelmsford Cathedral on 15th January. I love having the time just to go through my Google Reader blogs, see what people are thinking about and linking to, following those links and finding great websites and ideas and stuff to provoke my thinking.

So I'm listing below some of the interesting stuff I've found just in the last 2 hours...and hope it helps you and inspires you - in your youth work and personally - as you prepare for this busy time!

http://www.barefoottraining.com - this is an American based website offering training workshops but it has some great looking downloadable resources to purchase.
http://www.nailscars.com/journal/2009/11/30/creative-christmas-idea-manger-or-cross-reading.html - a dramatised reading useful for Christingle services, 9 lessons and carols or other Christmas service (from the Confessions of an Average Youth Minister website)
http://www.emergentkiwi.org.nz/archive/advent-blessings-creative-prayer-stations/ - Steve Taylor has 2 posts using prayer stations with a theme of Advent blessings...some great ideas here and the thinking behind it is refreshingly simple yet soundly theological.
http://godspace.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/celebrating-advent-with-kids/ Christine Sine has some brilliant suggestions for interacting and involving kids (of all ages!) with preparations for the birth of Jesus. I would see these being used in families as well as worshipping communities, during services, home groups etc. Also check out her Advent meditation film, available on You Tube or for download if you want to show it in church or on a big screen.
http://holdthisspace.org.au/ - liturgy, prayers, reflections for all occasions on Cheryl Lawrie's site - click on blog or writing and take some time to scroll through and browse.
http://www.youthspecialties.com/blog/2009/advent-agous/ - I was struck by this reflection when it first came to my attention so I link to it for you to be struck too.
www.thestoryofstuff.com - this is a 20 minute film, highlighting stuff around the materials economy - boring you may say?? well, kinda appropriate as we come into the season of giving and receiving - lots of stuff, where does it all go? This could be a good discussion starter...adults or kids. They also have a new film released today linking into the Copehagen summit next weekend which is current and relates well to our impact on the world.

and finally...for now!
Never Underestimate the power of a Good Story!

Youthwork the Conference

I'm heading off to Eastbourne today for Youthwork the Conference, the main national Christian youthwork conference and training event in the UK. I've been twice before, the last time 2 years ago, so I'm looking forward to going back for some input, reflection and refreshing as well as some fun with my colleagues and friends from the Hub youthworker gatherings here in South East Essex. A bunch of us have block booked a guest house a short walk from the conference venue and so we'll be eating together, learning together and sharing life a bit over the next few days which will be great! Last time I was a bit of a Billy with no friends as I decided to go last minute, so some company and a chance to react and connect on the teaching will be excellent.

The conference begins with a retreat for 24 hours, hosted this year by Jason Gardner and Jenny Baker. I didn't do that last time, as M was only 11 months old and I didn't want to be away for 3 nights...but this time I am dead excited to be able to be here for the whole event! (looking forward to uninterrupted nights and maybe some shopping?!)

So, the programme came through and I thought I'd just make an initial response at some of the seminars and events I think I'll be heading for - all subject to change of course!

Friday night - I'll be at The Story so Far in the After Hours venue with my friend Elin who is performing her one woman show with Lacey Theatre Company.

Saturday - I'm thinking I'll probably follow the Take me to your Leader Stream of workshops...or maybe the Culture Shapers...not sure yet.

I'll probably also take in the age specific stream about 11-14's and the Essential Mentoring 1 session as well as attending the Sophia Network reception for it's 2nd birthday!

I'm looking forward to Vicky Beeching leading worship and hearing some of her new material aswell on Saturday evening.

Sunday - I'm a bit torn as everything looks good - so I'll probably go to whatever seems to be most interactive based on the speaker and get the audio for the more lecture based sessions. I'm veering towards Worship and Justice but might go for the Adolescence session...

In amongst all that, I'm hoping to finish a book I'm reviewing for the Sophia Network site and start on the review itself...as well as looking round and browsing (!) all the great resources which are always available! I expect lots of tea to be drunk, thinking to be done and laughing to be had...bring it on!!

So, if you're there, be great to see you! I'll let you know what I went for in terms of workshops etc next week and will do some reviews and recommendations of sessions you might like to get hold of too!

Letter from God

A Great clip and a great track - so many possibilities for discussion starters or to play during a service...there are some interesting theological debates to be had too, if you're brave!! popout

labyrinth and worship wonderings

Mark Berry (way out west) has a really useful blog with all sorts of reflections and resources and thinking about worship in all it's forms as well as stuff about his pioneer role in Telford. Click on 'worship/prayer' in his cloud to get the full selection.

In the midst of toddler vomiting episodes, car servicing appointments and guests departing from a weekend of birthday celebrations, I have been starting to pin down the thinking and piecemeal preparation I had already done for the Labyrinth in St Alban's on Friday night.

The link above to Mark's blog is to his section of worship and prayer resources and a particular piece that has helped my thinking is titled 'Bored with Worship'. As we start to put together the elements for this Labyrinth and the stations to fit around the theme of 'Darkness into Light' - we're really concious of this being an indigenous and organic process for the people who come and share in it with us. We provide some prompts, some words, some ideas, and leave them to connect them in their own way. We want to enhance the journey, provide a stake in the ground as a point to say 'what am I doing here and what is God doing?', but worship, youth work and faith has to be non-directive...so we go with the flow! Hard for me who likes to have a plan!

It's going to be a different event altogether from the SolidReMix event in January in Chelmsford Cathedral. For a start, we have a much bigger and seperate space, but that means we need to fill it appropriately!!

Here are some pics of the January event:

Holy Space - rest in the centre, BE and take some bread for the journey.

The prayer/reflection wall on the way out - leave an encouraging word for those who follow you or thank God for something he has shown you. Pretty full as you can see!

Seeing yourself as God sees you - created in love and fearfully and wonderfully made. Self portraits...
 
 Some of these elements will be appearing at the St Alban's event, but there will be some new things too, some stolen and others totally original (!) - so we'll post photos next weekend when we've caught up on some sleep!