Anyway we think it is another groundbreaking move that will allow people to follow worship live in nursing homes, public transport and even on the golf course and why not? When streaming live onto the iPad everything is available at the click of a button the golf course might be a bit far fetched but the bus and the nursing home is a real possibility

Recently we’ve been developing within our services the opportunity for worshippers to contribute to worship using the text facility on their phones. Its actually a fantastic way to let people contribute to the prayers of intercession. It is also an interesting way to engage with the congregation interactively through preaching from the text. Only the text is the text message that has appeared on the screen in the sanctuary.

I believe there is an interesting opportunity for ministers to begin to explore how we can best utilise technology. Changing worshippers from consumers to producers is what worship is all about. Its about thinking about what I bring to church not what I get from church. I’m sure we will have an intetresting debate on the issue. Some will think what I’m talking about is a gimmick, but its not its a real opportunity to empower the worshippers. Its about engaging liturgy into everyday life. Its actually very Orthodox to talk of liturgy in this way.

Neil tried out the technology last weekend, and he was able to sit in his car on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and watch the morning service live. This also means that if he had wanted he could have sent his contribution for prayer via the iphone and it would have appeared on the screen at the front of the church. He tells me to make it clear he was not drivng at the time.

For those of the congregation and friends who don’t have iphones or ipads I believe Neil also plans to try streaming services live onto Blackberries, Google Androids and Nokia phones in the not too distant future so watch this space.

One other thing most of you guys know that I’m a bit of a U2 fan well I think its about time we had a U2charist here in Scotland. This is a Communion Service that uses U2 songs as part of the worship and praise. I believe these worship events have been taking place now for a few years all around the world but from what I can gather non in Scotland. So I thought we could develop a really cool service using U2 tunes using iphones and ipads then podcast it on itunes.

So what do you guys think. I’ve come across a web page worth looking at which gives all kinds of hints and ideas to help organise such an event. Have a look at U2charist resources I’d love to hear what some of you think. We could perhaps start our next Sanctuary First with a U2Charist or should we aim to put on a bigger event in one of the Cathedrals? I waiting on a text or an email but at least a comment

This was one of the themes picked up by Archbishop John Sentamu as he issued a reminder at the closing worship service of “Edinburgh 2010” in the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall. Alluding to the gospel account of Peter’s denial of Christ, Sentamu added: “Jesus today is on trial in the court of the world by our lips and lives. Jesus and his gospel are being judged.” Sentamu continued, “Human activity only begets human activity. The prophetic Word and the Spirit make us live.” His voice echoed with an evangelising passion that recalled preachers of the past who spoke in the same space. It was also reminicent of his recent visit to the CWW National Gathering in Edinburgh in 2008 when I had the privelege of introducing him to the 8,000 audience gathered at Ingliston. Archbishop Sentamu has been such an inspiration to many of us in Scotland and he was the ideal peron to bring the conference to a close.

PRAISE GATHERING 2010
All the good things were not just happening in Edinburgh, through in Glasgow, the Praise Gathering, under the leadership of Ian Watson was packing in thousands to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall over a three night stint. I had the privelege of attending on the Saturday evening. It turned out to be a fantastic evening. What I like about the Praise Gathering is it lterally does what it says on the tin. Its about praise to Almighty God, and its not about celebrities. in many ways it seeks to pick up the theme of Hope and Humility.

The Director and Conductor Ian Watson has been a wonderful friend to all of us involved with Church Without Walls events. Over the last few years in Aviemore. His inspirational leadership in worship was quite outstanding. Ian has put together an extensive programme of praise music, for the Praise Gathering, in doing so he seems to be able to find the balance between a participatory element to allow his audience to engage with praise themeselves allowing them to become producers of praise, while at the same time offering everyone the opportunity to become a consumer listening to an amazing 400 voice choir sing a variety of pieces ranging from traditional gospel to more contemporary songs.

For me the highlight of the evening was an arrangement of the well known hymn “How Great Thou Art.” How they did it I don’t know but they moved from a lyrical ballad to a rockous gospel sound in less than a minute, greatly assisted by Gamu.

