Worship that works – spirituality that connects
The above made me laugh. OK, I’ve got about 75,000 people following me on Twitter, and I appear to be the second most followed person in my country – but, let’s not take it too, too seriously 
Then, after a little poking around I found:
But, having seen the above two clips, I found they are parodies of an actual forthcoming movie about facebook (Yes, there’s a smaller liturgy presence on facebook):
Having a website, say for your parish or community, is no longer as difficult as it might look, or as you might think.
Rev. Andrew Hedge took the ideas I presented on how to make a free website simply and has produced a most admirable, attractive, and useful website, easy to keep up to date, and all basically free. The essence of my idea is taking the simple, powerful, free blogging platform, Wordpress, and with a little trick – making it the foundation of a website, not only a blog.
Here’s how you make a website
Here’s some more resources
Andrew has, for quite a while, been recording sermons which are accessible through iTunes (another option might be to investigate such free resources as Sound Cloud). Today there is a funeral that family members in America are unable to physically attend. These family members asked if the funeral could be broadcast so that they could be part of it via the internet. Andrew says, “It hasn’t taken much by way of addition to the setup in the church, just a secure internet connection and video camera really, and we’ve been able to broadcast this morning’s service as a test run.” (Here’s the link found on the site).
I received a significant number of requests for the link to live streaming, or at least a video recording of a recent episcopal ordination here – what our national church was not able to achieve, an ordinary parish church is not finding difficult. Our national church used to have a website with digital resources online such as “For all the saints”, daily reflections, readings, and prayers we could use and cut and paste into our worship. The site clearly needed refreshing, and we look forward very much to the flash new version. But, rather than leave the site up with those resources still accessible to all, it was just taken down a quarter of a year ago. We are a small church (we don’t keep statistics, but I’m guessing that maybe only 0.8% of the population was in an Anglican Church here on Sunday?) I wonder if we are unable to accept how small we actually are, and work fruitfully to produce simple, appropriate resources from that acceptance. Here’s a website I made in half an hour. It is free. Moral of the story? Keep it simple?
Rev. Peter Carrell on his site is reflecting on “Fresh Expressions“. He suggests, “Install a webcam and feed services live”. He is more cautious than I about this, and concludes, “Ignore the above. That is me trying to second guess (again!) what the Spirit is saying to the church. But do not ignore the Spirit.” Well, I understand what Peter is meaning, and I’m sure he knows me well enough to understand my preparedness to “second guess” the Spirit on this 
Waiting for the Spirit to indicate that your community needs a website is like waiting for the Spirit to indicate that you need a sign on the road, or a telephone. A website is as essential in the 21st century as a sign and a telephone were at the end of the last millennium. I’ve been told that research shows 80% of new visitors to a church check the website first – my unstatistical experience confirms this. No decent website, and…
Step 1: get a website
Step 2: get a facebook page
If you REALLY can’t bring yourself to follow my simple instructions: buy some pizzas and some coke and get some teenagers to do it for you. Win-win-win!
The website of St Andrews Anglican Church, Cambridge, New Zealand (Vicar: Rev. Andrew Hedge)
christian.com is a free social network site. It is a place for Christians to connect with each other, including right around the world. It is a way of keeping in touch with your church community. The resemblance to facebook springs to mind. But I hope that what drives christian.com is not as obscure as facebook. Certainly the privacy statement of christian.com does not look to be open to the recent issues that have beset facebook.
I have been in touch with christian.com and they have increased to 20,000 members in the last two months. I hope this site is another positive place for mission, ministry, and community on the internet. Let us keep such sites in our prayers.
Any using the site might like to add reflections in the comments.
Imogen de la Bere wrote in the magazine Anglican Taonga:
The other night I saw a post on Facebook from Bosco Peters. His website www.liturgy.co.nz/blog was about to receive its millionth hit, and he wanted his friends to make it happen so that he would be awake to witness it.
