Sunday 7/14/24
I depart Olivet Baptist Church during the chanting of the Creed (what a way to go out! I’m putting that in my notes for a good death: I’d like the Creed to be chanted over me as I lay dying) and head to the airport….
Read moreJoy is the thing that is really real
p/c ANIRUDH via unsplash
There is, first, a kind of naivete —a not knowing innocence. Looking back on moments of naivete we often lend to them a happiness they did not actually possess, charged with nostalgia and sentimentality: “oh those were the good ole days when things were good” we say. And when we say this we imply a moment when things stopped being happy. The “when things were good” is followed by a “before [insert event] happened.”
Read moreQuick notes on the '9th Island'
photo courtesy of Grant Cai via unsplash
I’ve been reflecting on a question posed to me late on Saturday evening by a member of the cast, the gist of which was whether I had been prepared for the overwhelming sinfulness of Vegas —the word used in the question was “sexiness.” I couldn’t help laughing, kindly I hope, at the question. I knew what he meant but had trouble articulating my answer. For I wanted to answer with a question that ran something like, “What sexiness?”
Read moreSecond Provincial Assembly Missive from Fr. Mark
Thursday morning started with a bilingual eucharist led by the Rt. Rev. Tito Zavala, an Anglican bishop in Chile (and, as a fun fact, his son spent a season at CtF a few years back). It was English/Spanish. I could not stop thinking and praying for our own Kassandra Dempsey’s story and my wife’s history in the Dominican.
Read moreFirst Provincial Assembly Missive from Fr. Mark
Dcn. Chris encouraged me to send two “missives” out to the parish during my travel this week. But first, we must inquire, “What is this ‘missive’ of which Dcn. Chris speaks?” Good question. It’s a fancy term for an official report or communication. Want a living example of a missive? Good news, I just wrote one –to you! Keep reading…
Read moreWhat happens when the Bishops elect a new Archbishop?
Wooden carving of Bishop holding Gospel Book, Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
There’s gonna be a new archbishop of the ACNA? How does that happen? Can they re-elect the current one? Who elects? Who’s eligible? Is this like the selection of the pope?
All good questions. This is a quick orientation —far more like a sketch made on a napkin in crayon than a detailed account in clean typeset.
Read morePreaching the Psalter
p/c Tim Wildsmith via unsplash
This summer we’re preaching through the Psalter. At the outset of the series, I sent our preaching team a brief set of notes laying-out some general rules for how to preach the Psalms.
The problem is this, ours is not a widely poetically literate culture. Poetry has become, in the past century, so abstract and so experimental that it has left us with very little in the way of ability to follow things like rhythm, meter, poetic structure, etc. The irony is that these are not at all hard or complex things to follow —they are actually very simply and, as Dana Gioia once reminded us, we are designed by God to follow them (the same way that bees are designed to follow ‘dance patterns’ to follow the trail to nectar). We ‘get’ poetry when it comes to us in the form of hip-hop, rap, or country music, but we get all clammy and confused when the Bible speaks in a poetic form.
Read moreBrief notes on "Mission"
p/c Colter Olmstead via unpalsh
Our dear brother James Mueller preached this past Sunday on our value of “mission.” His sermon concludes our series in which we have been preaching through our 5 key values. You can read all of them here.
What I’d like to do now is to offer a few notes, expanding and exploring points brought-up by James on this theme:
Read moreBrief notes on "Table"
p/c Chris Karidis via unsplash
…Worship is a response to what God has given us. When the Psalmist sings, “What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me?” he asks already knowing the answer: “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” (Ps. 116:12-13). The worship of God begins with the prior goodness of God…
Read moreBrief notes on "Family"
p/c Cosmic Timetraveler via unsplash
Continuing our march through the core values at All Saints, this past Sunday (yesterday from the writing of this post) we examined our value of “Family”…
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