A recent comment made what I think is a very important point: Mainstream popular music depends on a principle of planned obsolescence: a song is big hit for a short time and is then quickly replaced by the next big hit. Within this environment, it’s easy to lose sight of the power of tradition. There’s
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Let us pray (in silence) [that we may follow the Good Shepherd] pause O God, you shine the light of your truth for those who stray into error, so that they may be able to return to the right path, grant that all who profess the Christian faith may reject whatever is contrary to the
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“It is only a story.” I was delighted to see in a comment earlier this week: “Si non e’ vero, e’ ben trovato” – an Italian statement of Giordano Bruno: “If it is not true it is very well invented.” If we discover that some of the stories in the Bible do not correspond to
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Recently, I read an article “Small ≠ Broken: 5 Steps to Greatness In a Small Church“. It emphasised the value of small communities and (what I stress repeatedly) don’t try and clone/mimic one style (in this case the mega-church model) in another context (in this case your local parish church). The Anglican model has traditionally
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Church services have shifted from being the Body of Christ worshipping God to being primarily focused on evangelising the unchurched. With this shift, congregational prayers, affirmations, responses, and, singing were replaced with the “worship”-preaching-worship format. The music shifted to primarily being intended to create an emotional response. So, in summary, begins the hard-hitting post by
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Let us pray (in silence) [that we may rejoice in sharing in Christ’s resurrection] pause O God, in Christ’s humiliation, you stooped down, and raised up the fallen world in the resurrection, grant to your faithful people a holy joy, so that those whom you have freed may delight in you eternally; through Jesus Christ
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Along with the decline in Anglican common prayer in New Zealand is confusion about liturgical leadership. All too often liturgical leadership is comparable to a Television presenter, the continuity person on a show, the interviewer on a chat show. Add to this New Zealand’s tendency to divide the Eucharist into “two parts” – with the
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A friend pointed to the above image and exclaimed: “Now, that’s liturgy!” True. Very quickly, however, in our one-way culture (where affirming one thing is understood by many as denying anything different to what is being affirmed), people end up thinking that the above image is the only way to do liturgy, the ideal of
