Each year, when I receive a notification from WordPress that this site is up for renewal, I wonder whether the right time has arrived to let it go.

Honestly, I so seldom sit down to write all of the reflections that fill my head at night when my eyes start to close or the prayers that I draft in response to email requests for help with words for specific situations that this feels like wasted space – the holding on to a season which has passed because I don’t know how many more things I can let go of in this lifetime.

More honestly, there has been so much movement for me in the form and feel of “worship” in ever-changing contexts that I no longer know the land on which I stand as a wanna-be-poet more than a liturgist, and community-builder more than a church-leader.

Every time I feel that I have found my groove, someone or something comes along and shakes up the rhythm or challenges the ritual.

And then there’s the unravelling of beliefs and belonging and the reravelling of new parts for me within a grand and mysterious picture made up of an infinite number of parts … and it feels like I’m sitting with this beautiful, but alarming, tangle of brilliantly coloured threads that can go together in so many ways that it’s really hard to begin ….

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• What is worship, really?
• Where does it fit within a daily discipleship, this “long obedience in the same direction” (to borrow words from Eugene Peterson)?
• Does liturgy have any real relevance in today’s world?
• How does it shape, change, guide, reform, renew, and sustain the Church?
• What does it mean to preach/proclaim and preside within the context of a postmodern world and a declining number of clergy?
• How do we hold with integrity the tension between time-honoured traditions and fresh language and rituals that tell the good news true both within and beyond our sanctuaries?
• Where do the words we are using come from and do we understand what they mean and how they might form and inform our beliefs and identity?
• Where are children located in the worshipping community?
• How do we give voice to many voices in ways that keep us simultaneously safe and uncomfortable?
• How can I guard against the ego which always seeks to make worship about me in some way?
• ………………………………………………………………………………………………..?
• And, of course, how does this connect with the growing, ageing, changing shape of this woman’s body, mind, heart, spirit, and experience?

These are the top-of-my-head questions that, in spite of all the resources available to us through a simple Google search or AI-prompt or a multitude of church meetings about growing God’s church, clamour for a space for real, deep dialogue and exploration.

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It’s good to know that I am not alone in this. I watch respected mentors, colleagues, and writers wrestle in a similar fashion. I listen to podcasts that seek to unpack the root and the remedy of the current epidemic of loneliness and disconnection that affects our world so deeply. I work – vulnerably, relationally, joyfully – with two congregations* who know that change is necessary and have begun to work together in mission and ministry: to nurture youth and children, to advocate for social and environmental justice, to hold space for unity and for diversity, and to build a safe community of love. And I sit, often, with people who suddenly find themselves behind a pulpit or a communion table or in a leaders’ meeting with significant doubts about their gifts for or calling to this work that sustains the body of Christ in each time and place.

So, as I begin to play within this space again out of the sincere conviction that there is as much meaning to sharing the questions and struggles as there is the discoveries and “resources,” I hope it may spark conversations, both online and on the ground, with one another.

You may want to take the time to write a few of your own thoughts and questions in the comments section or to continue the conversation in any of the social media platforms shared on my homepage.

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