Roshi's ramblings

The same day as I went to the family mass at St Tee's I also went to their '7 @ St Tees' service. This was very clearly designed as a fresh expression of worship for students and young adults such as myself. As such it really appealed to me. To begin with there were coffee and cakes on offer as you entered the Church and everyone was happy and very welcoming. The Church was lit by stage lighting to provide ambience throughout At about 5 to 7 a 5 minute countdown came on the projectors accompanied by fly through of areas of natural beauty. It also had dramatic countdown music as you would associate with news programmes or such like. It was a good display, much like I used to use as a starter for lessons to help bring people's attention to the front and prepare for what's to come. The projectors and computer were used to good effect throughout the service. From showing a video to make you think about taking time to think about God.; showing a selection of image...

This has been a very interesting read. It takes the 9 selection criteria for becoming  ordained and uses pop culture, art and film to explore them in depth and realistically. Whilst the book doesn't give you all the answers to what you need to show for the criteria it does a very good job of guiding you in reflecting upon them. In using modern culture for the examples it makes the criteria instantly more accessible and understandable to young people such as myself.   It definitely helps me as I go through each criteria. I'm currently exploring criteria B and C as part of my exploration and go back to the relevant chapters for inspiration!

I'm writing this blog post having just been to the family mass at St Tees... And I loved it! The sheer sense of joy at worshipping Christ, the fact the Church was packed to the rafters with people and that there were multiple Sunday schools running was wonderful to see. The Church was full, ground floor and balconies!  As with the Wednesday service the focus was predominantly on the scripture. And the preaching that followed, but there was also time given to the young people to talk about the summer camps they had been on and what they had been up to. This was at the very start of the service, giving a clear focus to the youth, rather than tagged on at the end. Making sure everyone can see and get involved The Church itself has 2 projectors with screens either side of the altar and for those behind pillars there are televisions set up above each row.  There is a camera at the back that's used to follow the 'action' throughout so everyone can see what's g...