The challenge of ethnodoxology
Been thinking about worship in a multicultural city such as London, a bit this week. Partly prompted by stuff from my dissertation a couple of months back, partly by some colleagues and partly by some input from Muyiwa at our worship training day last week.

I think the answer may partly lie in encouraging home-grown worship, both in music and beyond.
To encourage communities to express worship in songs that are birthed from within the community rather than simply buy the latest "Now that's what I call worship" type CD. Or at least take existing songs and use them as tools rather than recreating the "album version" like a dodgy covers band.

Confession: I'm actually a big consumer of worship music, I own lots of albums (it helps to have a producer friend), and hunt for free stuff online. But I know at the same time I have gotten lazy and have not written any music for a long while. Pete Ward charts the rise and place of the worship music industry well in Selling Worship, which I shall add to my re-read list!

Rambling thoughts I fear, but helping people authentically express worship is a huge thing. I think music and singing do still (and always will) be a key part of that, if only we can be willing to move beyond our own narrow expectations.

T Shirt Must Have
Found this great tshirt. Available here.
And fear not there is a UK shop...

And if you scroll down you see some "Baptist Chick" tshirts, which actually worry me more!

Worship Training Day
Unashamed plug if any London Baptists (or any other local Christians) stumble across here for our worship training day on Saturday. Booking from from here

Retro Gold
The other highlight of the weekend in Bournemouth was finding in W.H. Smith's this classic "Roy of the Rovers" re-issue comic. Published by Egmont it's apparently a series of retro re-issues.
Brilliant stuff.

The only downside is that in the first story Melchester are wearing their Nike strip, and later a plain strip. No sign of the classic 1981 Gola outfit. Still you can't have it all...

Bandwagon Jumping
I joined Twitter, will see if it lasts (my use of it rather than the site itself!).

Still I thought that about blogging, and I've been here for over 5 years (yes blogging's so 2004...)

Assembly
The Baptist Assembly's over for another year, next year Plymouth (which doesn't begin with "B").
Plenty of blog comment (Andy has a bit of list of who has commented so far).
Overall it was a good time on Bournemouth, staying in a nice place (even if the staff struggled to do maths on more than one occasion when asked to split a bill), good weather (Tim has a great pic of the beach), and hanging out with good people.

In terms of the event itself, I always quite like these things. My boss, Pat Took did a great job speaking on the final morning on being "a Radical Community", and Kingsley Appiagyei spoke passionately about the need for renew and revival in the UK (seemed to me to be without some of the "revivalist" hype).

Could it be better? Probably. The average attender remains white and grey haired, but this is shifting for the better (and it is a strange way to spend May bank holiday!). But overall there seems to me to be a more positive "vibe" around the Union. I was glad to hear Kingsley's remarks about rejecting cynicism, a trap we can all fall into. And we need to take seriously the call to prayer. It's always going to be difficult to do an event for a diverse range of churches that make up the Union, but this is a good step in the right direction I think.


Some photos from this year and last are on Flickr (not mine!).