back from the durham diocesan conference. the sessions i did seemed to go down fairly well. a bit of a treat was that there was a huge plasma screen in the chapel where i was leading some worship late night. we tucked it behind the holy table and ran the visuals (arkaos stuff) on there and it looked amazing. every holy table should have one!
durham of course have tom wright as bishop so i caught a bible study on the parables. it was the prodigal son and his take on it was drawing from ken bailey’s amazing books and miroslav volf’s work… the conference was called ‘imagine’ and the diocese certainly faces some challenges in re-imagining church particularly in some of the more rural areas… i wonder what will happen in some of these villages. there is a real challenge for training leaders to think missionally rather than in maintenance or simply pastor/teacher mode.
of course i managed to find a TV to see chelsea safely through to the semi finals of the champions league. following liverpool’s impressive win tonight there is a guaranteed english side in the final (which will hopefully be the blues 🙂 )…
i wonder what will happen too cos i’m rural and only been here for 12 weeks – I don’t suppose the conference threw any light on it because at this rate it will all be money and town driven – the literature is out there- some of us have even read it. Perhaps what we need is permission to “just do it” permission to fail and permission to try again. If I hear any more on “the parish is vital/bedrock/non negotiable” i shall scream. George Herbert lived a long long time ago but his spirit seems to haunt Anglican Synodical ways of doing things.
also
Come on the reds
Highly recommend Robert Farrar Capon’s trilogy on the parables, grouped as Kingdom, Grace, and Judgement – although he claims *all* parables are Jesus trying to get us to take on board grace. Very bold and funny with it, his radical re-interpretations blow traditional preconceptions to smithereens.
I expect to see Chelsea results on your blog, but NOT Liverpool! They actually broadcast the match here in the US, and my friend was thoughtful enough to throw a tape in the recorder. He warned me, so I dutifully avoided from my usual sporting web stops. All for naught. The surprise is ruined. I will take consolation in the victory.
Cheers for the stuff at the imagine it was some of the most helpful stuff for me.
As exciting as it was to see the diocese challenging itself to re-imagine church
I was left wondering/worrying if it would ever be able to imagine anything outside of the very upper-middle class upper-middle age white bubble that it is wrapped up in.
Also I was wondering how you develop the digital images you used in the evening pray.
matt – some info on the video bits is at https://jonny-baker.com/2004/01/gfe_tour_worshi.html
i ran the videos in a programme called arkaos that i have written about at https://jonny-baker.com/wp-content/legacy/jonnybaker/worship_tricks/wt47.html
the sower video is online i think at jonbirch’s web site – see https://jonny-baker.com/wp-content/legacy/jonnybaker/worship_tricks/wt61.html
several of the loops are on the CD ROM with the book alternative worship
cheers
well helpfull
hopefully if I can get the cash too I’ll soon be putting it to some good use
I’m co-ordinating music and visual’s for a new evening service that my church is doing in a local bar it should be pretty cool. The bar area is in the round so the bar is in the centre and seat’s all around it, around the edge of the seating area are about 7-9 TV’s doted around the wall, it’s gonna be fun having to re-think a church service with out a stage or front (especially for a vineyard church!) got soom cool idea’s for the first night, themed all around breathe with a 5 min talk over a montage of various video clips of people struggling for breathe.
only thing then is to try and save up for a mac so that i look cool when doing it too instead of having to lugg a old desktop around to church.
matt-
sounds great!