Kia ora e te whanau
Curating Worship
Last week I floated the prospect of starting a weekly zoom conversation in preparation for the coming Sunday’s worship. This is to be primarily targeted for congregations without ordained clergy in the driver’s seat – an increasing reality across the motu.
I have a number of colleagues (and others) interested in supporting the venture – and who are keen to ‘front-load’ our gatherings with resources available before we meet. Hopefully we’ll be able to post links to such resources on the UCANZ website before-hand. With their involvement these gatherings will have a richness I’m generally unable to provide on my own. I’m not an expert, and my preparatory process is pretty simple and unsophisticated. Here, my goal is to get the people in the room together who are keen to learn and to share (we can potentially be doing both at the same time). My primary role will be to facilitate the conversation.
Initially, the zoom will be open to whoever wishes to participate. I don’t wish to exclude anyone. If we need to put some protocols around how we are together, that will become apparent, and we’ll deal with it as we go.
I’ve discussed this with the UCANZ Exec , and we’re now planning for this to happen at 10am on Tuesday mornings (recognising that earlier in the week is more useful).
Our first Curating Worship encounter will be Tuesday the 16th of June (2 weeks away). I’ll be posting the zoom link in my newsletter next week.
Have feedback? Please, don’t hesitate to respond.
Leadership & Personal Development Resources
Why Willpower Fails and How to Restore Focus
I can’t do better than to quote the opening summary of this research based article coming out of Neuroscience News:
A comprehensive neurobiological assessment mapped the structural, age-related, and environmental forces driving the modern crisis of human attention. The research details how smartphones and communication platforms intentionally exploit the brain’s evolutionary dopamine-reward pathways, substituting effortful, long-term focus with zero-effort wins.
By dismantling the myth of raw willpower, Stanford experts demonstrate that cognitive sustainability requires structural lifestyle intervention, specifically shifting from reactive resistance to “proactive control,” integrating physiological “bio” breaks, and utilizing self-hypnosis to systematically lock the brain into highly focused “flow” states.
The article is much more accessible than this sounds. For those of us addicted to social media in it’s many forms, and who grieve the amount of time and energy that it robs, this is a must read. The article is not long, identifies the key issues (including why will-power does not work), and provides useful strategies for reclaiming personal sovereignty. Of course, it doesn’t apply to me
. This article can be engaged with here: https://neurosciencenews.com/neurobiology-focus-proactive-control-30784/
How to Hack Fear, and Do the Things that Scare you
I wish I’d come across the concepts laid out in this article 50+ years ago – assuming I’d have taken any notice. It may well have set my life on quite a different trajectory. Not that I have any major regrets on how my life has turned out, yet I’m only too aware of the place that allowing fear has limited whom I might have become. The author identifies the issues, and offers useful strategies for actually going ahead and doing what we fear. This Psychology Today article can be accessed here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/202605/how-to-hack-fear-and-do-things-that-scare-you
AI Is Eroding Critical Thinking At Work
I know that I’ve banged the ‘AI caution’ drum a bit of late. Clearly, I’m not an early adopter. For those who are all in, or are dipping their toes into AI, this Forbes article (I hope you can access it) points out both where AI is useful, and where it can be dangerous. The issue becomes stark when we trust AI, and suspend our own critical faculties in checking out what it’s producing on our behalf. I can see this as a real problem – it looks so good, sound right, why wouldn’t we trust it? Trusting, without checking, sets up a diminishment in our own creative and critical faculties, and potentially producing stuff which is just not accurate – something we would have picked up if we had done the work ourselves and not delegated it. While the author offers corrective strategies, it seemed to me that these require considerable self-discipline to effectuate. The article (hopefully) can be accessed here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisrosenberg/2026/05/28/ai-is-eroding-critical-thinking-at-work-the-window-is-closing/
Homilies and Preaching Resources
My response to the lectionary Gospel for the 7th of June – based on Matthew 9 vs 9-13 (I’ve chosen to consider only on the first part of the Lectionary reading, leaving verses 18-26 unaddressed), and focusses on the calling of the most unlikely of all the disciples – Matthew himself. It can be engaged with here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YooS773qxM
Gospel Conversations – out of the Dunedin Anglican Diocese. They host a conversation of (usually) 4 Theologians / Practitioners. The site with all its options can be accessed here: https://www.calledsouth.org.nz/gospel-conversations/. Led by Michael Godfrey, rather than the Gospel text, this year they are generally focusing on other parts of the Lectionary. For this coming Sunday, the 7th of June, they seem to step outside the Common Lectionary and consider Isaiah 42:10–20 alongside John 15:9–17, asking ‘What could the “good news” be for the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand as we continue learning how to live as a three tikanga Church.’ It can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llyFtg2AhGw
Rev Darryn Hickling (Methodist colleague leading the Rolleston Project) has posted a brief reflection on Instagram – focussing on the calling of Matthew in Matthew 9 vs 9-13, and titled ‘I see you.’ It can be accessed here: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZB929fBUUi/?ref=xav_igxfb_comet_ig_bookmark_mega_menu_launch