You can read along privately, online at www.hereticslikeus.com. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed to notify you each day that I post a new bit of content, or become a ‘follower’ of the website. You can do it all anonymously!
You can pick up hard copies, printed on letter-sized paper, and left on the library table at Thornhill United Church, 25 Elgin, near Yonge and Clark just north of the city of Toronto and south of Highway 7 or 407. You don’t need to ask or pay or talk!
You can contact Bill Bruce, by posting comments to the website, or by email to bill@thornhillunitedchurch.ca, or by phone (with voicemail) to 905-889-2131. Your questions – and your answers – are welcome to shape the emerging words.
You can join conversations at Thornhill UC in Lent on Wednesday afternoons at 2pm, or Thursday evenings at 7:30pm, or Sundays after worship in Lent. We’ll watch videos called ‘Dream, Think, Be, Do’, of liberal theologians reflecting on the faith.
You can join us for Sunday worship at Thornhill UC in Lent. At 9am, videos on the theme will provoke you to think and feel. At 10:30am, more conventional worship will include a sermon or message on the theme. Our themes will be:
1st week of Lent: Introducing the Study
“Faith is a Journey”
2nd week of Lent: Dreaming Hearts
“Your Jesus and Mine”
3rd week of Lent: Thinking Minds
‘Thinking Theologically’
4th week of Lent: Being Souls
‘Creative Transformation’
5th week of Lent: Doing Strengths
‘Incarnation’
6th week of Lent: Concluding the Study
‘Compassion’
Holy Week and Easter Day
“Do You Believe All That Stuff?”
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Saturday, February 26, 2011
How To Participate: Do You Believe All That Stuff?
Introduction: Do You Believe All That Stuff?
When I told my father 30-odd years ago that I was going to be a minister, he responded as a charter member of the United Church, born before the denomination existed, and an elder, steward, choir member: “Do you believe all that stuff? I go for the music!”
We’re not a confessional denomination, requiring commitment to a specific creed. We’re a connectional crowd. Presbyterians who did not join us in 1925 were right to say so. Nor are we clear about sacraments and ordered ministry. Anglicans who did not unite with us in 1970 were right to say so. We are not all spirit-filled. Charismatics were right to invite us to imagine more, and say so. We affirm a diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity. Those evangelicals who rejected us since 1988 were right to say so,
We ride a waterlogged raft of ‘believing, belonging, and behaving.’ Thank God we don’t sail above it all on any one plank of meaning, membership, movement or morality. Our century and generations have emphasized themes of freedom and liberation. But I am haunted by Yeats’ 1921 poetry capturing the global and moral context of our movement:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Says who? We generally have a problem with authority in our subculture. Nobody is going to tell me what to believe or think! These notes can be blamed on Bill. The congregation and denomination just permitted them.
Oh Yeah? We are familiar with some patterns of challenge: secular, glib liberal, progressive post-theist, feminist. These notes should acknowledge those voices in our midst, and within each of us. A critical attitude is important to us.
Yeah! We yearn for the opportunity to affirm something we share. Creeds may exclude – but rather than fencing us in to a field, they may be like a welcome salt lick or a spring or stream in an open field. How close will you come, how often, for how long?
We are not a confessional church. We resist dogma. But we risk anarchy, as an ‘Untied Church’, in a scary world, in which the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. I’m inviting you to consider the way we used to try to say ‘we’.
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Outline: Do You Believe All That Stuff?
Lent 2011 Blog: Do You Believe All That Stuff?
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