I read everything I can from the Alban Institute.  Alban is the congregational development research organization par excellence.   The following article (I know it’s long, but a very interesting read) came in my inbox this morning.  It speaks somewhat to the theology that as church members (those who participate in the work of the Church) we are not owners.  The Church is not ‘ours’ as if we could possess the Body of Christ.  The paradox of church membership, as Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once said/wrote, is that: The …

from Christian Century
The parish liturgy committee decided to adopt the contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer for use during worship. From now on, at least at one of the services, we’d be “sinners” instead of “trespassers.” The next Sunday a distraught man cornered me. “You’ve taken the Lord’s Prayer away from us!”
I was shocked. What did he mean? We’d been preparing and educating people for this small change for years. How could changing a few words “take away” the Lord’s Prayer?
I thought: maybe the Lord’s Prayer was not part of …

The following is from Bishop Porter Taylor of the Diocese of Western North Carolina:
This week I have been in Minneapolis for the meeting of the Standing Commission on Lifelong Christian Formation. This Commission is authorized by General Convention to focus on policies that will enhance, deepen, and improve Christian Formation across the Church and to propose resolutions to the 2012 General Convention. Our task is to make disciples, equip the baptized to do the work of ministry every day, and to enable the people to go deeper in their faith, …

From where comes our worth?  For those of you who prefer Rite I, from whence cometh our worth?
I think this is a fundamental question that so many, especially those in younger generations, have never asked themselves.  Even worse – they’ve never been told.  What defines us a human beings and grants us intrinsic value?  Because the question has been left unanswered and too often, unasked, we embark on a misguided voyage to find out for ourselves.  We look for our worth in the eyes of others.   We engage in …

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940)

I don’t know if I’ve read this somewhere before and the concept was buried deep down and just popped up today or if this is something that original. In any case, in thinking about the Missional Church, Church culture, and congregation processes and conflicts, the following thought made its way from the ether into the firing synapses.
In the Gospels and in Acts, the faith community had at least three contexts: the temple, synagogue, and the house. Each of these had its own place in the life of the …

My family’s pew was on the Gospel side (left facing the altar) at the back.  We sat with the Hodge family.  It wasn’t always the case, but more times than not, that was our arrangement.  When I served my first church (where my father was raised and where my grandmother still attends), my grandmother would sit on the back pew on the Epistle side (right facing the altar).  “Granny, why do you sit in the back?” I asked early on.
“Oh, I don’t know.  It’s habit.  When your daddy was young, …

Tomorrow’s Old Testament reading introduces us to Abram (he’ll be Abraham later).  In a dramatic and typically biblical scenario, God calls Abram to leave his homeland and his family and go to the place God has prepared for him.  Not only that (but wait, there’s more!), God will make Abram a great nation, he will bless his name, and he will be a blessing to others.  Abram’s response?   “Ok.”
Abram didn’t realize he wasn’t in the ‘divine drive-thru’ and that those promises wouldn’t necessarily be ready for him as he drove …

Yesterday in USA Today, the front page statistical snapshot was of our experience of the supernatural.  Over 4,000 adults were surveyed in August of last year and 29% affirmed some connection with the dead.  Lesser numbers believe they’ve seen a ghost and consulted with a medium.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that reason why Halloween and scary stories/movies/etc. resonate with us so consistently is that there is something to all this.  I need to qualify that.  Do I believe that there are spirits of …

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