Maybe it's being sick, maybe it's just me being argumentative, etc.
A lot of this sounds fabulous. (A lot of this makes me think that, for me, Mark the Evangelist was my version of your perfect church.)
Some of it, though, strikes me as needing huge amounts of resources. Money and time and person power. There are things that simply can't be done when there's only a single minister. Having an ASL interpreter on standby? Even at CAN, where half the congregation had learnt Auslan, there was no one who could have interpreted above whatever level Miranda was at. So that would cut out the volunteer option.
And there are things in this that I think require the congregation to be made up entirely of people as dedicated to this vision as you, AND to not have any other demands on their time.
And: We will not sing songs in foreign languages just because we want to be diverse. We will sing songs from the cultures and traditions of those in our congregation. Sorry, but that makes huge assumptions about why we might be singing *anything*. Does this mean that in your dream church no one will sing in Latin? We might be singing something because it's *good*, because it fills us with joy, even though no one in the congrgation comes from that background - (I'm thinking "Masithi" and "Siyahamba" for two African-originating hymns/songs.)
It's a lovely statement, and it's making me miss MtE something chronic (They could have used a round of "Siyahamba" once in a while). But.
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Date: 2009-10-20 11:27 pm (UTC)A lot of this sounds fabulous. (A lot of this makes me think that, for me, Mark the Evangelist was my version of your perfect church.)
Some of it, though, strikes me as needing huge amounts of resources. Money and time and person power. There are things that simply can't be done when there's only a single minister. Having an ASL interpreter on standby? Even at CAN, where half the congregation had learnt Auslan, there was no one who could have interpreted above whatever level Miranda was at. So that would cut out the volunteer option.
And there are things in this that I think require the congregation to be made up entirely of people as dedicated to this vision as you, AND to not have any other demands on their time.
And: We will not sing songs in foreign languages just because we want to be diverse. We will sing songs from the cultures and traditions of those in our congregation.
Sorry, but that makes huge assumptions about why we might be singing *anything*. Does this mean that in your dream church no one will sing in Latin? We might be singing something because it's *good*, because it fills us with joy, even though no one in the congrgation comes from that background - (I'm thinking "Masithi" and "Siyahamba" for two African-originating hymns/songs.)
It's a lovely statement, and it's making me miss MtE something chronic (They could have used a round of "Siyahamba" once in a while). But.