The Presiding Bishop speaks, a video reminds us of the essential characteristics of Advent, and seasonal web calendars put us in the right frame of mind.
Seth Godin suggests that the way in which an organization approaches new ideas largely determines whether those ideas will stick.
‘Tis the season: an enterprising group of young clergy and seminarians has teamed up to create an island of reflection and prayer in the middle of a mall.
“As long as we understand our primary mission as preserving buildings, maybe we ought to welcome being tossed out.”
“Perhaps this Advent can bring revolution within the Christian church — to inspire us to use our power and privilege to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse.”
We are in the habit of making grand claims about our institutions — often about their failures, sometimes about their successes. But we rarely pause to ask ourselves about their purpose.
Father Alberto Cutié — priest, television personality, man who doesn’t mind getting a little sand in his shorts when he makes out on the beach — seems to be taking it in stride.
You’re in your pew. The worship is amazing, almost transcendent. The song ends in a moment of awe-filled silence. It’s just you and God. And then—train wreck; you are catapulted from a state of ethereal wonder to an awkward announcement about the church cookie bake-off or a video that never seems to have the sound start until seven seconds after it begins.
“People have to be more tolerant. We have to make them understand that homosexuals are not different from them as human beings. [Gay] people are suffering and we believe the problem is in failing to understand them.”
I think of our churches like a crop of corn that was planted at the same time. That field produced corn for 50 years—so much wonderful corn that many of us were fat and happy. In our abundance, we forgot to diversify and plant new fields. Now the corn is coming to the end of its season, all at the same time.