To blog or not to blog that is the activity
Spent my morning going down my blogroll with comments from a non-blogging friend at the back of my mind; he said to me yesterday
"you really like those flipping blogs don't you" and
"keep 'em to yourself ...". From those comments I've been thinking that awkward question
why do I do this?". Then I reached the
philgoodacre.blogspot that descibes the blog-habit thus
(A) blog helps me reflect on my journey, about where I've been, and where I might be heading ... I make these thoughts public, because "others understand better what I have trouble grasping and they help me to continue on my way" (Brother Roger of Taize, 1915 - 2005).
I like that. And without having consciously thought about it before realised that is why I blog. A partial answer to the awkward question.
But perhaps there is more to it than that. Because they never speak of their doubts it seems that most of my friends. acquintances, home-group or out-reach community members are not asking the same theological questions that I am. But some people have and so like Brother Roger I need help along the way. [Sad that Brother Roger was murdered during a worship service the other day.]
There is another advantage to blogging in the Christian blogosphere. I'm dyslexic and have very slow phonological processing and a very poor memory so it helps to get the jump on my vicar. Who, after reading all these blogs, I suspect also has a well established blog-habit himself. Either that or many blogging clergy/theologians/church-leaders are thinking through the same issues as him on films, post-modernism in the church, emergent church, evangelism and a pile of other topics affecting out-reach, mission, and worship.
While my blogroll lists people holding a broadly similar doctrinal basis to mine. A few do have a completely different take on Christian faith. To read how the other end of a broad church approaches something that I hold dear means blowing away the cobwebs and dust and cleaning off the tarnish that I've let settle over many years. That's just as much a part of the journey.
Occasionally one comes across a blog by someone you knew for a while and it allows a little voyeurism reading about the current location of their journey. It is heartening to read that some of them are also wrestling with answers to my questions. If friends, acquintance, travellers in the same congregation discover my blog then we can "continue on our way" together.
There's something of the essence of spiritual journal in blogging. A long forgotten or much over-looked spiritual discipline that prominent Christians in the past used to great personal advantage. With theirs we had to wait until after they died before reading their struggles, joys, perplexity. Had the people of the time known some of what was being written perhaps others would have been help. But now with blogs it is possible to share these thoughts with others and maybe thereby "build up the church". That has to be a fine goal for what is such a solitary habit.
The heart of worship?
Today two different bloggers put up quotes on worship. One from Soren Kierkegaard (on Jim West's
Biblical Theology blog) that said
In paganism the theatre was divine worship. In Christianity the churches have generally become theatre. How so? Like this: people find it pleasant and not without a certain enjoyment to commune with the Most High via the imagination once a week like this. But nothing more.
and the other from C H Spurgeon (via a link on Donnie Hiltz, III's
Parable of the Blog-Net) that said
When I have heard of large congregations gathered together by the music of a fine choir, I have remembered that the same thing is done at the opera house and the music hall and I have felt no joy. When we have heard of crowds enchanted by the sublime music of the pealing organ, I have seen in the fact rather a glorification of St. Cecilia than of Jesus Christ.
(Though I have also pasted in Spurgeon's next sentence.)
These quotes require serious consideration. What should our corporate worship be like? Do we need fine choirs to sing to us or with us? Are we merely actors in church? (And what was it that Jesus is reported as saying in the Gospels about hypocrits?)
The other day someone emailed me a quote from the Orthodox Presbyterian Book of Church Order
As a service of public worship is in its essence a meeting of God and his people, the parts of the service are of two kinds: those which are performed on behalf of God, and those which are performed by the congregation. In the former the worshippers are receptive, in the latter they are active. It is reasonable that these two elements be made to alternate as far as possible.
Although an Anglican I see great merit in those words.
Unfortunately those parts are generally neither receptive nor active for me. Corporate sung worship has the same emotional and spiritual responses with me as does the community singing at large sporting events. Nothing. Similarly with liturgical spoken worship. Ordained clergy dressed in unusual clothes reciting words at me. Leaves me cold. Maybe Kierkegaard, Spurgeon and I could have worshipped together with us his people meeting God. If only ...
A new church
I went to church for the first time in nine months last night! No, not what you think.
As a congregation we have been refurbishing the church building for nine months so we have met as smaller groups in various locations. There simply wasn't room for us to continue meeting in the building. Much of it was a hard-hat area for all those months. The chapel, which seats about 40 and wasn't being refurbish, would not have been large enough. The church hall is/was used by the children's church so even if we could have crammed upwards of 600 adults in there where would the 100+ under 12s have gone?
We did met as a body once a month in a local school but even that wasn't really large enough for the entire church and the many visitors we get to congregate together. So out we went into the communities around us. 18 groups ranging in size from a half-dozen to 100+. Each one with its own common vision be it age-group, geographic area, theological interest, shared language, personal responsibilities or some other bond.
Before closing the church building our net annual growth had been an average of one person. Transfers out as people moved away, transfers in as people came to the area, new converts. Balanced. During our nine months without a building the net growth has been over 100 (yes one hundred). And that's just counting new converts. We have well-known evangelists amongst the congregation. They had little to do with these local converts being off elsewhere in the world.
After nine months a "new" church has been born.
