New Kid on the Blog

It's incomplete, and I made the deliberate choice not to stuff it with references and quotes. This one comes from the heart: To Marriage Commission of the General Synod Anglican Church of Canada From: The Rev’d Alastair McCollum Rector, St John the Divine Anglican Church 1611 Quadra Street, Victoria BC V8W 2L5 My response to the questions posited by the Marriage Commission are below. How do you interpret what scripture says about marriage? What Scripture says about marriage is much more fluid and less easily pinned down than those who advocate for ‘Biblical Marriage’ often proclaim.  We see throughout the Biblical texts multiple models for relationships: monogamous and multiple partner marriage, concubinage, co-habitation, and much more are all endorsed, or simply understood as present as the scriptural texts reflect the cultural norms from which they arise. What I understand from Scripture is that there is a significantly nuanced understand...

I feel the need to write, but can honestly say I don't quite know what to say.  This last six months has been a whirl of activity and colour, life, questions, worship, prayer, discover, reinforcement and faith, hope and love.  I feel very warmly welcomed and quickly at home here as part of the congregation of St John the Divine , as part of this Diocese of British Columbia and in this city of Victoria . Sketch by Martin Machacek. The Church is active, vibrant, welcoming and alive.  The people who I am fortunate enough to count as colleagues are dedicated and fun to work with, those who give so much time in voluntary service to the Church are committed and faithful.  There are many activities which take place in the course of each week and the church offers a variety of worship, groups, events, ministries and social action.  Of course it's not perfect, nor is the Rector who serves it.  But we, together, are seeking to celebrate those aspects of the ...

Conversations had in various Social Media forums (or forae) as well as some very good blog posts have got me a-thinking. That along with the tremendous amount of work that I seem to have set about in the past few weeks have had me considering ministry 'from the ground up' it seems! My creative and forceful (in a good way) Curate has been driving some of the processes that our Mission Community has needed for some time.  My tendency is to let things happen as they happen, she has inspired me by saying (in action rather than criticism) that this isn't enough and we need to consider the purpose and plans for Five Alive Mission Community and where exactly our Churhes, and indeed the Church at large, are/is going. So in the past few weeks we have had, run by our Curate, a course called 'everybody welcome' which has considered not just the act of welcoming people when they come through our doors but about being Churches with an attitude of welcome, and Churches willin...

On return from holiday I had lots to deal with, a pile of mail that was nearly as tall as me, various calls to respond to, and an update on all that had been going on in my absence. All good, or rather everything went well, though it had been extremely busy and very well covered by my colleagues. In the week since I've got back though I have had a number of conversations where people have expressed disappointment that 'The Vicar' didn't do X or Y, or that Clergy haven't visited certain folk - despite the fact that I know I have extremely competent colleagues and very good lay pastoral visitors from all of the Churches who have handled things as well, if not better, than I ever could. It boils down to the erroneous belief that things are somehow more 'kosher' if a man (preferably a man in many cases, but that's another issue which I am not going to rant about today) with a 'dog collar' does it, be it opening fetes, visiting people or services in...