Current issue—Spring 2010:
Highlights from archives
Columnists
10 surprises about student worship (part two)
In my last column, I began to share my “top 10 list” of what I have learned about worship as a campus minister. One of the biggest surprises was that many of these items are not unique to worship with young adults. Take a look at the top five:
#5 Coffee and community are as important [...]
Tomorrow I will be ordained
Tomorrow I will be ordained to the priesthood at All Saints Cathedral in Halifax, N.S. When I reflect on the long journey up to this point, I sometimes feel like Job, listening as God speaks these words out of the whirlwind: “‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins [...]
read moreA think tank for the new South Africa
Once the seat of apartheid South Africa’s Calvinist, intellectual elite, Stellenbosch University is yet another site of social transformation. Its School of Theology is evidence of this. While it once trained pastors for the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), the school now provides theological education to members of the DRC’s former “daughter” or mission churches, linked together under the rubric of “The Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa.”
read more10 surprises about student worship (part one)
I’ve been in campus ministry for just over three years now. When I started, I knew this was a very different context than parish ministry. I thought my assumptions, especially about worship, would be challenged, and they have been, although not always in ways I expected. So here is a countdown of my top surprises. [...]
read moreMe and my clergy collar
“It must be hard for you to wear your collar today!” These words from a stranger hit me like a Mac truck as I walked into the local gas station to pay for my fill-up and get the morning paper.
I couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. Just the night before a former Roman Catholic [...]
Old bricks, new hope in Johannesburg
Central Methodist and J.L. Zwane churches demonstrate the transforming power of the gospel in how they embrace the outcast. But what of South Africa outside the church? Can we discern God’s claim in so-called “secular space”?
read moreFermented Faith
Thursday afternoons are the highlight of my week. Around 2:00 I bring the conversations in my office to a close, and log off my computer. At 2:15 I head across campus to a local pub. By 2:30 I’ve met the group already gathered there, and another week of Fermented Faith has begun.
read moreRapping and youth ministry: doin’ it for da kids
I am a rapper. Well, I try. This past spring, I (as “DJ Cranmer”) teamed up with my Lutheran friend, Peter “Via Media” Reinhardt, to write a little rap called “Straight Outta Compline.” It was a lighthearted attempt to show how Anglican liturgy and tradition is indeed cool.
read moreThe AIDS church
J. L. Zwane Church has AIDS.
This Presbyterian congregation runs a series of impressive programs reaching out to members of the Guguletu community striken or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has reached staggering proportions in South Africa’s townships.
read moreThanks to small churches
When I was an undergrad student in the early ’80s, going to church involved much planning and stealth. You certainly didn’t want other students to discover what you were up to, and admitting that you were Christian implied you really weren’t very bright after all.
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