The way we arrange the furniture in our lives (both the literal and the non-literal) communicates so much about who we are and who we aspire to be. And it sets the background scenery to our story. If the arrangement of the furniture is at odds with our goals, this can frustrate or even prevent us attaining our goals. One cannot physically relax in a living room without comfortable chairs. Equally, an untidy desk can be an impediment to work. Less literally, a cluttered calendar has no space for a new departure in life (e.g. deciding to pray regularly) – something has to move out to make space.

So it interests me immensely how we arrange the furniture in our church buildings. We should sometimes stop and ask what our furniture says about our understanding of who we are and who God is calling us to be.

Continue reading →

As vicar of Greenside Parish, I have been exploring with my church the idea of adopting a church rule of life. Recently, we began to look at some potential wording for such a rule as a way of exploring the idea. Whether we will ever adopt this wording or even something similar to it remains to be seen. For now, it is just an exploration.

The words we have been considering are below. Continue reading →

Last weekend, I attended a new monasticism conference in London. My interest in new monasticism primarily concerns how parish church might be influenced and, in some way, become “new monastic” in character. These are my reflections, then, from a parish church perspective.

Continue reading →

This is the third in a series of posts about new monasticism in parish church. Here, I begin to ponder what items might appear in a rule of life for a parish-based expression of new monasticism. I’ve been preaching on these things so, where appropriate, I’ll include links to sermon recordings/transcripts. We’ll start with just two or I’ll never get round to publishing…

Continue reading →

Having previously set out some of my thoughts about what we were calling “parish monasticism”¹We’re now calling it “new monasticism in the parish context” because that’s what we really mean – even if this name is a little bit of a mouthful. The emphasis here is on new monasticism to be clear that “parish monasticism” is not a different thing to “new monasticism”, but, rather, an expression of new monasticism in a particular context., the next question is how to proceed practically. It’s all very well to talk about doing this – but how do we actually begin?

This week, I began a foray into new monasticism with my church at our annual parochial church meeting. My thinking was aided by discussions held around an upcoming New Monasticism conference in October in which we pondered what “new monasticism” actually is. Like most movements of the Holy Spirit, this one proves difficult to pin down. However there was broad agreement around one thing: having a common rule or rhythm of life. This set me wondering as to whether this is a good place to begin.

Continue reading →