There are two things about this which are extraordinary. One is the raw fact that a liturgy website hosted in New Zealand should be so successful – I mean, how niche can you get – New Zealand, liturgy? It’s like million hits for Ethiopia, ice cream. But then, if Ethiopian ice cream were as good and as useful as Bosco’s liturgical resources, then maybe we would all be licking our Coptic cones.
The other thing that struck me was the way time and space are crunched and distorted in our internet-connected world. Bosco said he wanted to be awake when the millionth visitor struck. A world, time zones away, I wondered if I should go in, all guns blazing, UK time. What time was it in New Zealand? How long would he stay awake to see this magnificent milestone? Needless to say, the millionth hit came from far away: Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Almost Coptic in its obscurity. Unless you live in Fort Lauderdale.
The next morning a musical friend, who floats between London and Hong Kong, posted a link to a gorgeous Bach cantata for Low Sunday. It was Low Sunday. My sister, who currently lives in Hong Kong, and I both clicked on this link and listened to the same piece of music, half a world away from each other, and another half world away from where we both grew up, loving Bach and liturgy, in New Zealand.
All of this chimed with me very powerfully, because I have just made some fascinating discoveries about the villages in which we all live, no matter how large and complex our urban context.
I recently wrote and directed my first play, subject matter: faith. ( you can read all about it in exhaustive detail on http://delabere.typepad.com/ ) The central character is a charismatic priest in danger of losing his faith (if you think you recognise anyone, I will deny it). The context of the play is a theatre group, of which the priest is the lead actor. It was written for specific actors and for a specific place – an eccentric space in Sumpter Yard, St Albans nestling up by the Cathedral, where we have been kindly hosted for a while. So the text is full of in-jokes: about Anglicanism, actors, St Albans and its pubs, ruins and city walls. Unsurprisingly not everyone got all the jokes. But what floored me was how ignorant my actors were of all aspects of religion. Working on the text was like trying to explain to Ethiopians the finer points of ice cream.
From this I learnt that while Bosco’s liturgical village has grown miraculously into a city, the once great Anglican metropolis has shrunk, in the heart of Anglicanism, to a village.
But what I also learnt was that when you talk about universals, everyone understands you. Regardless of the in-jokes, local references, village cultures, everyone gets God.
Imogen de la Bere runs a blog at http://delabere.typepad.com/
General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is being held at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, from June 3 to 11, 2010. The Vision 2019 presentation on June 4, 2010 opened with the above evocative video.
For a full schedule of General Synod events, consult the Agenda and the Orders of the Day.
It is good to see a church in mission and ministry in the 21st century, taking for granted the opportunities offered in contemporary communication technology.
And don’t forget the ads and quizzes:
“What is your IQ? Are you smarter than Bob Smith?”
- – - do you like this ad?
“If you were a car, what brand would YOU be? Send this to 24 friends to find out!”…
Facebook: “Mary answered a question about you – ‘Do you think *** is hot?’ Answer 5 questions about your friends to find out what she said!”
Oh – and to add a further point of irony: this Liturgy site has a facebook page.
A final serious point: Facebook has 50 settings with more than 170 options in a bewildering tangle. Here is a tool to help you check your own privacy situation.
H/t Bob Chapman posted on the Liturgy page
It is still Easter. I encourage you to “attend” this event, especially at a time when many are forgetting this.
And here for the parents (mothers especially today): 10 ways parents can annoy their kids on facebook
An article in our local newspaper described the probable closing down of Bebo:
The site has lost members to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
Kaila Colbin, of Christchurch social media consultant Missing Link, compared Bebo to a party that people wanted to leave.
“You go to a party, everyone’s having a good time, but suddenly the momentum changes and someone says, `Let’s go to the pub’,” Colbin said. “And people start flowing out. And when people flow out, there is no way to recover that energy.
“The more you try, the more desperate you look and the more people want to leave.”
Now reread the above, and instead of Bebo think “church” – your parish, diocese, whatever. Any echoes?
