Juan Oliver’s post on “At the Threshold” offers a perceptive look at power, control, creativity, liturgy, and life-giving practice. He focuses his concern on our churches’ call to be “icons of the kingdom,” and our tendency to be, instead, “a church spending all its energy on controlling each other.”
Oliver continues, “This is going to kill us, first because healthy newcomers smell this at a distance and wisely stay away. Second, because creativity, both in-house and in outreach, cannot thrive in such an atmosphere. And without a huge investment in creativity we are going to die.”
Oliver’s prescription: “We must start modeling a habit of trusting each other’s ability to create if we are to exist at all.”
Feeling inspired by Oliver’s words to explore further? Then you might be interested in All Saints Company, founded by Rick Fabian and Donald Schell. All Saints is dedicated to exploring strategies for the renewal of church life through the liturgy. Fabian and Schell, Episcopal priests who founded St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco, continue to call on people to model transformative faith in liturgy and in their daily lives.