Now I said there were no celebrities but there was one outstanding star! Once again for me the evening highlight was the young Glasgow singer Gamucharai Nhengu (aka Gamu). She is a seriously talented young woman. The truth is the she brought the whole Concert Hall to life. She has amazing stage presence and for someone so slight one wonders from where does the voice come? To hear Gamu sing again it would be worth any Glaswegian brave the elements and venture east and attend the next Praise Gathering which takes place in the Usher halls Edinburgh on Saturday 19 June.

In comparion with the Lausanne Conference which will meet in Cape Town later in the year, where there will be an estimated 4,000 delegates this is a much smaller grouping of people, but I believe it can have a great influence on future world mission strategy, however such influence must be earned and not simply depend on the legacy of the first conference which met in Edinburgh in 1910.

The original concept for this conference was to to bring around 1500 people together to celebrate the historical significance of first Missionary Conference of 1910, but the conference planning has been beset by financial constraints and eventually a much smaller event has been organised. However size is not everything. Its more about quality and influence and passion and above all practice.

There are around 300 delegates from all over the globe meeting together to engage with the theme . ” Witnessing To Christ Today”. Many of those attending are pastors and church leaders and academics, all seeking to understand the changes and challenges that face the Christian Churches as we seek to take ‘ The Great Commission’ of Jesus into the 21st century.

The task is a challenging one and it was interesting to hear the perspective of different denominations during the response time to the first plenary session which was delivered by Dr Dana Robert. I’ll comment on these in another post. Professor Robert is co-director of the centre for global Christianity and mission at Boston University School of Theology. She had a theme question running through her paper asking the rhetorical question from the psalmist ‘How Long, How long ? ‘ I found myself wanting to listen to the U2 song, called

Click here to view the embedded video.

Professor `Robert was basing her thoughts on Revelation 7. 9 where John the Apostle describes the great gathering representing every tribe and nation. Reminding us that the early Christians were people of vision believing that the Gospel was for all peoples. The Revelation vision is all about celebrating God’s global mission. In her paper the Professor raised many interesting points highlighting the truth that the church can only enter into the “Full riches of Christ when the world church works together ‘. We have to be a people who speak, who act, who live, so that God’s glory can be praised. Here she was quoting, Orchard, who wrote a great deal about the correlation between Mission and Doxology. There was a plea in her paper to make sure that we didn’t let our theological difficulties stop us from working together to share the Gospel.

Robert, as well as giving us a critic of where the church has been in the past in relation to World Mission was also calling the world churches to engage in a global conversation, that allows us to concentrate on that which unites us rather than divides us. I think she is absolutely right.

There is I believe a common agenda developing among Christians featuring the core gospel values of peace, justice and reconciliation. These ideas are developing around social concerns including the needs of the poor. It is these biblical injunctives that are uniting the church across the world, regardless of so called theological divides.

Many now believe that proclamation and justice go hand in hand, this also includes “the whole world concept” highlighting a concern for the preservation of God’s creation. There is also a concensus growing among Christians that the technological and economic globalisation of our world has created new challenges and responsibilities for all of us as believers in the way we talk about world mission.

Professor Robert touched on all of the above issues, ending by reminding us all that we need to take the long view and believe the eschatological vision that one day there will be no more hungering or thirsting, because God will indeed be with us. Until that day we still may cry how long but it is a cry that surely reflects our hope rather than our dispair.

The great challenge of the 2010 Missionary Conference for all of us who claim to be Christians here in Scotland is to rediscover the power and passion of the Holy Spirit in our churches so that we may talk with conviction and commitment to the idea of the whole gospel being proclaimed to the whole world. For too long our visioon has been squashed by our own domestic challenges, especially those of us in the Church of Scotland. It is refreshing to once again have our eyes lifted beyond our domestic challenges to be inspired by the world church.

