We all long to live fully and meaningfully while we’re alive. But what we forget is that abundant life includes death. Every life is a series of experiences of deep and vibrant life, followed by some kind of little death, which is then followed by a new experience of life. And, while this truth is at the heart of Easter, it can be difficult to connect the realities of our daily lives with the Easter idea of resurrection.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we remember the universal cycle of life, death, and new life that fills our lives personally, collectively, and cosmically.

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The power of collective memory is profound. Sometimes we go to great lengths to remember events that are identified as especially significant for our life together. We recognise that we need to remember the past because it continues to shape and guide our future, and so we work intentionally to make sure we don’t forget. Every culture and nation makes use of public holidays and monuments to remember moments in their collective history and these acts of remembering have a profound impact on us both as individuals and as a collective.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we explore how we can do this work of exploring, evaluating and living more deeply into our religious memories as we gather for worship.

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In the last few weeks, we’ve been doing a deep dive into repentance as an act of worship and of transforming spirituality. And now, as we wrap this series up, we explore an aspect of repentance that isn’t often recognised or practiced. Repentance is much more than an act of personal piety. The prophets of Israel often called their people as a whole to repent together. Unfortunately, as Christianity has become more personalised and individualised, we have shifted away from collective, justice-oriented spirituality and become increasingly concerned with personal salvation and purity. But the prophets remind us that what we believe and how we live have social consequences. And we need to repent collectively when we have failed to live up to God’s values of justice, compassion, and inclusivity.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we explore what it means for us to embrace collective repentance in our worship.

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What if repentance is not just a personal practice to make us “right with God”? Jesus connected repentance with God’s reign—and that means it has a role to play in community, in our relationships with one another. And it is designed to help us to be more aware of each other, to heal us of our inherent narcissism and grow our capacity for empathy, compassion, and generosity. Repentance, then, is a highly social practice and how we practice it impacts not just us, but our families, friends, and neighbours—and even the strangers and enemies around us.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we explore how to practice repentance personally in a way that has an impact relationally and socially in our lives and world.

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Our minds play a large role in our perceptions and experience of our world, and so mastering our thoughts and not being at their mercy can be a massively significant shift in our lives. This is what spirituality—and particularly repentance—are designed to do.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we explore how repentance can help us to master our minds and emotions so that we can show up more fully, authentically, and courageously in our lives and relationships.

For an expanded version of this episode which goes deeper and offers more practical suggestions for progressive worship practitioners, sign up for the Sacredise Patreon. You'll also get additional bonus content from time to time, and exclusive discounts on premium Sacredise Resources.

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Too much repentance focusses on what we do wrong, on our sinfulness and unworthiness. But beyond confession and receiving forgiveness, it offers us little motivation or direction to actually change anything in our lives. For repentance to do its work, it needs to help us to see where we need to change but also where we are already doing well. It needs to offer us some practical guidelines for how we can change what needs to change and nurture what is already good. And it needs to empower us to know ourselves better in healthy and empowering ways.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we explore the relationship between repentance and self-awareness.

For an expanded version of this episode which goes deeper and offers more practical suggestions for progressive worship practitioners, sign up for the Sacredise Patreon. You'll also get additional bonus content from time to time, and exclusive discounts on premium Sacredise Resources.

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Traditionally repentance is often seen in terms of acknowledging our sins or our sinfulness and committing to not sinning again. When we limit repentance to this narrow focus, it can seem like a rather depressing discipline. It may feel like, to be truly spiritual and good, we should view ourselves rather negatively and spend a lot of time feeling guilty, bad, and worthless. The practice of repentance is so much more than this and it is actually a wonderfully positive, encouraging, and liberating spiritual discipline.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we explore how repentance can be the act of seeing our world differently and learning to live differently in it.

For an expanded version of this episode which goes deeper and offers more practical suggestions for progressive worship practitioners, sign up for the Sacredise Patreon. You'll also get additional bonus content from time to time, and exclusive discounts on premium Sacredise Resources.

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The world is a large, undefined thing. So it’s easy to say we love the world, but it’s very hard to know how to engage in loving actions toward the world. And when we speak of the world we are speaking about so many different things. We may mean the planet as a whole. We may mean the creatures and plants that fill the natural world. Or we may mean the global human community with all its cultures, systems and societies. The truth is we can’t really love the world as defined in any of these ways. It's too big, too vague, and too impersonal.

In this episode of The Progressive Worship Podcast we explore what it means to love the world and how our worship can teach us to be world-lovers in practical and meaningful ways.

For an expanded version of this episode which goes deeper and offers more practical suggestions for progressive worship practitioners, sign up for the Sacredise Patreon. You'll also get additional bonus content from time to time, and exclusive discounts on premium Sacredise Resources.

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Loving ourselves is not something we speak about when we talk about worship. It may even seem contradictory. But the lack of this element in our worship is one of the big challenges of worship in the Church today.

If our worship doesn’t teach us to love ourselves, it fails us. It denies the Gospel message that God loves us unconditionally. And it makes it far more difficult for us to bring our gifts and love into the world, because our capacity to love others is inseparably intertwined with our capacity to love ourselves.

For an expanded version of this episode which goes deeper and offers more practical suggestions for progressive worship practitioners, sign up for the Sacredise Patreon. You'll also get additional bonus content from time to time, and exclusive discounts on premium Sacredise Resources.

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At the heart of the Christian faith is the Great Commandment to love God and love our neighbour as we love ourselves. And yet, somehow, Christianity is not really known as a religion of love. It seems that we’re not very good at this loving others thing.

Worship is the central act of our faith and it is meant to teach us how to embody the values and priorities of Jesus. So, we would expect that it would teach us how to be deep and intentional lovers of others. But how can it do that? What needs to happen in our worship for it to transform us into people of love? That’s what we explore in this podcast.

For an expanded version of this episode which goes deeper and offers more practical suggestions for progressive worship practitioners, sign up for the Sacredise Patreon. You'll also get additional bonus content from time to time, and exclusive discounts on premium Sacredise Resources.

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