Do you see any parishes, dioceses, churches trying one program after another, organising non-church-type events for youth and then being disappointed that the young people aren’t taking the bait-and-switch and turning up to services to help assist members of the congregation up to the altar rails and put money on the plate to maintain the pretty building? Let’s acknowledge there is some truth in the observation that organised religion is looking to produce better programs, spirituality is looking to produce better people.
Pope Benedict XVI is not the flavour of the month in some contexts. So if you are looking for an alternative for pope, might I suggest Pope Michael I:
“Pope Michael” Trailer from Pope Michael Documentary on Vimeo.
Pope Michael I
Teresa Stanfill-Benns has since withdrawn her support because laity cannot under any circumstance participate in the election of a pope, and a layman cannot be Pope. Pope Michael has condemned her work as heresy and she has been excommunicated.
A documentary is being produced about the pope.
More information from the Vatican in exile. And the now-archived site (click on the image to go further in).
Become a friend on the pope’s facebook page (position: pope).
This link is clearly the photo of an imposter.
ps. in his writings Pope Michael I justifies wearing a mitre without being a bishop, but I see no justification of his wearing a stole without being ordained?
A couple of posts ago I wrote about the number 8.
8 = 7+1, so it is about abundance, fresh start, resurrection.
50 has similarities, it is 7×7 +1
49 is a sabbath of sabbaths – 50 is the start of a new cycle of those
50 is the number of the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-55; 27:14-34; Numbers 36:1-9)
Pentecost πεντηκοστή ἡμέρα, pentekostē hēmera is the fiftieth day
In the early church the season of Pentecost was not the period following the Day of Pentecost, it was the 50 day season from Easter Day until the Day of Pentecost.
50 is approximately a seventh of the year – the 50 day season of Easter is celebrated as if it is one day – it is the Great Sunday of the year.
There is a connection with 8. There are 8 Sundays in the Easter Season. It has been suggested that the English expression “Whitsunday” derives from the French huit (eight), Pentecost being le huitième dimanche, the eighth Sunday of Easter.
Today is the 25th day of Easter, we are half way through the Easter Season.
You can join the facebook “event” Easter is 50 days here.
Reflection on the collect/opening prayer for the Third Sunday of Easter
The forty days of Lent are to prepare for the fifty days of Easter. Is that your experience?
Regularly people have a very intense Lent (study groups, extra services, disciplines, etc.) And then after Easter Day, the next Sunday (last Sunday) is “Low Sunday” and soon everything is “back to normal”. Thankfully the parish church I participated with for the Second Sunday of Easter continued from the Easter Vigil with the environment looking at its best, flower arrangements magnificent, five times the Easter Greeting was used in the service (Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!), Alleluias added to the dismissal, and good strong Easter singing, again filled with Alleluias. Was your experience last Sunday like that? Will this be (able to be) maintained for the fifty days of the Easter Season? What is it that for many sombreness is easy to maintain (the preparation) but celebration is difficult to maintain (what we have been preparing for)? And also let’s be clear: celebration of the Easter Season is not identical to the frothy, surface-level, superficial jolliness that our culture (and many communities and Christians?) can mistake and replace for the deep transformation, and transformative celebration that Easter is about.
Please add hymns, prayers, ideas, resources in the comments.
And join the facebook “event”, Easter is 50 days.
The webcounter (at the bottom of each page) has just clicked over the 1,000,000th visitor to this site! (The millionth visitor was from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States). Four years ago I had the digital version of my book Celebrating Eucharist which I thought I could make more accessible by purchasing a domain and placing it on there. I had just been asked to give a lecture on worship developments since the publication of the NZ Prayer Book, and, in researching for this, had been horrified at some of what I discovered. Placing the book online was a small step, I hoped, to improve things.
