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Letters after your name

A photo of a 10 metre swimming badge

It is a long way from first achievements and ten metre swimming badges. Every time I do get a certificate or qualification, I’m always reminded of a scrawny but proud seven year old with his first swimming badge. I don’t know why.

Anyway, those thoughts came again this week for two reasons. Firstly, I got my Post-graduate diploma in Ordained Ministry courtesy of my IME 4-7 (Curacy training). It can now sit nicely with my other Post-graduate diploma in Christian Theology that I received while at Ridley Hall.

Don’t ask me why I need two. I don’t… long story.

Then I also found out that I passed my Masters in Pastoral Theology (also started whilst at Ridley) with distinction. Read more

Gaming in Worship – I’m intrigued

Photo from Exeter Cathedral of Communion celebrated in front of Flower backdrop

A few years ago, Manchester Cathedral and the video game industry had something of a clash. I was encouraged and pleased to hear of a very different encounter between church and gaming industry from Exeter Cathedral recently.

A good friend recently alerted me to this story of a man called Andy Robertson who has collaborated with Exeter Cathedral to use video games in worship.

The service made use of the PlayStation 3 game, Flower. If you’ve not seen Flower before, it is worth Read more

Hands-free worship

Book jacket image for Hands-free worship by David Green
Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

I am very pleased to announce that I have self-published my first book ‘Hands-free worship’.

What is it about? Well, the snappy sub-title gives you a clue: the ‘pastoral, theological and missiological dimensions of digital projection and computer technology in worship’.

In essence, I started researching and writing because, while I was aware of various books out there that look at the practical dimensions of what happens when churches use projection technology to worship, I felt that no-one was writing about what happens pastorally and theologically when projection is utilized. Furthermore, I felt it was influencing mission and I wanted to think about and address those issues.

I am a fan of projection, but I’ve also seen it used badly and in the book I try to Read more

Café Church stations: Holy Spirit

A photo of heart-shaped marshmallows

Earlier this month I was part of was my final Café Church service here in Walderslade before I move to pastures new. I’m not yet sure whether such services will be part of my future ministry or not; we need to do some listening and seeing what’s appropriate to the local community and the churches that I’ll be working with.

So this might be the last downloadable station for a while. I’m not sure, I may keep writing stations for the sake of it anyway, even if I can’t use them personally.

Anyway, in the last three Café Church services, we’ve been following a series on the Creed (driven by friend and colleague Brad Cook) and looking at the Father, the Son and Spirit in turn.

With the focus on the Holy Spirit this month, there are a couple of stations available to download (PDF file) that might be of use either in a similar setting or perhaps at Pentecost time. Lots of flames and fire, so be ready with your health and safety!

Café Church stations: Ash Wednesday

A screengrab from the Trinity Cathedral media video 'Dust'

I had very little to do with our Lenten Café Church service this month, but I did contribute a prayer station based around Ash Wednesday and Isaiah 58.

As always, if you are interested, you are welcome to download the basic instructions of the station and re-use them or adapt as you see fit.

The video is called ‘Dust’ (no, not the Rob Bell DVD) and comes from Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix where a contact, Nick Kniseley, is the Dean. You may like to be polite and check but they seem happy for people to make use of the material.

My one reflection on the way the station worked is that it would have been useful to, perhaps, have someone on hand to administer the ashing and speak the words over people ‘remember that you are dust… etc’ rather than relying on people to sort themselves. There’s something significant, I think, in having such words spoken over you.

Café Church stations: Covenant prayer

Covenant Prayer card image

My apologies for recent lack of publication in terms of our Café Church resources that we use. I’ll try to get better and sharing these resources. If they are useful to you, again feel free to use them.

This month at our Café Church service, we were looking at the theme of ‘Covenant’.

One of the hidden gems in the Common Worship: Times and Seasons material is the adoption (and basically plagiarising) of the Methodist Covenant Service. Having first grown up in an Anglican-Methodist church, I loved this service at New Year and I’m very glad that the CofE has brought it into their liturgical provision.

This month was a little more complex in that we asked people to follow the stations in a (loose) order. To start, we tried something we’ve never tried before – a ‘collective’ station together at their tables, then a couple of stations that they could do in any order, but asked them to finish up at a particular station to finish. We then rounded off by using some of the official Common Worship liturgy to ‘seal the deal’.

You can download the details as a zip file (6.4Mb) which includes Read more

Café Church station: Jobs Board

A photo of an example Job Board advert

This month at our Café Church, I have to confess that I wasn’t much involved and so don’t have much to share.

HOWEVER!! I do have one idea to share which went down very well.

The service as a whole was looking at the subject of the church with one definite thread looking at how we contribute together as a body and all need to be using our gifts to benefit one another.

For one of the prayer stations, I did a Jobs Board. Ahead of time, I asked all the different groups in the church if they had any jobs that needed doing. We got all sorts of responses from the usual need for more children’s workers to very specific things like wanting a Bass player for one of the worship groups!

To set-up the jobs board, I used some very simple Word-style templates straight out of my Mac Pages template section (see this image for example) that picked up the idea, very familiar from universities, of a pull-tab flyer poster where you can rip off one of the contact slips at the bottom. We did a whole bunch of ‘jobs’ in this way and put them up on the wall.

It worked really well and we had a nice double effect going on. On one hand, people ripped off the tabs and so had something to take away with them and to act upon. The other effect was that people following them could see which ‘jobs’ were popular and which had yet to receive interest. Worked really nicely, recommended.

Café Church stations: living it out

An image of a burnt sacrifice being made upon an altar

This month at our Café Church service, we were looking at the theme of ‘living it out’. As we continued with our series on the basics of the Christian faith, the entire evening examined how we are called upon to take this faith that we believe and proclaim and live it out in the context of our everyday lives.

I was involved in two stations this month. You can download the details as a pdf file.

The first one used a video clip called ‘The March of the Unqualified’ which highlighted the fact that nobody is perfect and we are called to follow God regardless of our imperfections and weaknesses. Indeed, it is often in our weaknesses that God is able to work.

The second station talked about needing to be a ‘Living Sacrifice’ and how we can sit back in church and not participate, even if we’re there and present and even doing things. The station called upon people to examine their situation from a different perspective and then recommit themselves to getting back onto the altar, being a sacrifice to God.

Both were essentially fairly simple stations. The only complicating factor was the need to download the video clip and I was fortunate enough that a team member had it already, downloaded and paid for. You also have to put up with an American accent on the video, but otherwise it’s very good!

Café Church station: Speaking, Removing, Free of dirt

The future belongs to dirty hands image

I occasionally get asked about the Café Church congregation that meets once a month at Pip & Jims. I also know how hard it is to find decent resources and ideas for prayer stations for things like Café Church or Liquid Worship.

So, I thought I would start to share some of the things that I put together.

This month I was responsible for just one prayer station which was in three parts: Speaking dirt, Removing dirt and Free of dirt. You can download the details as a pdf file.

We’ve been looking at some Christian basics over this ‘year’ Read more