Brian talks about the trap many worship leaders find themselves in, trying to serve the needs of sophisticated consumers of worship products and prefabricated worship experiences.
He concludes that there’s a difference between propaganda and art. Art can be about telling the truth - even if it’s not pretty. Being honest about the ugliness of life can be a beautiful thing. But trying to make everything look pretty makes it look cheap.
I agree. But the most difficult art is supporting people in the transition from the safety of the ‘worship industry’ culture to the sometimes threatening environment of honest worship.
Meg Tsiamis, at Dipping Into The Blogpond, has created a regularly updated list of the top 100 Australian blogs, based on Technorati rank, Alexa worldwide rank and Alexa Australia rank. Technorati provides a rank based on the sites linking to each blog. Alexa measures web site traffic. Duncan’s TV has hovered around 15th to 18th on the list.
Travelling around Melbourne this morning got me thinking about the nature of spirituality, particularly for emerging generations.
I drove down to Fairfield Station with a colleague, caught the train into Melbourne, getting off at Flinders St Station. Walked around the centre of Melbourne for a while, before getting on the No. 59 tram to West Coburg. I got off at stop 16, waited for four minutes and caught the No. 55 tram to Melbourne Zoo. From there I wandered down Poplar Drive, in the wrong direction, before finding a courier having a smoke by his Honda 90. He and I looked at his Melways street directory to find that I needed to retrace my steps back past the zoo, past the golf course. Finally I arrived at the Treacy Centre in The Avenue, Park Royal.
Active spirituality is often measured (by church leaders) through levels of commitment to religious institutions, seen in long term weekly attendance of worship services and demonstration of use of traditional spiritual practices. What would happen if we started to recognise the spirituality expressed in participation in a variety of forms of community, in real time and over time, online and offline, some short-term, others long-term. And what about the journeys travelled alone? What about the roles of mentors who help discern direction?