All of us are living through what can only be described as the greatest communication revolution in the history of the human race. Technology allows us to communicate in ways that were only before dreamt of or written about in science fiction novels. This revolution has changed the way we understand communication and has influenced the style and aspirations of information technology. In the light of this extra ordinary advance in communications there is an undoubted case to be made to re-evaluate the way preaching is carried out in our churches. Congregations in this brave new world may discover themselves sinking in the Tsunami of change or discover a new found confidence in being empowered to contribute to the over all worship experience including the sermon through the creative use of technology.

How Can We Engage Interactive Preaching

How can we engage with the idea of interactive preaching? Can we use technology to help that interaction take place? In my last article entitled, ‘Re-imagining Preaching as a Process’, I was seeking to find a way to express the function of preaching as more than just a performance by an individual but rather as a process of interaction by the Holy Spirit between preacher listener and scripture. In this article I’m going to try and attempt to understand each of these roles and perhaps reflect on how technology and the creative arts are being used and can be used to further enhance this interaction.

What I’m saying of course is not new. It was always part of the reformed tradition that preaching should not be separated from worship as a kind of ‘stand alone’ performance but rather seen as part of the whole contribution that makes worship itself a process rather than an event. There is no place in the reformed tradition for a Eucharist to take place without the Word first being preached.

Within the Scottish Presbyterian tradition the preacher also has the role of being the prophet. When you take time to think about the roles that the prophets in the Old Testament played, quite often they were willing to engage with the creative arts, not only speaking forth the Word but acting out the Word. Jesus of course is the fulfilment of all the prophets for that is exactly what he did. He was the Word made flesh. ‘Salvation lived out” He not only spoke forth the Word, he brought forth the Word in action.

Worship as Active Learning

Last Sunday morning on retuning from church my wife, who is an educationalist, said to me, “I see you used the ‘Active Learning Model’ in worship today, it worked well!” She was referring to the educationalist theory which suggests that people learn as they participate and understand more as they become involved.

This then must be the challenge for the preacher to engage the people of God with the great theological truths of the scripture in such a way that they learn from a kind of ‘incarnational Model ‘ in which we live out the encounter of the preaching and teaching through engaging with the message in the moment. In order to capture a glimpse of the eternal. This in my book is what theology is all about. All doctrine must have a practical application for the daily moments and be pointing us beyond ourselves to the eschaton.

All this sounds rather grand, and I know it is easier to say than do, but it is more possible than we sometimes think. This is what liturgy is all about., engaging theology. It must go beyond words and begin to engage all our senses indeed our lives and lifestyles, so that they themselves become part of the liturgy. John Zizioulas one of today’s leading Orthodox theologians, and at one time my Professor at University writes:

“Theology is the liturgy, and the Christian caught up in it. Through listening to the liturgy and the scripture, the Christian Community learns to see the whole world as this liturgy ,and watches God at work, creating, judging and providing for all creation.”

Learning to understand the process of revelation in all of our lives is a wonderful liberating experience. Understanding how this process flows out of our worship encounters, our scripture reading, and the role we and all of creation have to play in worship is indeed challenging but also affirming.

To realise that my presence in the world and at worship is enough in itself to bring blessing and encouragement to another is humbling but it is also to remind me that I am one and the many in Christ. In other words I am connecting with others because i am part of the Body of Christ.

Engaging with the idea of worship taking place beyond the walls of church has become one of the most pressing and important pursuits for the church today as we seek to create new emerging models for worshipping communities. How we go about teaching and preaching within these new models will be highly strategic to ensure the truth of the Gospel is passed on to the next generation of Christians.

What concerns me is that in an attempt to be relevant we speak of the gospel as emerging. This is to suggest that what has been delivered down to us by the saints is incomplete for a changing world. i want to suggest that we need to engage with what it means to receive that which as been instituted by Jesus and proclaim that which has been constituted by the Spirit.

In my next post I’ll address these two important road maps as we seek to understand the nature of preaching in a Changing World of communication and technological innovation.

Here in St Andrew’s Bo’ness we have been experimenting with technology and worship for many years. You may find it of interest to see how we are linking a daily worship website with a monthly interactive worship experience, which we are franchising out across Scotland and the world if people are interested. Check out Sanctuary First just click on the URl below this article.

