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Worship Workshops in Tasmania

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chris-barnett

A week ago was in Tasmania running sessions on Worship as part of a presbytery event aimed at equipping lay worship leaders. About 35 people from across the state gathered for 2 days of input from people including Chris Barnett (pictured), Steve Terrell, Anne Perrin, Carol Bennett and myself. Wonderful organisation by Michelle Cook and Anthea Maynard.

Here are some of my session resources:

Worship as Formation (plenary session)

Unknown1. Story -“Always” from “Grasshopper on the Road” by Arnold Lobel

2. Discuss

  • What do you ‘always’ appreciate about worship 
in your church?
  • What ‘always’ annoys you about worship in your church?

3. Dinner at my place

I described that habits of the Mitchell household when people come over to dinner, and then talked about human beings as creatures of habit.

Human beings are creatures of habit. We are shaped by our habits. The patterns of our lives and relationships begin leaving their mark on us from the moment we are born. Who we are is part nature, part nurture. The habits of our families of origin shaped us for better and for worse, and we spend much of our lives both drawing on the strengths they gave us and trying to unlearn the unhealthy scripts that they placed within us.

Any community, large or small, has a culture that is in part the accumulation of many habits – ways of speaking and acting that reveal what we value, what we hope for, what we like and dislike and what we believe. We are shapers of culture but we are also shaped by culture.Continue Reading

Using the Bible in Worship

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Our task as a church is not simply to read texts aloud in worship, but to let our lives be shaped by God’s Story. How does Christ, the Living Word, speak through the Scriptures to diverse Christian communities today?

Here’s a short paper that I wrote for the Assembly Worship Working Group prompted by an online discussion about whether you can only use the recommended NRSV version of the Bible in Worship.

Download The Word Speaks (107kb PDF)

Spill The Beans

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Cover-Spill-the-Beans-11“Spill the Beans” is a quarterly worship and learning resource from the Church of Scotland with a focus on children, youth and intergenerational settings. The publication is now into its third year, and is put together by a team of ministers and lay leaders from across the country (rather than an in-house publishing team). Rev Roddy Hamilton who has previously written for “Seasons of the Spirit” is one of the regular contributors.

“There is a particular ethos behind this material: it’s all about story . When we spill the beans about anything, we tell the story of what happened and we share the story of what that means for us. We believe story is the lifeblood of faith.”

The downloadable resource costs £12 per quarter. The current issue, Lent to Pentecost, is 156 pages.Continue Reading

Working Preacher

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Luther Seminary in the US has a Youtube Channel called Working Preacher. It features short videos of preachers and professors talking about preaching – including people like Tom Long, Walter Brueggemann, Jim Wallis and Will Willimon. There’s a also a nice Pentecost animation that I’m going to use at the start of worship tomorrow (although with different music…). The site is run by Luther’s Centre for Biblical Preaching, and they also have a Working Preacher website, which features a weekly audio podcast on the forthcoming lectionary texts, as well as written commentary. The Centre produces a quarterly CD of preaching and teaching about preaching. You can download a free sample, as well as the Pentecost animation and an Easter animation for free.

I visited Luther Seminary in 2008, and we’ve had Dr Roland Martinson here in Adelaide. It is an excellent teaching institution with a world class faculty.