Let me start again with Bonhoeffer, and with one of my favourite quotes of his: ‘The renewal of the church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time men and women banded together to do … More Rethinking Church 5
Deitrich Bonnhoeffer, in his wee book, ‘Life Together,’ talks of how we should never let our ideas or ideals of community ruin the possibility of it. In other words….any ideas we have of church, however lofty, theoretical, right or wrong, must always be subject to one reality: people are people, and people are messy. If … More Rethinking Church 4
One of the areas of church life I’ve encountered most joy and pain, in equal measure, is over the ‘worship service’ – that thing churches do mainly on Sunday mornings. Times I’ve loved it is when the Word somehow seems to preach itself, when the worship seems to lead people to encounter God, and when … More Rethinking Church 3
Let me talk about tribes. Having a wee bit of a Scottish background and a rough working knowledge of some of its history, I know a fair bit about clans. I know my own, I know the tartans of some, the history of some, the politics of some. Clanned Scotland was a primitive feudal society … More Rethinking Church 2
I left ministry in The Salvation Army in 2010 after almost a year and a half of serious reflection on the idea ‘what is the church?’ Quite simply, I went to an event and it filled me with such horror and, well, pain, that I was thrown into a deep search within myself. I wrote … More Rethinking Church 1
I’ve been having a renewed relationship with courage in these last few days! The roots of that word come from the French for ‘heart’ – it carries the meaning that goes something like ‘take heart!’. It doesn’t matter what it is; whether its a ‘what do we do with our lives’ question like we have; … More Courage
Although our final decision to move was only recently, the plans of what we are returning to Newcastle to do are established in that they were on our hearts before we left and some of the groundwork had already been laid. What we hope to do is a result of 20 years of life together, working … More The Plan
Yes, we’re on the move again, back up north to Newcastle upon Tyne. The reasons are ones that I can’t go into in detail, just family stuff that we’ve had to act on, little to do with the current church we’ve been at at all. Yet, we’ve tried to be philosophical about it…in fact, we’ve … More Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…
The last line of Brendan the Navigator’s prayer is, Tune my spirit to the music of heaven, and somehow, make my obedience count for You. It is so easy for our spirits to be tuned elsewhere: our own wisdom; common sense opinion; whatever suits our comfort and sensibilities; whatever is easier; or, whatever makes us … More Making Obedience Count
Reflecting on the idea of what we sometimes do with our dreams, hopes and vision for our lives, inspired by Brendan’s missionary voyages, I’ve put into poetic form an idea of how we sometimes treat our dreams. What hope is there of unleashing them? The poem is called ‘Dreams’ Dreams I laid you to rest, my … More Dreams
Andrew S M Clark 