Praying Our Lives: SSJE daily videos for Lent

This is a daily Lenten video series on prayer produced by the brothers of the Society of  St. John the Evangelist. I am a member of the fellowship and very much appreciate the work that they do. Here is the trailer. You can go here to enter your email for daily links to the videos.

Leonard Sweet

One of the key people that I really wanted to see at Breakforth this year was Leonard Sweet. He is one of the key people thinking through the church's mission in the 21st century and how it differs in many ways from previous eras. His biggest challenge I think when I went to see him is that God is calling us to witness and be a disciple of Christ in and for this time. The challenge he said was that this was not the time that he would have chosen to be in. Leonard feels he is much more Victorian at heart, but the fact is, he is in the 21st century with all of its changes and differences.

The best way to describe the time is TGIF (Twitter, Google, Ipad and Facebook). This is a digital, social media time in which people are connecting to people in very different ways. He encouraged us to look at it like this: when missionaries go out into the field they must first learn the language in order to connect with the people to whom they are taking the Gospel. For us as a church, we are not only NOT learning the language, we are willfully refusing to learn it. This is a problem.

But there is also a balance that has to be acknowledged. For the church not only connects with the outside world to bring them to Christ, but is also a worshiping community who already has traditions that have been nurtured and cultivated over the centuries. It is not possible nor desirable to throw the old out and go with the new. There is an ancient - future dynamic that has to be taken into account. But the heart of what he said that points us in the right direction of the church is that we have to be very cautious about mistaking bringing people into the church as the mission of the church. The mission is to bring people to Christ and to help them grow and deepen in their faith. Our church programs are a means to a greater end, and never the end themselves.

News from New Zealand

Here is the latest news from the cathedral controversy in New Zealand.


If you have not been following the controversy, there is a great video at the BBC about the cardboard cathedral here. It is about 2 minutes long.

The Importance of a Web Presence

Here is a fascinating blog post called 8 Things the Churches Could Learn from the collapse of HMV.
The post is a reflection on how important it is to have a strong presence on the web. Here are a couple of tidbits:

• Know that Social Media is not a fad. It isn’t going away. Trust me on this one. It is where the people are. Engage.
• Understand that people trust personality not corporate speak. They don’t trust language about mission from companies like HMV. They don’t and won’t trust it from us. Saying you are “doing mission” my well put people off. No, really.

News from Vestry: Meeting of January 15, 2012

• We started off our Vestry  mtg with Chris giving  a presentation of our use of social media and the website as a method of communication. One nice feature of Facebook that he pointed out was that we can track how much exposure our posts are receiving broken down into categories such as age, gender, geographic location and so on. 
• Until the budget is approved, the corporation decided to contract Janitorial services for the months of January and February.
• We are in the process of finding people willing to be part of the vestry for 2013.
• There was no financial statement as the entire financial statement for the year is in the hands of the Accounts Examiner. 
• Our big discussion was on the budget. The budget committee proposed a recommended budget to the vestry for consideration. Vestry will have a month to look at the numbers and will decide on the budget to bring forward to the congregation in February. The AGM is on February 24th.
• Betty Hopfner has agreed to organize the Shrove Tuesday dinner. She will be looking for volunteers.
• Brian Jolly brought us up to date on the situation with having the fire alarm system put into place. We have a contractor we are negotiating with. Hopefully, we can start to have the installation begin soon. 
• The annual Turkey Pie baking fundraiser will take place on two Saturdays: February 9 and February 23.

Quotes from the sermon

Here are the two quotes I built my sermon around this Sunday for the Baptism of Christ:

Thomas Merton: ""The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian answer to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandant bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God. That faith that one is loved by God although unworthy - or rather, irrespective of one's worth."

Paul Tillich: ""Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, ...It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying:“You are accepted.You are accepted,accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything.Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance."

Helpful Article about the Restructuring of the ACC

The discussions about restructuring our national church in the face of declining budgets and membership have been going on for a while. This article from the Anglican Journal is helpful to understanding what the national church is thinking about in terms of structures:

Less reliance on standing committees and more on task forces, a review of the size and function of General Synod, increased partnership with dioceses and other churches, an “overhaul” of the national church’s communications strategy and a review of the national stewardship initiative.

These are but a few of the wide-ranging, as well as immediate and long-term, changes that were identified in the national consultation convened by Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, last January 8 to 10 in Mississauga, Ont. 

I have a new favourite song!

This was the song that Tapestry played at the end of the service this Sunday. It is called Build Your Kingdom here and is by an Irish band called Rend Collective. It is well worth a listen. This part of the lyrics is a great prayer:


We seek Your kingdom first
We hunger and we thirst
Refuse to waste our lives
For You're our joy and prize
To see the captives' hearts released
The hurt the sick the poor at peace
We lay down our lives for heaven's cause
We are Your church
We pray revive this earth

I just love the image of the Kingdom of God being 'unleashed' into the world and no power of hell can stop it!

From Thomas Merton:

The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian answer to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God. That faith that one is loved by God although unworthy - or, rather, irrespective of one's worth.

Hobbits amongst us!

I recommend watching this little video on Youtube called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Theological Journey.

It is only about 9 minutes long by Professor Alison Milbank where she explores a bit about the life of Tolkien and some helpful theological aspects of the Hobbit. I don't know Alison Milbank's work, but I have followed her husband, John Milbank and the radical Orthodoxy movement. Anyway, worth watching.

More on the Bishop from Les Miserables

In my first sermon at St. Thomas I told one of my favourite stories about the famous meeting of the bishop of Digne and Jean Val Jean in the musical based on Victor Hugo's musical Les Miserables. I have read the book but it has been so long I didn't remember many of the details. However, after reading a wonderful blog post by Mark Roberts about the Bishop I know I will have to come back to it. The Bishop is one of my favourite characters because he was so fundamental to me personally in understanding the deeper logic of love and sacrifice and what set up my own journey into the Christian faith.

What I had forgotten, that while the Bishop in the musical only has a brief appearance, in the novel he is a much more developed character. For instance, in the sermon I think I made a joke about Bishops in that time living in palaces. In fact, in the novel the bishop has sold off much of his wealth for the poor and chosen to live in a simple house while turning the palace into a hospital. For some reason, this character speaks to me profoundly. I pray for a heart of simplicity and love and service as deep as this. It is the reason that I am so attracted to St. Francis. I know that I really struggle with it in my own life, but to me there is nothing so beautiful to behold as one who can say with the Bishop:

This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours.

ACC News Item

From the Anglican Journal:

In a letter sent on Dec. 31, 2012, Anglican Church of Canada leaders have urged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to meet with Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence. Her hunger strike, which began Dec. 11, is a “sacrificial act of one for many” that demands respect and response, they said...