Values

I had been a priest for fifteen months, and was visiting my old friend Joe Doss who’d just recently been made the rector at Grace Church. New Year’s Day 1974. He asked me to preach and preside at a New Year’s Day/Holy Name of Jesus liturgy in the Grace Church’s chapel. I was hurting and confused. My marriage was coming apart and in dark moments I counted myself a failure as a priest and as human being. So I was deeply grateful for my friend’s invitation to preside... Read more about A Breath of Fresh Air

Upon first entering St Gregory Nyssen Episcopal Church in San Francisco, you will see a church distinctively arranged. Immediately before you stands an altar table in an open space; and rising beyond it in a bright courtyard, a rocky baptismal font. Nave seating for worshippers stretches off to the right.

St Gregory’s altar table bears two inscriptions: one pedestal facing the entry doors reads in Greek from Luke’s gospel, Read more about The Scandalous Table

Just what concrete steps should we take to make a new economic system that's NOT-
1.) ruled by a few 2.) economically unjust 3.) chronically violent and 4.) religiously legitimated?

Occupy Wall Street? Actually these four eerily familiar bullet points are Marcus Borg’s description of the ‘four central features’ of ‘the ancient domination system,’ that prophetic voices in the Bible... Read more about Human Microphone: Liturgy and Pedagogy

"Services in Episcopal church are like repeating fifth grade. There’s no place for me there.”
“Do I have to be able to read music to belong to this church?”
My colleagues who heard this observation and this question, one from a friend, the other from a stranger, are seasoned, committed leaders in our church, but both felt they were hearing something significant in the impression of a first-time visitor to an Episcopal Church. Read more about Like repeating fifth grade

We pursue evangelism using desire instead of shame
We realize transcendence through affection instead of fear
We make bonding playful instead of needed

4. We pursue evangelism using desire instead of shame

In the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa wrote that our infinite desire is the way humans are most like God. Gregory was the outstanding innovative thinker of his age, and the last systematic theologian until Thomas Aquinas; Read more about Core Values 4: Evangelism Using Desire

We treat scripture as a conversation instead of ideology
We realize tradition as creative instead of nostalgic
We hold reason as balance instead of inevitability
Read more about Core Values 3: Reason as Balance

We treat scripture as a conversation instead of ideology
We realize tradition as creative instead of nostalgic
We hold reason as balance instead of inevitability Read more about Core Values 2: Tradition as Creative Expression

All Saints Company took form to support churches’ worship and common life in our time. We began work at Yale University in 1974, and founded St Gregory of Nyssa Church in 1978. Read more about Core Values 1: Scripture as Conversation

Sometimes when we’re planning something as familiar as a liturgy, clergy and musicians get impatient to ‘get it done.’ And so we begin without first asking questions of principle or reminding ourselves of why we’re doing what we’re doing, in other words we skip the ‘first things first’ that ‘prin Read more about Horse Before the Cart?

Christians have taught for centuries that our Sacraments are Signs. Different churches have counted different numbers of Sacraments; but scholars agree that the Eucharist is preeminently Jesus’ own Sign. So his Church must hold his Sign up clearly. Read more about Welcoming the Stranger