In the land of the nearly blind you need to draw really big caricatures! This intriguing comment from Flannery O'Connor offers an entry point for last Sunday's exploration of the Jesus' words to the crowds in John 6 about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. You might like to read more here. If you explore the link immediately above you will have read and also heard, for the audio of the sermon is now posted on the blog site, an explanation of the psychospiritual and sociospiritual dynamics of worship. Worship is the one activity that lies at the heart of what it means to Episcopalian. As we often say: as we worship, so we believe. The downside to the centrality of worship in our practice as a church is that often we think that offering decent worship is enough on its own. It's not! Our liturgical tradition of worship is complex and it's not immediately accessible to those who come fresh and new to an Episcopal Church. Inaccessibility can be a weakness, as folk can be easily put off. Yet, complexity can be a strength, because it stretches us to move beyond our modem expectation that everything should be immediately accessible and available. This is the world of the lowest common denominator and it's profoundly unsatisfying. Complexity offers depth. Worship thrives when it is nurtured by spiritual and theological formation. We need to make time on our Sunday mornings for Christian Formation, not only for the young, but also for everyone. This might mean in due course that we change the pattern of our Sunday mornings. We will know more when we have the information from our members about what they need individually and the kind of community they long for St. Martin's to become through our participation in RenewalWorks. St. Martin's is part of a cohort of parishes that will launch RenewalWorks on the 12th September with an on-line spiritual inventory survey that we encourage all our members to complete. Assistance will be offered to those who feel they are not internet proficient. Each week I reveal a little more about this program and you can now see back weeks of my weekly e-news commentary here. RenewalWorks reflects ten years of research into the key characteristics of vital congregations. This research emerges from work with more than 1,800 churches, including 100 Episcopal congregations, and around 500,000 congregants around four key questions:
1. Where are you on your spiritual journey?
2. Where are we as a congregation?
3. Where do you feel called to go?
4. How will you get from there to here? Our expectation is that this program will provide us with the in-depth analysis that will enable us to chart mutually agreeable directions of travel into 2016 and beyond.
See you in Church, uncomfortable though it is at this time of year, on Sunday! Mark+ | 