I was very surprised when what I thought then were a lot of people started coming to the site. So I started adding a few more resources. And more people came. After a while I had built up a significant website – but I had done it without really knowing what I was doing. Here is an image of the first page recorded by the internet archive a couple of months after starting the site. After a while the site was growing so much and interest also growing, that I realised I had made a complete messy tangle. I bought new software and took six months to rebuild the site from scratch. Then people started suggesting I add a blog to the website, which I did. But I feared adding a comments facility because I have seen so many sites with fights – including a really good site which in the end closed down because the host could not take the ongoing nastiness. Nearly a couple of years ago I cautiously opened comments. I have been thrilled by the positive culture and community that has built around the site (the spam filter has filtered out 15,737 spam comments in that time!)
The number of visitors continues to grow: 61,330 in the first year 13 April 2006- 13 April 2007. 168,855 in the second year. 270,355 in the third year. 499,460 in this fourth year. I remember discussing visits with internet experts who were enthused when I was heading towards a hundred visits a day. That, they thought, was a good maximum to aim for – there just, they thought, wouldn’t be more interest than that on the internet for this “niche”. Well now there are days with around 4,000 visits.
Associated with this site there is an RSS feed, an occasional email newsletter (see bottom right of that linked page), a facebook page, and a twitter. This website is the most visited Christian site served from New Zealand. And the twitter is the second most followed twitter located in New Zealand. There is clearly a strong interest in worship, liturgy, and spirituality.
I produce all this in my “spare” time and thank you all who visit here for your support and encouragement. Let us continue to pray for each other, and all who visit here.
Another way to look at the interest:
ps. I could see that the counter was going to turn in the middle of the (NZ) night, so I called on some help through twitter and facebook to encourage some more visitors and waited up for it to turn a million. Thanks everyone for your help. And sorry to those whose advice to go to bed I ignored
Sadly, the eighth day of Easter (and I may blog about the significance of 8), is often referred to as “Low” Sunday – even in the New Zealand Lectionary!
Commentary on the collect/opening prayer for Sunday April 11.
I am firmly in favour of calling this the “Second Sunday of Easter” and opposed to it being the “First Sunday after Easter” (in spite of that being in our NZ formularies). Easter is 50 days. Join the Facebook event and encourage others to do so. Add the “Easter is 50 days” badge to your website or blog.
Note, the first reading during the season is not from the First Testament as usual, but from the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospel reading this Sunday is the same every year: John 20:19-31. The image, above, is by Caravaggio (1601-1602). When I chose it for this post I muttered, look Richard Dawkins examining the Resurrection. No, was the reply, Dawkins doesn’t look that carefully.
Those baptised at the Easter Vigil would wear their white baptismal gowns until this day. Hence the Latin title for this Sunday is Dominica in Albis [Depositis] – “Sunday in [Setting Aside the] White Garments”. In the East this is known as Thomas Sunday. Delightfully, East and West read the same Gospel reading on this Sunday, and furthermore, this year the Eastern and Western celebrations of Easter are identical. So Sunday April 11 East and West Christians proclaim John 20:19-31. Whilst in the West there is a focus on “Doubting Thomas”, the East focuses more on Thomas’ declaration “my Lord and my God”. This week from Pascha to Thomas Sunday is called Bright Week (or Renewal Week). It is celebrated as one continuous day (similar to my advocating the whole 50 days of the Easter Season be regarded). During Bright Week the Royal Doors on the Iconostasis are kept open. Another title for this Sunday is Antipascha (meaning “in the place of Pascha”). Those who for good reason were unable to attend the Paschal Vigil, attend services on this day instead.
The text of the traditional Introit for this Sunday is drawn from 1 Peter 2:2 and begins “Quasi modo geniti infantes…” (”As if in this manner newborn infants…” In Victo Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame Quasimodo was found on the doorsteps of Notre Dame on this Sunday.
He [Archdeacon Claude Frollo, Quasimodo's adoptive father] baptized his adopted child and called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly molded the poor little creature was. Indeed, Quasimodo, one-eyed, hunchbacked, and bow-legged, could hardly be considered as anything more than an almost.
Since 2000 this Octave of Easter for Roman Catholics has also been designated as Divine Mercy Sunday.
Please add hymns, prayers, ideas, resources in the comments.
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