So, yesterday I was treated to what I like to call the Basic Evangelical Tithing Sermon, or BETS.   You’ve probably heard it yourself a few times, if you’ve moved in evangelical circles.  Many churches will trot it out once a year or so.   It tends to annoy me, because it tends to conflate a quite reasonable review of the church’s financial situation with a bundle of guilt and some really bad hermeneutics.

I was going to write an angry point-by-point refutation of the BETS, but a cooler head than mine suggested otherwise.

So instead, a brief thought on the subject of tithes.

If we’re going to talk about tithing, then we can’t really avoid Deutronomy Chapter 14, where the Israelites are instructed by their God that it was their sacred duty to have the mother of all barbecues every year.

I’m serious. Go read it.

It’s a fascinating chapter.  The first third is all about the importance of finding a good Kosher supermarket in your neighbourhood.  The last paragraph is about how it’s a good idea to take care of those on the edge of society: the immigrant, the orphan, the single parent.   And in the middle section of the chapter the Israelites are explicitly commanded to to spend one tenth of their yearly incoming on “cattle, sheep, wine or beer” or anything else that they liked, and eating together in one big annual party.

A tenth of your household income.  Maybe 5 or 6 thousand dollars for a typical Canadian family.  On a barbecue. That’s a lot of steak and Molsons!  And this isn’t just a backyard get-together, the entire country was supposed to get in on this.  It makes Burning Man sound kinda tame.

Apparently, when God talks about tithing, he talks about barbecues.

Collier St. United is another of our larger downtown churches, steps away from the bar and shopping district on Dunlop street.

Unlike Painswick United, a small congregation meeting in a strip-mall, Collier Street has a large facility that it uses to the max.   The main sanctuary on Sunday was packed, and the balcony was mostly full too.

Collier Street strikes me as a very ‘involved’ church.  During the service, an ‘Installation of Officials’ was held; a recognition and commissioning of those serving the church in various capacities this year.  25 or 30 people came to the front for this part of the service. In fact, there’s clearly tons of activity going on here.  There were 60 or so events listed for this week alone on the handout sheet, and judging by the announcements, the church website, and the various bulletin boards around the building, Collier Street should win the award for ‘Church in Barrie with the Most Programs.’

The service itself followed a typical format; songs, announcements, performances by two different choirs, and a sermon.  Interestingly, although the topic of the sermon was Christ’s passion, the Rev. Dennis Posno chose to talk about Jesus’ life, not death, about Jesus’ passion for peace, for hope, for justice and for healing.

Collier Street is clearly a tight knit community, and like some other similar churches, it can be very easy for a visitor to be aware of their status as an outsider.   At First Christian Reformed, 4 or 5 people introduced themselves to me and welcomed me to the service before it had even started.  At Collier Street no-one really noticed my presence, despite the convivial atmosphere at coffee hour.  This is a tricky balance for any church to strike, between nurturing its existing community and being open and welcoming to outsiders.  But that said, I think if someone did take the time and effort to get involved, they would find it a warm and accepting community.

This will be a short article, as I unfortunately arrived very late for the Sunday morning service at St. Margaret’s Church last week.  However, despite my tardiness, I had a very positive visit.

The building is only 12 years old, and has a wonderful airy design.  From the sanctuary you can look out through windows on either side directly into the subdivision the church is located in.   The architecture gives the church a feeling of being rooted in the local community.

I had an interesting conversation after the service with Reverend Stephen Pessah.  We talked about the fact that for churches located in urban cores, usually the needs of the local community are very obvious.  Poverty, crime, housing difficulties and so on are usually quite visible.  But in suburbia, although the needs may be very real, they are frequently hidden behind a veneer of respectability.  You cannot immediately distinguish between a a resident who is comfortably well off or on the verge of bankrupt – they may both drive an SUV, dress smartly, and so on.

Furthermore I’m convinced there are more forms of poverty than simply financial.  Our community can frequently suffer from relational poverty, as we isolate ourselves in our detached houses behind our ‘good neighbour’ fences.  Or we can suffer from poverty of imagination, as we trudge through a lifestyle we find unfulfilling but can’t imagine changing.   Or we can wrestle with poverty of hope – an inability to dream that life might one day be different than it is today.

St. Margaret’s will be holding a series of contemplative services during Lent, which I’m pleased to here.  I’m convinced that the church in Barrie needs a healthy contemplative stream of Christianity.  Brian McLaren, in his book ‘A Generous Orthodoxy’, says

I’ve noticed that among the people most dedicated to missional activism, you find either (a) people burned out because of the difficulty of the task, or (b) people who have best learned to undergird their activism with contemplation, with quiet resting, with finding God in the center of normalcy… Contemplation isn’t only for passive, withdrawn people, but also for active, involved ones.

