Rotundus.com

It's been an interesting week and a half with a fair number of photo opportunities available. My family was out in Alberta for about a week, and then I left Saturday morning to hang out in Edmonton and watch a little bit of soccer.

I haven't had the time to add any comments to photos or do any significant pruning, but I figured that I would at least point you to a few of the new photo galleries:

• My July trip to the Fraser Valley
• Three hours in a prairie location with no trains rolling by
• The arrival of the coffee mugs
• A photogenic grasshopper and a few trains nearby Canmore
• My family in Alberta
• Soccer photos

(There was some damage to the shipment of mugs, but most of them survived. Damage during shipping is covered by the company producing the mugs, but it'll take some time to get replacements. I've pestered Ryan into dealing with these mugs on the BC end.)

I picked up a 3rd party power adaptor for my laptop off eBay for less than half the cost of buying another Apple one, and now my laptop is up and running again. It's been a few months since I last used the thing, so it's nice to have a somewhat portable platform available for use again. (Also something a little less noisy than my desktop).

I received a memo thing yesterday from the post office informing me that I've got something to pickup from the local post office this afternoon. I'm hoping that it's my mug order that's finally arrived.

Anyways, my family is scheduled to be stopping by again in a couple of hours or so, so I guess that I should get to the laundry before they arrive. It still feels a little odd having my family visiting my place, but at least with the current setup of couches everyone can be accomodated reasonably well.

I was forwarded a link to another post on attire for worship by the pastor of the PCA that I've been attending lately. A couple of paragraphs taken from it:

We seek to make sure that our musicians know their role is to draw attention to the surpassing greatness of God’s glory in Jesus Christ. That means clothing that would draw attention to them is inappropriate. Categories include clothes that are immodest, tight, “loud,” dirty, or sloppy. Of course, those standards are variable in different cultures and to different people, but usually every church has a fairly defined idea as to what qualifies. Regarding modesty, we want to avoid anything that accentuates or reveals what could be sexually alluring.

By the way, our pastors, who stand on the side of the stage as we sing, are dressed in a variety of styles. We purposefully want to communicate that we don’t believe a certain kind of dress equates to godliness. While we appreciate and respect the conviction some have that dressing up is a way of showing honor to God as we meet together, we’re convinced that God places the greater emphasis on the heart attitude behind what we wear, and that the church will always have a wide range of clothing (James 2:1-5).

This sort of attitude towards dressing for worship is one thing that has also been coming up in the church history class that I've been listening to lately. One of the things that's been discussed there was a push during the reformation away from the clothing of a roman catholic priest to more academic apparel in order to emphasize the role of preaching. Still, this also reflected a push to less specifically-ecclesiastical clothing.

I'm curious to hear thoughts on some of the following practices. Some you might be in favour of, some you might be neutral about, and some you might not care for. I'm curious about which and why:

• Standing during scripture reading as a sign of respect
• People in the CanRC seem to have debated individual cups for communion versus a shared cup, but I can't recall the same debate over bread. What I've seen a few times now is communion done with people tearing bits off a communal loaf. Is this practiced anywhere in the CanRC as well? It seems to me to emphasize oneness, while at the same time being perhaps more hygenic than all sharing a common cup
• Not having the minister on the pulpit for the whole service. Langley seems to be gradually moving in this directionm with an elder now introducing the "pre"-service song. Generally, I've found that in the PCA typically an elder (or elders) will lead the first part of the worship service before the minister steps up to the pulpit. (This may include the call to worship, one or more prayers and much of the congregational singing.)
• Responsive readings ... of passages of scripture? ... of some confession? A couple of comments on this issue: when responsive readings of scripture are done, responsive readings may be set out in the back of a hymnal (or perhaps in a liturgy sheet or on an overhead). The second bit of this question follows from the responsive reading of part of the Heidelberg Catechism this afternoon in the URC. I've emphasized a few times how I think that the catechism is inappropriately elevated in the CanRC, but if one is to put such a document in such a place this seemed perhaps more effective than simply having the minister recite the questions and the answers.
• Laughter during the sermon if the minister says something humourous. This isn't done in the CanRC, but do you think that this is intrinsically wrong to have during worship?