new smallritual.org

colour changes here to go with the new smallritual.org. new menu system, photos gone to flickr, all emerging church stuff in one menu [though the actual locations of old files has not changed]. the menus are in chronological order and give dates now - i was curious to see how my ideas develop through iterations, which was disguised by the previous layout. not to mention that some stuff is 'of its time' while still being interesting later. and loads of liturgical stuff put into the 'small rituals' section [formerly 'stuff' - why didn't i think of 'small rituals' earlier? it's so obvious]. if it's good enough for proost i ought to have it on my own site ;) and some of it didn't make the proost cut [yet] but i like it anyway.

also the article i wrote for the royal college of organists' 'church music quarterly', published in june - a classic case of the same old same old with a new thought - 'alternative worship is the first church movement to fully embrace recorded music as its normal means of expression'. ['alternative worship' because that's the term i was approached with, rather than 'emerging church'. the article is a miracle of compression, there wasn't space to argue!].

Comments

[John H]

Nice article, good new thought. I think the singing issue goes deeper that merely a lack of material or it not fitting a particular service though. I think that in our culture, singing has become the preserve of performers. It's no longer something that "ordinary folks" do, and many people might actually feel uncomfortable being asked to sing in public.

[steve collins]

you're right and i've said so elsewhere, but i had to compress so much for that article - when writing about alt worship to an audience that's not familiar with it there's so much explanation of the basic situation required before getting to the meat of the argument.

the magazine's readership is organists, choirmasters, church musicians - my 'new thought' declares them more or less redundant! so it'll be interesting if there's any reaction [it's quarterly so the next issue will be out around now].