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...

No, this never made it to our TV screens, it's a first edit 'grab tape' which was possibly going to turn into a reality TV series, but I left the UK before it went anywhere... It may resurrect in another form... No copyright infringement intended. I will remove if I am not meant to share this!

After my wonderings about preaching ( What are we doing when we preach ?) Karma decided to bite me a la derriere and I found myself having to prepare three sermons for today - Two Eucharists and a funeral address.  Rather than post the two Eucharistic Sermons here I will put them up on New Kid Deep Stuff and you can peruse/read/comment/respond as you wish. The funeral address was for the funeral, won't be putting that one up! Same set of readings ... different groups of people, though some overlap (so I couldn't cheat by using the same sermon twice!} So here's what I ended up with: One, thinking on the Gospel reading for today, is concerned with ' Shaking the Dust from our feet' The other, using the Psalm and Proverbs reading for today is talking around ideas of ' The word, the law and The Word' . And the common (sometimes) artificial contrast betweee 'Law and Grace' in the church - one which isn't a Jewish understanding of 'Law' ...

At our late Spring Church Retreat which took place in Camp Pringle on the beautiful shores of Shawnigan Lake in May I took a workshop/lecture/seminar thing for which I wrote my notes out longhand in a notebook - very oldschool - and it meant that I didn’t have them available to share. At the request of a number of members of the Church and the Quo Vadis group I have transcribed them and offer them here and at St John The Divine Staff Blog for comment and consideration! Religious but not Spiritual The trend to call oneself “spiritual but not religious” has reached epic proportions,  and so has the response within the community of faith which is the Church.  One book, by  Lillian Daniel , is entitled When Spiritual But Not Religious Is Not Good Enough  and expresses her frustration at what is, in her understanding, an epidemic of ‘self-made, self-centred, self-absorbed religion, passed off as an innovative spiritual approach’.  As she writes she t...

Back in the mists of time, sometime around May, I was at the exceptional Festival of Homiletics in Minneapolis . A five day feast of speakers, worship and making new friends that I enjoyed and felt very refreshed by.  The purpose, to talk about preaching, and to have great examples of preachers and to consider how our preaching can be improved and be stimulating and engaging. A full Central Lutheran Church, Minneapolis (from Festival Flickr Stream https://www.flickr.com/photos/lutherseminary/sets/72157644910650154/) We did a lot of how, I didn't pick up a lot of 'why?'.  It seemed to taken as a given that we accepted the importance of and the reasons for preaching.  It wasn't the nature of the conference.  But as I consider the possibility of taking on a course of Study - a Doctorate of Ministry in Preaching - the question of the nature and purpose of preaching is at the forefront of my thinking at the moment, Let's start with me, though, as it is kind o...

To keep things moving on the blog, here's the sermon from Sunday.  I have been thinking about the purpose and nature of preaching lately - but such lofty thoughts will need to wait....