Overall, I felt very welcomed at St. Margaret’s.   In many ways, Anglicanism still feels like ‘home’ to me.  I find that good Anglicanism strikes a very healthy balance: formal without being stuffy, orthodox without being exclusivist, liturgical while remaining accessible; a global denomination constructed entirely of local communities.

When I told my daughter I’d visited the ‘First Christian Reformed’ church on Sunday, she asked me if it really was the first ever Christian church. I told her that, no, despite the name, it wasn’t.

However, it is a warm, friendly congregation.  Unlike some places I’ve been where I’ve been able to stand around at coffee hour for twenty minutes without anyone talking to me, at this church three or four people had introduced themselves to me, got me a coffee, and started to get to know me before the service had even started.  So full marks for hospitality!

This is another of Barrie’s larger churches, with several hundred people in the Sunday morning service.   The format is very typically Evangelical.  We sung several songs accompanied by a small band, there were announcements,  a short message for the children, a brief prayer,  and a thirty minute sermon.

I’ve found myself asking recently when and why the sermon replaced communion as the central sacrament of the Protestant church.   I’m sure no Catholic would feel that they had really ‘gone to church’ if Mass had not been celebrated.  And likewise, I suspect an Evangelical feels that they have not ‘gone to church’ unless they have heard a sermon.

It may not formally be referred to as a sacrament, but it certainly gets treated like one.   It’s clear to a casual visitor of this church that the sermon is the main point of both the Sunday morning meeting and, in fact, the entire building.   Just as an Anglican or Catholic church has as an altar as its focal point, this church clearly is centered around the pulpit.

I’m fairly sure that the point of the ritual of the sermon is about more than simple information transfer.  This is not just about educating a congregation.  Not least, there are clearly more efficient ways to transfer information.  You could read the texts for 52 sermons in a few hours on the first day of January.  And there are certainly more effective ways to transfer information.   Any decent degree program complements its lectures with tutorials to discuss the material, with practicals to investigate the subject first hand, and with exams to monitor progress.

As far as I know, most churches don’t have a formal curriculum, nor any way of assessing student progress, so I really don’t think that the point of a sermon is fundamentally about education.  And indeed, as I’ve been asking people on this journey why they go to church, I’ve rarely heard the answer ‘to hear a sermon’.

And yet we construct buildings, hire staff, and organise services largely in order to deliver sermons.   I can only assume that this is because we believe that sermons do, in fact, have some kind of sacramental value.  That maybe people are influenced in some spiritual way by the act of sitting in a chair and listening to somebody talk for thirty minutes.   And that this has to happen on a consistent, weekly basis to have the desired effect.

Understand that this is a general question, and not a criticism of First Christian Reformed church.  Pastor Mike Borgert gave an engaging message on Mark 1:29-34, although he somehow managed to talk for thirty minutes about a four-verse passage that includes multiple healings and exorcisms without really talking about the supernatural elements of the story at all.

But my question remains – why the centrality of the sermon?  When did this become the focal point of ‘doing church’?  And what are we fundamentally trying to achieve?

Yesterday I visited the third and final Catholic church in Barrie.   Liturgically it was very similar to the others, of course, although I did notice that unlike the other churches, as St. John Vianney they give both bread and  wine at communion.

I also finally had the chance to sit down with a priest after the service and talk a bit about the church.  This is the first chance I’ve had to talk to an ‘official’ representative of the catholic church.

I have a lot of questions I’d love to ask the entire Catholic hierarchy, not least ‘how can we patch up the appalling mess that we all made during the Reformation, and while we’re at it, the Great Schism as well, and get on with this whole Kingdom of God business?’

However, my time was limited.  So I stuck to my usual questions: “why are you here,” and “what is God doing in the city?”  And I got probably the most comprehensive answers I’ve yet heard.

The priest talked to me about the church being a place where people are both drawn in to worship God, and then inspired to go outwards and serve the poor and the needy.  God, he said, works through people, and he calls each of us to serve others.

Within the formal structure of the Catholic Church in Barrie, there are various organisations such as the Society of St Vincent de Paul, the Knights of Columbus, and the Catholic Women’s League that provide specific opportunities for individuals to serve the poor and demonstrate Christ’s love.   And St. John Vianney tries to pool its resources with the other churches in the city to more effectively have an impact on society.