It was a great honour to have the company of our Patron The Princess Royal and also to have been given the use of the Palace by Her Majesty the Queen for this event. We had people from every walk of life with us including Oscar Schiappa Pietra who currently advises the Minister and the Secretary of National Planning in Papua New Guinea as a UNDP Officer. Oscar in the past has been a Senior Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Executive Director of the Peruvian Agency for International Aid, in Peru. He has also been a great friend and advisor to the Trust. It was also great to see some of the first members of the Trust attend the dinner and to remind ourselves of our early challenges and difficulties.
However it is because of people who were prepared to carry on in the face of difficuties that we have the Trust as it is today. We all had a wonderful time. I was especially pleased that Princess Anne highlighted the work that the Trust is now developing in partnership with schools in the UK and also paid tribute to the way we work trying to be innovative and inclusive networking accross the whole strata of society.

I can hardly believe that 25 years have past since we first opened the Branches shop here in Bo’ness. Today much of our success has been brought about by the grace of God working in the hearts and minds of people of faith and even no faith. I particularly want to say a huge thank you to Willie McPherson our Executive Director and his small but dynamic staff who have worked so hard to make the Trust an effective partner as we work alongside Scripture Union in Peru bringing Health care to over 100,000 people in the Amazon through our Medical Programme and supporting over 200 children in the five homes we have built and continue to fund. All this is a far cry away from our first falteriing steps as we opened a shop in the Market Square in Bo’ness. Its a great privelege to be Chairman of the Vine Board and to have such a creative group of people on our team.

The purpose of the day was to introduce a new constituency to Alpha and also to show that there was a sound theological ethos surrounding the whole course. The framework of Hospitality, Encounter, Catechesis and Community were all duly explored as key elements to the course.

It was actually well done. However one couldn’t quite help thinking how a course that has been run for years put in the hands of a theologian can be repacked in such a way that one would almost think that it had been designed that way in the first place? Don’t get me wrong this comment is not meant to be a criticism it is more a revelation. Sometimes we do things and we don’t see the shape or the structure that lies behind what we do. I guess it was this that I found helpful and yet left me asking the question, when they designed it. did they think this structure?

The guest speaker was Graham Tomlin. He is on the Alpha staff at Holy Trinity Brompton and an Oxford Don to boot. If I closed my eyes I thought I could have been listening to David Cameron. However there the resemblence ended, because there was real substance to his contribution.

He has recently written a book entitled ‘Provocative Church’. Tomlin’s presentation was spot on helping us all to think through how we can best engage with a generation that is very suspicious of people who want to evangelise them. The summary of his thesis it seemed to me to be saying, Its more how you live it rather than saying why you believe it. Believing comes later belonging comes first. The how comes first, the why later.

I totally agreed with his analysis of our post modern or post Christian culture here in the UK. We are in a different place from where we were 50 years ago. The rise of pluralism has made it difficult for Christians to talk about world evangelisation in the way we once did. Religion in this new world order has been given a different place. When it is brought into the public arena it has to be branded in such a way that it speaks an inclusive language. How do we do this without comprimising our belief in the exclusive flavour of the Christian gospel is a question we need to be wrestling with on a daily basis?

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference 2010 this coming June. This will be an international gathering of Christian leaders and academics engaging with the current ethical and moral topics facing Christianity today in the light of Christian tradition and culture. One thing is for certain it will be a different conference from the one held in Edinburgh in 1910 exactly 100 years ago. It from this conference that the worldwide missionary movement of the 20th century has been attributed.

Today we need to be continually asking the question, how do we share the gospel of Jesus Christ in this changing world where different cultures and faiths demand an equal respect and acceptance. It will also be of interest to see how the Lauzanne Congress in Cape Town later this year engages with these very same same topics surrounding pluralism and evangelisation. This whole dialgue takes us into the area of philosophy and sociology of signs and symbols. It also challenges the whole concept of truth. Indeed we are back to Pilate’s famous question to Jesus.

