Category: congregation

learning curve

wonderfulexchange26 Comments

This Saturday, there is an open invitation to the congregation(s) to come to the rectory to talk about sexuality and the church.  This comes after discussions that whirled around Lambeth, and the realisation that far more people were wanting to talk about the church’s understanding of homosexuality than I had anticipated.

We’ve spoken before about ‘the current tensions in the Anglican Communion’ (I am so tired of that phrase), but it was focused on church structures rather than understandings of sexuality.  So, today, I am trying to plan the workshop and develop a few small handouts.

It’s hard, isn’t it?

I sat down to map out the areas we might need to touch on, and quickly wrote down (in no particular order):

  1. understandings of homosexuality
  2. misunderstandings
  3. is gender constructed?
  4. biblical criticism:  how do we interpret?
  5. bible as rule book or record of relationship?
  6. is revelation ongoing?  / role of Spirit
  7. how do we determine what is culturally bound?
  8. theologies of the body
  9. sex, faithfulness, marriage
  10. celibacy
  11. sexuality, identity, relationships
  12. role of liberation theology

The goal, of course, is that the people who come do most of the talking/ thinking, and I just help to build scaffolding.  And all this has to happen in about 90 minutes.

Preparing this sends me back to questions I have asked before:  is it possible to ‘start’ with homosexuality or do you need to go right back through the early discussions on gender and liberation?

If there were one thing you would hope everyone would understand by the end of such a conversation, what would it be?

pushing the boat out

wonderfulexchange8 Comments

So, do you suppose after two years here, the congregations are ready for me to abandon a normal sermon in favour of paper folding and meditative prayer?

The idea spawned equally by tomorrows OT lesson on Moses amid the Bullrushes, and the fact that my voice is very weak after an infection.

I still remember the first time I put pen and paper out at my last church and had a substantial part of the congregation prowling up and down the aisle before the service saying:

what are these for? (wait and see)
what are we going to do? (wait and see)
Here, you can have this. I won’t be needing it. (yes, you will)

to the friend, the enemy, the warden, the rector:
Will she tell you what we’re doing? (no, of course not)

The second time there were paper and pens in the pews it went much better:

oh, I don’t like orange. Can I have that pink bit?
Do you like green? No! Give it to the rector.
My pen doesn’t work, does yours?
What are we supposed to be doing?
Here, N. (age 7) will show you.

Ah, happy days.

begin again

wonderfulexchange3 Comments

This blog has rather lost its way of late. Plenty to blog about, but a distinct lack of time and energy to see it through. So, we begin again.

That has been a theme of the week, really. Last night we scrapped most of the vestry agenda to try to cut through the anxiety that has been mounting over property and to reconnect with God. The usual item on the agenda, ‘opening prayers’, took the form of a slow and meditative house communion, with cat and candles and grazing rabbits in sight.

I have always said that I do not reuse services or sermons. Each occasion is different and makes it’s own demands. And yet, last night, I echoed fairly directly a service that a friend and I put together for TISEC. It was the service that broke all the rules (though not the eucharistic ones) and the one I most enjoyed. I never for a moment thought I’d use it again. But for the past fortnight — ever since realising how anxious we had all become — this is the service that I knew I had to use. Not just a house communion, but this rather strange version of a communion that invited people to enter into their own weariness and to find God there.

Good old Elijah:

What are you doing here, Elijah?

I have been very zealous for the Lord, and everything I have tried has failed. I am tired and without hope. Just let me die now.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

Angels come, and Elijah is fed and forced on his way across the desert to Horeb.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

I have been very zealous for the Lord… and I am the only one left, and they are seeking my life.

Go, and stand on the mountain before God, for the Lord is about to pass by.

And Elijah has to face the fact that God is not in the crashing storm or the raging fire, or in all the disastrous things that demand his attention and threaten to overwhelm him. But when Elijah has survived those things and is left standing, he hears silence fall and knows he must cover his face to enter the presence of God. God asks him again:

What are you doing here, Elijah?

The answer remains the same. Elijah still feels overwhelmed; the path God asks Elijah to walk does not become any easier. But something has changed.

Elijah returns to the place he fled and begins to prepare for God’s future.

God’s good timing

wonderfulexchange5 Comments

Splendid service this morning with the bishop commissioning the lay team for the various roles.  Or at least, I am assured that it was.  I was too busy trying not to cough to notice much.

The treasurer did later ask if trainee priests were taught how to drink Lem Sip surrepticiously throughout the service.  He seems not to have noticed the liturgical use of hand-sanitizer before the peace and again before shaking hands at the end of the service.

And then, I left them all still laughing and talking with the bishop, so that I could get to Tighnabruaich in time for the next service.  But thankfully, I noticed my anwering machine flashing:  one of this afternoon’s congregation, saying that everyone else was away or ill, and that she more than willing to go to the Church of Scotland service tonight, and that I should stay home.  Usually, when it’s just one or two there, I say ‘no, no, that’s all right.  I’ll be there.’  But today (cough, cough) I simply said ‘thank you’ and counted my blessings.

That tiny congregation shows me a far greater level of pastoral care than I show them.

And — added benefit — this gives me a few hours clear to think about the Christmas carol service.  I’m already running eight weeks behind with it.

Or I could clean the house…

Hmm.  Which shall it be?

(ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha)
Dashing through the snow (tra-la-la)…