All this I deeply respect, of course.  But I still find the lack of communion between Catholics and other denominations deeply troubling.   In answer to my inquiries the priest told me that yes, I really did have to pick one side of the fence or the other.  If you want to take communion in a Catholic church then you have to first take Catholic baptism, and having done so you would not be allowed to share in the Eucharist at another church.

As I’ve said before, I’m a passionate believer in open communion.  I don’t want to have to pick sides in a fight that happened centuries before I was born. I want to be able to eat, pray, and worship alongside my brothers and sisters from across the Christian spectrum.  And it saddens me that there are still ecclesiastical rules that forbid me from doing this.

I will say that I felt listened to and respected as I talked about this yesterday.  We may struggle with a great deal of historical baggage, but I am grateful every time I encounter someone who shares my desire to bridge the gaps that divide us.

Yes, today we visited a church who’s name is a single letter.  Because that’s pretty hard to search for in Google, here is their website!.

‘M’ was quite a contrast from last week’s Catholic service.  Instead of large, structured and formal, this morning’s service had an almost improvised feel.  ‘M’ is a new community, and so I suspect that at the moment there is no such thing as a typical gathering.    This morning was billed as ‘Bring It’ Sunday, a chance for all members to share a song, a thought, a poem, a reading, or a painting.

Personally, I love this kind of interactive environment.  ‘M’ meets at the Creative Space in downtown Barrie, which is an ideal venue for getting a bunch of folks together in a circle to drink coffee, share ideas, listen, talk, and learn.

In some ways, this feels very contemporary, but the idea of group-led worship is nothing new.  The Brethren movement has been doing this kind of thing for more than a century.  Following Paul’s suggestions in 1 Corinthians 14:26, a typical Brethren service, although centered around communion, sets aside a generous chunk of time for anyone present to share with the group a thought, a prayer or a song.

The difference between this kind of church service and a more formally structured one is, perhaps, like the difference between going to a classical concert and taking part in a drumming circle.  The former may be more polished, more predictable, and perhaps ‘safer’.  The latter may be more chaotic, but is definitely more participatory.  Everyone plays a part, and when done well, everyone listens to and responds to each person’s contribution.

‘M’ is still figuring out what it wants to be, I think.  But, if you’re the kind of person who prefers dialog to lecture, or improvisation to formality, then I’d recommend that you pay them a visit.

This visit was slightly different as we had been invited to St. Mary’s to attend the baptism of a friend’s child.

While I am very familiar with a large range of Protestant denominations, Catholicism is still a bit of a mystery to me.  However, it’s one that I am determined to come to grips with.  St. Mary’s is one of three catholic churches in Barrie, and there were probably around 350 people in attendance at the service we were at, the second of the day.   Barrie has a large Catholic population, as well as a number of Catholic schools and social agencies.

So, I can’t really say that I’m getting to know the churches in Barrie unless I understand this denomination.  However, so far I haven’t got very far. I’d love to have the opportunity to sit down with a priest or well-informed layperson and get to hear what Catholicism in Barrie is all about.  And because my passion is for reconciliation and cooperation, I’d love to hear stories about how the Catholic churches in Barrie are working with others to impact the city.

So, the service.  St. Mary’s has a large, bright, airy sanctuary, with the light and sight lines all focused on the central altar.

Coming from an Anglican background, the liturgy itself was very familiar.  We sung hymns, listened to readings from the Old and New Testament and from the Gospel, and heard a short homily.  This was very well delivered, and was a meditation on the question that Jesus asks the first disciples – what are you looking for?

Communion at a Catholic church is still something I’m getting used to.  For one thing, it still hurts to be relegated to the role of an observer at what should be a shared meal.  I’m a passionate believer in Open Communion; a priest I know invites all present to share the bread and wine with the phrase ‘We welcome you because God welcomes you.’   I love this approach, because it replaces endless theological wrangling over who should and shouldn’t be allowed to participate in a sacrament with a simple recognition of God’s grace and invitation to community.

There are also some practical issues surrounding Catholic communion that I don’t understand yet.  Why do they only share the bread, and not the wine?  What is the purpose of the locked box to the right of the altar?  What is an ‘Adoration Chapel’, and how does it relate to communion?   Some churches take time to explain what they are doing to newcomers; at St. Mary’s, even during a baptismal service, it’s kind of assumed that you belong here and you know what is going on.

So, if you’re Catholic, and live in Barrie, please get in touch with me!  I’d love to have the chance to have some of these questions answered.

