Those who follow me on Twitter may have noticed that we have been to Rhodes. We love visiting Greek islands because neither of us are very good at sitting still and there is lots of ancient history to look at. One of the other reasons that we love the islands is because of the Orthodox Church and the vibrancy of the eastern Church.
We took a little trip to The Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag, Knaresborough. What else would you do when you all work for the church and want a day off?
During covid I had a sabbatical and I visited a lot of UK shrines. I have a lot of footage for a vlog series about Holy Places that I have planned so you’ll have to wait for it to appear on YouTube in 2037 when I’ve had the time to edit it.
Modern church music often struggles to express the deep emotions of grief, sorrow and lament held in tension with the certain hope of the Christian faith. Resound Worship have done a lot of work to engage with this over the course of the last couple of years and has been a big part of the 12 Song Challenge. Last week, the long anticipated Double Album, Downcast Souls Expectant Hearts was released. It has been a long project in the making bringing together the work of different songwriters from around the world.
I have been involved with the Estates Evangelism Task Group and Partner’s Conference at High Leigh. Ninety practitioners gathered together to look at the challenges facing us in the future serving our communities. There has been a lot of challenge for The Church to reform its institutional bias and refocus on those who live in poverty. That however is for a later post.