Categories
Brainstorming Change Mission

Toast on Beans

I recently came across weand.me which has some wonderful ideas about how to make online meetings better with good questions, and creating involvement and engagement.

There are some freely downloadable resources featuring ice-breaker type questions – along with the more deep and meaningful…

I had posted an example on the ITsForMinistry FaceBook page:

It generated a bit of discussion – with ideas about how to do ’beans on toast’ differently – with cheese – not on top but under the beans… another suggested adding chorizo to mac and cheese…

Which got me wondering about what ingredients we might try adding to our otherwise tried and tested mission practices!

It’s good to bounce around the trivial – sometimes it prompts deeper thinking…

I’m off to have some toast on beans now…!

Categories
Brainstorming Change Prioritising Productivity Resources Saw Sharpening

I have a dream…

Martin Luther King Jr Day is marked on the Third Monday January – close to his birthdate 15 Jan 1929

He famously said, “I have a dream…”

Not, “I have a plan… an idea… a project…

With the emotion of a dream he led others to action, changed beliefs, ideas, and plans… but it all began with a dream…

What are your dreams… your hopes… for the World, the Church, your nation, your community, your family, your self…

Categories
Change

Tradition

“Tradition is peer pressure from dead people!”

“Tradition – the living faith of the dead
Traditionalism – the dead faith of the living”.

Categories
Uncategorized

Our deepest fear…

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

Categories
Brainstorming Leadership Meetings Productivity

Enabling the Impossible

It’s only impossible until it’s done”, words attributed to many including Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela.

On a Thursday morning in January 2022, 24 ministers, elders and others from within the ITsForMinistry Facebook group meet on Zoom for a Conversation triggered by some of Seth Godin’s thinking around Leadership always being qualified by ‘this might not work’.The Seth Godin’s Video which all had watched prior to the conversation was this one:

The recording of the conversation is available to those within the FB Group. If you are not already a member there you can request to join. (There are a few simple questions including commitment to the group rules which must be completed)

The Practice

Following the conversation a number of the group have committed to reading Seth Godin’s The Practice and to meet regularly to discuss its content and to encourage one another in our practice in the context of ministry.
Details are in the FB group if you are interested in joining in.

Categories
Advent Christmas Worship

‘A Brilliant Star‘ – An Advent Meditation

An Advent Meditation – take time to ponder Hope, Peace, Joy, Love and Faith…

Categories
Advent Christmas Resources

Advent and Christmas Resources

Advent and Christmas Resources

🎶 Advent and Christmas Music 🎶

🎶 Click to move to the Music Page 🎶

Messy Church

Church of Scotland

Spill the Beans

ALTERNativity

Christian Aid

When out of Poverty

Bible Society

IgnatianSpirituality.com

Churches Together in Britain and Ireland

CofE: Advent and Christmas 2021 resources: At the heart of Christmas

Link: churchofengland.org/resources/advent-and-christmas-2021-resources-heart-christmas

Wild Goose Group – Iona Community

FormationReimagined.org

Methodist Church

Children’s and Family Ministry

Other Advent & Christmas Resources

Categories
Uncategorized

Harvest Music

Songs from Resound Music might be helpful this Harvest time…

We See the Fruitful Harvest
Praise Awaits You (Psalm 65)
Freely

From a recent collaboration with Christian Aid with its themes of justice for all:

God of All Comfort

And, really, any song from Resound Worship’s Doxecology collection – in particular:

God the Maker of the Heavens
If the Fields are Parched (Have Mercy)
As the Seeds Are Planted (Let the Earth Find Rest)

Categories
Change General Worship

Outside Holiness

I was looking for the George MacLeod quote ‘Take us outside holiness’ – from the prayer prayed during the rebuilding of Iona Abbey in the 1930’s.

Before finding it, I came across another George Macleod quote

“I simply argue that the cross be raised again,

at the centre of the marketplace

as well as on the steeple of the church.

I am recovering the claim that

Jesus was not crucified

in a cathedral between two candles

but on a cross between two thieves;

on a town garbage heap;

at a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan

that they had to write His title

in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek …

and at the kind of place

where cynics talk smut,

and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble.

Because that is where He died,

And that is what He died about.

And that is where Christ’s own ought to be,

And that is what church people ought to be about.”

Lord George MacLeod of Fuinary

Words which the church might ponder again as we seek to discern where God is leading in the post-pandemic world, as we rationalise the building stock, looking to ‘well equip spaces in the right spaces’, and seeking to bring meaningful relevant faith in Christ to the folk who don’t ‘come to church’.

…And then I found the quote I was looking for…. Worthy too of renewed contemplation…

It is not just the interior of these walls,

it is our own inner beings you have renewed.

We are Your temple not made with hands.

We are Your body.

If every wall should crumble,

and every church decay, we are your habitation.

Nearer are you than breathing,

closer than hands and feet.

Ours are the eyes with which you, in the mystery,

look out in compassion on the world.

So we bless you for this place,

for your directing of us,

your redeeming of us, and your indwelling.

Take us ‘outside the camp’, Lord.

Outside holiness,

out to where the soldiers gamble, and the thieves curse,

and the nations clash at the cross-roads of the world…

So shall this building continue to be justified.

George MacLeod (A prayer during the rebuilding of Iona Abbey – circa 1938)
Categories
Uncategorized

Include a News Feed

You can easily include an RSS news feed in your Church website – here’s the current listing from the Church of Scotland News Page. In WordPress add an RSS block with the URL: https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/feeds/news