Twitturgies

Gerard Kelly is the founder of the Bless Network with his wife Chrissie. They live in the Netherlands, where Gerald is Senior Pastor of Crossroads Amsterdam, a church of 40 nationalities. Gerard also writes poetry (see Spoken Worship) more recently he has shared some of his verses through twitter under the name twitturgies.

Kelly coined the name Twitturgies, asking "Why not use Twitter as a means of prayer, all the time accepting the constraints of communication in less than 140 characters? In essence I simply took the Twitter question “What are you doing?” and translated it as “What are you praying?” taking the prayers I was praying in any case and crafting them into personal liturgies."

240 Twitter prayers later, he's found that not only do hundreds of other people appreciate the prayers, but that being disciplined into 140 characters makes his prayers very focused.

Meanwhile, Ireland’s top Catholic Cardinal Sean Bray has urged his flock to use Twitter as a means of prayer. In a speech in honour of the late Father Patrick Peyton, the Priest famous for coining the phrase “the family that prays together stays together,” Cardinal Bray insists that a new movement of prayer can arise using new technology and social networks.

Photo is of Gerald and his wife, Chrissie. Courtesy of the Godspace blog

The Church is right outside your window

In an article in The Acorn, Toya Richards Hill writes about a Presbyterian church in Oklahoma that was bemoaning the skateboarders who'd taken over their church grounds. The minister, Karen Rodgers, along with the rest of the church, also bemoaned the fact that there were no youth in the congregation. Rodgers challenged her congregation to start praying for the skateboarders. Up until then the congregation had preferred to put up 'No Skateboarding' signs. She reached out to the youths and invited them in for a bite to eat. There were no takers at first, but gradually the skateboarders came - they were from broken homes, dysfunctional families, and the like - and eventually they started showing up at the youth group as well.
The church still doesn't have a large youth group - an average of 21 turn up - but now there are both skateboarders and non-skateboarders in the mix, including 11 who've been baptised by Rodgers.
And the women in the congregation got money together to help build a skateboard park.

Night Vision

Church for the Night.
St Peter’s Church is slap bang in the middle of the club scene in Bournemouth, and is usually closed during the night. However, a group of club chaplains (by which I presume they mean they’re chaplains to the clubs) decided to open up the church for a night, with decorations, mince pies, music, lights, visuals and heap more. Before they’d even got the doors open at 11 pm, a young girl sitting on the steps with a group of teenagers was desperate to get in, and kept on asking if they could pray with her. As soon as the doors were opened, a stream of people, including bouncers from the clubs, came in to look around, to ask for prayer, to seek counseling and help, and to show a host of other needs. The chaplains were constantly busy, and couldn’t even close at the time they’d decided on.

Since then the church has been opened on other occasions, with similar results.
There’s a full version of the article here, and a website with more stories here, plus there’s a book, Night Vision, that was published in February this year.
Here's the blurb:

Jon Oliver was involved in mission to the club scene long before anyone thought up the term 'mission-shaped'. Here he reflects on the kind of mission that everyone is now talking about - the church going out to where people are, in this case to the clubs and city streets in the early hours, when most churches would be locked up. Part One: looks at the changing face of mission among young people, asks whether clubbing has a spiritual dimension and makes the case for mission and evangelism in places that are about as far removed from most people's idea of church as you can get. Part Two: tells some great stories from the front line by others working in mission to the club culture, e.g: Turning a typical parish church into a 'Church for the Night' - a spiritual oasis for dehydrated clubbers, bottled water and pastoral care, how to be a Christian and a clubber or DJ, engaging with young people who have no contact with the church,and more.

So you thought you just bought and sold on TradeMe?

TradeMe isn't just a place to buy and sell - it turns out that the message board area has a life of its own, quite unrelated to retail therapy. Stuff.co.nz tells us:

* Between 5000 and 20,000 messages are posted on the message board every day.
* The average age of someone who posts a message is 35-plus.
* The boards are largely self-censored, with 98 per cent of threads monitored by the online community and every member able to ''vote'' to remove a thread if they believe it is not suitable.
* Message topics are most active on personal or social issues, be they grief or happiness.
* There are 20 different categories for messages, from books to parenting. General and Opinion tend to be the most frequented.

Greer McDonald, in an article entitled, Web of support for the grieving, writes about the way in which Julie Adams happened on the TradeMe message board almost by chance, and discovered a world of fellow New Zealanders who were prepared to go the extra mile, offer support and encouragement, and even try and discover what had happened to Julie's missing husband. (His overturned car was eventually found on its roof in dense bush 50 metres down a steep bank just below the summit of Rimutaka Hill, Upper Hutt.)

It may not be 'church' as we know it, and it may not be 'community' as we know it, but it's certainly a place for Christians to be keeping tabs on.

We can't resist these Top Ten lists!

One of the intriguing things we (the congregation of Dunedin City Baptist) learned in our last Sunday at the Teachers' College auditorium was that sermons on the church's website are downloaded in all sorts of places around the world. Some of those downloading will be ex-DCBC people, but by no means all.
So it was interesting to find on Cynthia Ware's Digital Sanctuary blog (a blog that focuses on innovative use of technology in the church scene), that downloading sermons came second on the list of top ten things people look for on a church website - and also appears in another form as the fourth item. Here's the whole list.

1. Find service information (times, directions, etc).
2. Listen to/download Sermons (audio recordings).
3. Learn about the church’s Beliefs/Mission/Values
4. Connect with other members.
5. Read/download Sermons (text transcripts).
6. Join and/or interact with a home/bible study group.
7. View weekly information/calendar/news/events.
8. Find serving opportunities at the church.
9. Post prayer requests or needs.
10. Read articles or other content.

Praying in the Phone Booth

The Pastor's Weekly Briefing e-letter alerted me to Dylan Mortimer's prayer/phone booths in New York.

The two booths could almost be taken for typical phone booths except for a few unusual features:

the side panels depict folded hands;
the word, 'prayer' appears instead of 'telephone;'
there's a flip-down kneeler.

Mortimer, who is a recent graduate of NY’s School of Visual Arts Masters (MFA) program, says, “My goal is to spark dialogue about a topic often avoided, and often treated cynically by the contemporary art world,” says Mortimer. “I employ the visual language of signage and public information systems, using them as a contemporary form of older religious communication systems: stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, church furniture, etc. I balance humor and seriousness, sarcasm and sincerity, in a way that bridges a subject matter that is often presented as heavy or difficult.”