Once again I find myself leaving a church with slightly mixed feelings.

This morning I attended Essa Road Presbyterian Church.  This is a friendly congregation, with around 70 people in attendance.  The demographics are weighted towards the older end of the spectrum, but there were several kids and young families there too.

The structure of the service was very much like any other evangelical church: opening music, announcements, some hymn singing and a ‘talky bit’.

However today was also the ‘induction’ of several new elders, which gave me an interesting snapshot into the functioning of a Presbyterian church.

As I’ve noticed before, some churches find it important to be very precise in their understanding of church structure, and that is definitely the case here.  Clearly Presbyterians find church government a topic of high importance.  A significant amount of the service was given over to reviewing the structure of the Presbyterian church, the role of elders, and the way that the congregation is expected to treat them.

To be honest, I felt a little uncomfortable by some of this.  It was clearly stated that “God has ordained these elders” and that “Failure to submit to them is to rebel against God.” A distinction was made between congregants that are ‘teachable’ and submissive, and those that question authority.

I found myself wondering what an outsider would think of all this.   Would all this talk of authority and submission sound reassuring, or threatening?  A lot of the language used  deftly tied God’s authority with the Church’s authority.  I do find this a bit ironic coming from a Reformed church, which by definition rejects the authority that the Catholic church claims to derive from God.

One day I really hope that I have the opportunity to sit down with a catholic theologian, a reformed theologian, and possibly an umpire, and ask them both to explain to me why the structure and authority of their particular church is God given.

Having said all that, I had a very pleasant time after the service, meeting and chatting with folks from the church.  This is a welcoming congregation, and talking with the pastor afterwards I found a lot of support for the idea that the churches in Barrie should be complementing one another, rather than competing with each other.

One of the challenges that we will have to face as we work towards greater collaboration in the Church in Barrie will be addressing how we reconcile our deep convictions about ‘correct’ church structure and governance with our desire to bless and learn from our brothers and sisters in other denominations.

“Blessings on the peacemakers!  You’ll be called God’s children.”

I’ve been thinking recently about this statement of Jesus’.  “Blessings on the peacemakers.”

Jesus also said that some other folks were blessed, too.  The poor.  The hungry.  Those who mourn.  The pure in heart.  The meek.  The persecuted.

Some of these groups are easy to identify.  We could go for a stroll through downtown Barrie and meet the poor and hungry quite easily.  It wouldn’t take long, I’m sure, for us to find someone grieving.   And we’ve heard many stories of people being persecuted for standing up for what is right.

But peacemakers.  Who are they?  Where do they live?  What do they look like?

I’m  convinced  that reconciliation and peacemaking are essential elements of the mission of the church.  But I realise I know little about the practicalities of peacemaking.  Who should my role models be?  Who are the people that are actively bringing about reconciliation between groups in conflict?  Between Palestinian and Israeli, between rich and poor, between labour and management?  Between landlord and tenant, between conservative and liberal, between Catholic and Protestant? Between Pakistan and India, between Sunni and Shiite, between oil company and environmentalist?

Who are the people that stand in the gap, that refuse to accept the inevitability of conflict, that believe and hope and work towards just and equitable resolutions?

Who are the peacemakers?

A few weeks ago I had a fascinating conversation in a downtown coffee shop with a new acquaintance.  Among the many topics we covered was his conviction that the Bible presents one concrete, straightforward pattern for church structure and practice.

This got me thinking.   In theological circles we call the study of the Church ‘ecclesiology‘, from the Greek word for church, ekklēsiā.  In fact, theologians have all sorts of ‘ologies’.

• Christology is ‘talking about Christ’.
• Soteriology is ‘talking about salvation’
• Pneumatology is ‘talking about the Holy Spirit
• Eschatology is ‘talking about the culmination of history’

Interestingly enough, however, there doesn’t seem to be a word for ‘Kingdom-ology’, or the study of the kingdom of God.  I’ve never, ever heard the phrase ‘Basileology‘, which would be the logical term to use.

This seems to me a strange omission.  The word ‘church’ is mentioned twice in the gospels.  But the phrase ‘Kingdom of God’, or ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is used more than 80 times!  So why do theologians talk about the Church so much more than the Kingdom?

Am I missing something?  Is this actually a subject that’s taught at seminary?  Is there such a thing as ‘Introduction to Basileology’ or ‘Kingdom Studies 101’?  What would such a course look like?  What questions would it ask?  Which experts would we study?

In fact, while we’re asking these questions, what is the Kingdom of God?  And who is teaching and studying and talking about this question?