Week of May 31, 2020
I am taking a break from my survey of the history of the Church through the centuries to reflect for a moment about that topic and the celebration of Pentecost this Sunday. Pentecost is often considered the “birthday of the Church” because it is the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus’ followers fifty…
Week of May 24, 2020
To try to sum up all of the factors that led to the Reformation in a Church newsletter article is quite impossible. It is easy to point to the abuses that were occurring in the Roman Catholic church politically, financially, and theologically as the instigators of Reformation supporters, but that would also ignore the changes that…
Week of May 17, 2020
I am continuing with my overview of Church history, architecture, music, and liturgy during this season of reflection and physical distance this week by embracing a fairly long period of time: 1073 to 1517 AD. The political and cultural changes in Europe during these centuries are too vast and various to sufficiently encapsulate here, but the…
Week of May 10, 2020
During this Easter season I’ve been exploring the history of Christianity with a focus on architecture, music, and liturgy as a way for us to enjoy and expand our own understanding of those elements of our own faith tradition that seem perhaps just a little farther away right now. This week my focus is the…
Week of May 3, 2020
I’m continuing with my survey of Church history, architecture, music, and liturgy this week with the period of the rise of the Roman Church (313-750 CE). It is during this time that secular authority took on a new and dramatic role in the life of the Christian faith. But first, some backstory. The emperor Diocletian divided the…
Week of April 26, 2020
Last week, I began to talk about how shared Christian history of liturgy, music, and worship, beginning with the earliest generation of the Church. The time between those first Christian communities and the time of Constantine (roughly 100 to 313 CE) can be described as “the Domestic Church” because so much of Christian life occurred in…
Week of April 19, 2020
During this unusual and challenging time, I have found comfort, inspiration, and engagement spiritually in reflecting on the history of the Church. Some of this is revisiting things I learned about in seminary, other aspects are new avenues of learning. But as we move through the Easter season, I thought it might be of value to share…
Week of April 12, 2020
As we approach Easter, I would like to share two related thoughts: Prayer is worship. Every breath can be a prayer. This week we worship together by gathering online together to pray at the same time. There were some wrinkles in our initial, rushed roll-out of online services that have thankfully been resolved so that participants…
Week of April 5, 2020
When it comes to thinking about Church in the time of COVID-19, I am finding myself having to drill down pretty deep into the theology of our liturgy. Church is, at a core essential level, a community. Not being able to gather together for worship, especially in the holiest week of the year, is something that…
Week of March 29, 2020
Right smack in the middle of Lent is the feast day of the Annunciation, a jarring anachronism in regards to the narrative of Jesus’ life playing out through the Lent/Holy Week/Easter cycle. As I mentioned earlier this week in the “Mini-Corner,” the Annunciation celebrates the visit of Gabriel to Mary to tell her that she is…