In the conference yesterday Tomlin introduced a quote from the famous 20th Century French thinker and commentator Jean Bandrillard. I think it went something like this,( if I’ve got it wrong someone will correct me) ‘ None of our societies know how to manage their mourning for real… as a result we try to reproduce an endless searching after the real.” It was an interesting quote which he used to suggest that what people are in search of today is reality. To put it in my words they are asking of us the simple question ” Does it work? ”

All this is a challenge to evangelicals to realise that there are many different ways to communicate the gospel. Christians who have a passion for world evangelisation need to realise that Britain is in a post Christian pluralist culture. The fact is the prevailing “plausibility structures”, have a profound aversion to evangelism. The political classes have no desire to see one religion promote itself above another.

The rise of fundemalism and the whole experience of 9/11 has caused a fear factor to be projected by commentators around the ideas and actions of over zealous religious people. Too many of our role models for evangelism have been rooted in the American Culture of the 1940s and 50s spiced up a little bit to look and feel more attractive for the 21st century. The tele- evangelists of the current God Channels in the UK are on the whole connecting with people who agree with them and many of the contributers on reflection may well be adding to what I call the commercialisation of the gospel. Whether this is a good thing or not can be debated. The facts remain they are talking to a narrow ghettoised audience. We need to be in the business of broad casting rather than narrow casting.

The truth is that there is much we can learn from other Christian cultures, especially those in the east, who have lived with pluralism and know well very the challenges that pluralism brings to Christian witness. I for one am indebted to the insights of Bishop Newbign who spend a huge part of his ministry in india living our gospel principles in a society that has over 33 million gods. Newbign was of course a Church of Scotland missionary before becoming the first Bishop of the Church of South India in Madras.

All this means that the authenticity of the gospel will only prevail when Christian men and woman earn the right to talk about faith becuase they have been living the reality of the gospel in their communities. We must become people who live out the reality of kindness, grace, forgiveness, service and integrity.

On a more personal note, I was delighted to be able to film a number of church leaders for our next round of video podcasts coming up on Sanctuary First. Make sure you take a moment to check out their contribution over the next few weeks. And a huge thanjk you to the organisers of the Alpha Training Day it was a great success.

Switching on and off emotions is one of the hardest things you have to do in this job. I don’t know about you but looking at the video of the home under water makes me feel very sad. I saw a quote the other day it says it all ” When you spend years building someone or something could destroy overnight. Build anyway!” I think we are people of resurrection. I’ve been so encouraged by the rsponse of those who are in a position to help. I know of a few people who have offfered support andI know one donor in particular who has been an inspiration to us all with his support and generosity at this time. What has happens in Peru literally can happen in this country in the spiritual world. You can spend your life building an idea or a community and it can all disappear overnight. What is important is the now and also understanding that God is in the business of pruning and cleaning as well as fruit gathering. We were reminded of this when Alec Carstairs the treasurer of the Vine Trust reminded us in our joint Board meeting that in order for growth to continue sometimes we also have to be willing to make changes. I’m sure we all have to learn this lesson time and time again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I visited Peru last week I was able to neet some of the boys who have been affected by this disaster. I was also privileged to hear and see them perform click here to listen to their recorder group.

I have visited this little school and have noted the excellent work that is carried out there by two woman Jhansi and Freeda. Over the years these two woman have been seeking to engage with the tribal people who live in the Western Ghats. This is a mountain range that stretches almost 800 kilometers in the western region of India. Some of the mountain peaks can be as high as 9000ft. The temperature during the months of December and January can be extremely cold. iIt is thought that there could be in excess of 100,000 tribal people living high up in these mountains. They prefer to live isolated lives and are suspicious of strangers.

Freeda and Jansi have travelled extensively in these mountains and have built up the trust of many of the tribal people to the extent that they allow their children to go for extended periods to the little school that the woman have established. Sometimes it can take the children two or three days to walk back to their villages in the mountains. It is these children who are in need of the blackets and warmth at this time. If you feel you’d like to donate to buy a blanket or two feel free to click here and donate through the Sanctus Media website to the project. It is our aim to get the blankets out to the children as soon as possible.