Thursday, February 26, 2004

y'know I've been thinking recently (too much no doubt) that how you think of yourself is often a bit 'out of date'...
shall i give an example? well i tend to think that i can just about stand traditional Anglican, liturgy/old hymn-heavy services (which we'll call 'A') and actually despite my rather accidental involvement in new ways of doing church for the last 3 years (shall we call that 'B'?!) that i don't really fit there, as i didn't arrive in huff with ordinary church. I had actually done OK sustaining my faith at ordinary largish Anglican charismatic churches and i have this thought that one day i'll move out of this 'trendy' (which doesn't quite fit with my image of myself as a bit square!) phase back into 'bog-standard' Anglican worship ...

... Yesterday I discovered that that's not really true anymore as the sharp contrast between the Ash Wednesday service at college which was very much 'A' (with some truly uninspiring hymns i'd never heard of written just after the 1st millennium) and a rant from the Bishop of Buckingham about I'm not sure what (but along the lines of we're really terrible at showing Jesus to people aren't we?)
... and then just an hour later was at hOME's Ash Wednesday service which was awesome ('B') we did have liturgy - but focusing on the particular stuff we need to repent of now (consumerism, desire for fame, food focus, lack of attention to the poor) - and ashing from burning up symbols of that stuff - which was powerful... I actually met with God in the worship ('trendy' dance based songs) and so repentance and freedom actually meant something in my life right now ... i think this could be telling me something! be interesting to see how God works this out through my jobs post-Wycliffe!

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