mountain masala

I Can't Wait for Christmas

I can't wait for Christmas
I can't wait for Christmas
The wait is going to be really short, really short
Cause it's not long to go!

I uncovered a musical gem today while doing some digital cleaning up. In the leadup to Christmas 2015, our minister Jock Dunbar and creative extraordinaire Adam Smith stole an idea from a US church to create an original piece of music.

[J & E. Photo used with permission.]

Step 1. Interview some children from the church asking them what they like and hate about Christmas, and also about what happened in the Christmas story.

Step 2. Give the videos to someone (in this case, me) and ask them to create a song lyric from what they said. So I wrote a kind of mini-opera lyric in several movements.

Step 3. Give the lyric to someone to write a melody. Now melody is not my strength. Glenyce was going to do it (she's a fantastic classical musician) but she couldn't, so she suggested Rob Boucher who happened to be in town. Rod said yes!

Step 4. Edit the video interview of the children down to a couple of minutes of highlights, remembering to reference the song lyric moments.

Step 5. Assemble your Christmas Eve choir and teach them the 6 minute mini-opera song.

Step 6. As part of your Christmas Eve service, tell the story behind the song, show the video of the interviews and then the choir presents the song as an item. Display the lyrics on screen.

Rod and I didn't get to meet up. I just emailed him the lyrics. It was Bernie and Elton. His score is Boucher Brilliance.

I filmed the interviews (all arranged by Adam) and Adam did the editing. However I've never seen the final video and was away for Christmas Eve. I have the original interview movies but can't show them without parental permission. 

Anyway, it was a brilliant idea and went so well for us. Huge thanks to Rodney m² Boucher.

Download I_Cant_Wait_For_Christmas_Lyrics_Chords

Download I_Cant_Wait_For_Christmas_Score

I_Cant_Wait_For_Chrismas_Demo

 

Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch

The Cardboard Church in Christchurch

A semi-temporary cardboard cathedral has been built in Christchurch and opened today. brilliant, both in a real sense and metaphorically - temporary vs permanent, structure and design, building and breaking down, memory and hope. and I have to say that this matters to me both because I have friends (and a great aunt) from Christchurch, and have been there once and walked the streets not long before the earthquake. so I feel a connection to this place.

So now, I'm wondering about things "on the ground" in Christchurch.  how are the locals? who is struggling at the moment?

Thinking of this week's lectionary readings about Abraham and faith...  Who are the people living in tents and having to move place? Who is building a temporary city?

And after all that, prayers for the people of Christchurch.

Sci-Fi Memes

I'm helping out Rev Dr Avril Hannah-Jones who hosts an annual "Church of the Latter Day Geeks" service at the intersection of gospel and... err... sci-fi geek culture. She's after some meme-type images to use in the service. Here are my contributions so far... For those who can't see the obvious...  Doctor Who, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of The Rings ... Not sure how many of these will make the cut...

social media and mainstream religion

Mainline churches come directly or indirectly from the medieval church, and medieval or pre-modern communication was highly relational. In its own low-tech way, the medieval church was networked. People created and shared knowledge and shaped their practical theology or their spirituality by sharing stories...

The modern period changed that. The printing press distributed knowledge and allowed the Reformations to happen, but it also privatized reading... Reading was not done in community anymore, and that changed the relational nature of communication...

Social media changed that. It democratized communication, giving everybody access to all kinds of information. It also gave people access to the means of creating, sharing and collaborating on information.

an excellent interview interview with Dr Elizabeth Drescher, author of "Tweet if You Heart Jesus" here. I've just borrowed the book from our College library. more to come...

the church zombie walk

that's what Halloween,  aka "All Hallow's Eve" is. The night of the dead. remembering the saints who surround us. who they were, why and how they died. if I had my own church I'd make it a creepy gothic thing this night. skeletons, death metal, maybe even real tattoos on offer (serious). not messy church but bloody church. 'i see dead people'...

tonight we tried to read from the book "365 saints" by, wait for it... Woodeene Koenig-Bricker. It was supposed to be dead serious but it turned out funny thanks to the saints names and some of the very lame 'life applications'. a great pity as these were remarkable people.

some excellent saint's names:

Andrew Dung-Lac
Christina the Astonishing
Hedwig (no, she wasnt an owl....)
Imelda Lambertini (no, not Lamborghini...)
John Before The Latin Gate
Lucy
Sylvester I (i know what you're thinking...)
Wadetrudis

but no Brian...

next year lets all dress up as dead saints and walk the street and tell our stories...

new media for sinners and saints

Here's a great article from Union Seminary's New Media Project. Its an interview with Nadia Bolz-Weber, the Lutheran pastor at House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. I met her briefly at Greenbelt in 2008.A remarkable woman and a facsinating church community.

Read  Ancient Liturgy for Scruffy Hipsters with Smartphones

what gift will you give?

the church of england bookshop in the uk knows just what a newly ordained person needs....

if you're attending an ordination....

what will you give?

sunday's coming

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

do we still need christian education? - part one

apologies for the quiet blog... i seem to be going backwards at the moment...

i've just had three days in melbourne at the annual meeting of the uniting church's national christian education reference committee, something that i joined a couple of years ago. great to catch up with people from across the country and meet some new folk (including paul, who is a 'research fellow in multi-modal learning'.  damn! how I want that on my business card!) 

one visitor asked whether 'christian education' was a modernist term that we didnt need in a postmodern word. i'm glad he asked it (although we didnt get enough time to explore why he did). so, is CE a thing of the past, or what?

growing disciples

speaking of our "growing disciples" project - the website is here. it's a group project...