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If we love to sing, discuss, celebrate, reflect, hear and act with spirit and faith and meaning, church is a good place to do it!
Would you be part of a faith community if you weren't expected to believe the impossible or become more than fully human?
Liberal, inclusive churches can be the centre and sacred space for special events and our day-to-day lives…
Many of us still enjoy traditional forms of worship, but we want and need a human-centered, inclusive and green theology.
Liberal -
inclusive
-
progressive
- reconciling - transitional churches can retain people of faith and attract people who wish to live meaningfully but - as Bishop John Shelby 'Jack'Spong puts it - don’t want to check their intellect at the door.
Find one near you!
St Andrew's on The Terrace, Wellington
St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland
Liturgy: "the work of the people"
To keep faith communities alive, we need new lyrics, new affirmations, and new litanies to replace the outdated concepts in many traditional hymns, prayers and liturgy.
The institutional church is still important to many who value religious tradition and a community focus for the special events as well as the day-to-day of our lives.
If we love to sing, discuss, celebrate, reflect, hear and act with spirit and faith and meaning, church is a good place to do it!
sacred space in sacred places
Celebrants can facilitate our special life events - naming ceremonies, civil unions and weddings, home blessings, funerals - without a religious or theological content. Yet if we still find value in our faith traditions and wholeness in a caring but non-judgemental community, the church can, and should, still be the centre of communal and spiritual life.
The conservative opinions of fundamentalist, evangelical, literal Bible reading Christians do not represent the views of all Christians.
In social justice and political debates, especially, a spectrum of voices from Christian and faith communities needs to be heard.
For a church with a social conscience, a reconciling congregation may be what you need. Find a reconciling congregation near you.
Inclusive faith community - church - can be a place of reintegration (regaining integrity), wholeness and holiness. It challenges and inspires, helps us ask the questions to which we may not need to find answers, sets us on a journey or be sanctuary at journey's end.
Don't give up on church!
Instead, transform it from within - read, discuss, disagree, explore, value difference, encourage participation... but keep creating sacred space in traditionally sacred places.
your ideas or comments: conTEMPO guestbook
St Andrew's on The Terrace, Wellington, is on Facebook:
become a fan!
Authentic church - disliked, offensive, and scandalous
Meditation
- David O Rankin
Source: Dancing in the Empty Space – Skinner House 2001
To escape the trap of public acclaim, an authentic church should advertise as follows:
Our worship is not an entertainment.
Our congregation is not an audience.
Our music is not a concert performance.
Our preaching is not a trivial comfort.
Our theology is not a marketing strategy.
Our counseling is not a promise of prosperity.
Our church is not a business enterprise.
Our ministry is not a cult of personality.
Our community is not a gathering of sheep.
Our success is not a membership statistic.
In fact, it is probably better to be disliked, offensive, and scandalous.
Even booing is preferable to mass applause.
For no vision is worthwhile without the risk of rebuke.
Every truth is born out of painful criticism.
Love, itself, is crucifying.
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