THE MYSTERY WORSHIPPER

Oh you who can drop in to worship anytime, anywhere to rate the latest design techniques and marketing ploys of a church to try and nudge them into becoming the ecclesiastical equivalents of Claridges, Harvester or Macdonalds consider this.

You are part of the system; comfortable, well fed and at ease with Christianity, so much so, you can poke fun and parody. What about those who languish far from home and food, who trudge in the deserts of this world, who have no time to indulge in the luxury of cynicism and misrepresentations, who are trapped and for whom Christ came to rescue and redeem.

The Open Episcopal Church exists, in contradiction to what you say, to reach out to all and to make all the sacraments available to all, as the primary resources of outreach and redemption. Post the Host is just a small part of all that we do.

Join us in our evangelistic mission and divert the time you spend at present in trying to enhance the church into providing savvy, posh and fast food outlets and instead help make the bread of life available to the poor, most of whom are not to be found anywhere near church worship.

Neda Agha Soltan

We shall not forget you, nor your family, nor your friends, nor their tears nor their pain.

You will inhabit our prayers. You will join the pilgrim martyrs leading us to the promised land.

You will inpsire us in the darkness to apsire to the light.

You have paid the supreme price, as did Christ, for your noble beliefs and hopes.

May you be blessed in heaven and your loved ones comforted on earth.

CONTACTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Its typical that the UK media have been afraid of Post the Host so far, leaving the Guardian and the World Service to carry the news far and wide.

The cynicism of the British Press, their obsession with celebrity and their lack of ease with sincere religious innovation renders them incapable, it seems, of understanding how extraordinary Post the Host is in the history of Christendom.

As Bishops, priests and the general public reel around the world at this new provision and as people contact us in horror or in excited support, the tabloids and broadsheets are lost in the forest of MP's expenses or Jordan's failed marriage etc...

Meanwhile, the landscape of the Christian church has altered for good. Alleluia.

THE REVOLUTION BEGINS - WITH UPDATES

Over 400 hosts have now been posted out.

The first order was for an elderly person facing surgery this week and wanting to receive the Host before entering hospital.

Two international orders have been placed from Germany and Canada.

Sceptics and critics, see the miracles that Christ will work and be brave enough to set him free yourselves.

POST THE HOST HITS THE WORLD

Yesterday the Guardian covered www.postthehost.net. Then LBC, Premier Christian Radio, Italian TV and the BBC World Service.

Never before has the consecrated host been made available by post to all that desire to receive.

The gift of God, the living presence of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit, the unconditional love of the Trinity arriving through your door, by the special ministers of the sacrament, the postmen and postwomen. Alleluia. A new era has dawned.

IN REPLY TO ALLISON RUOFF

We share, I believe the passion to make Christ known. You want Christians to get out of church buildings and onto the streets and into the community. You will be heartened to know that that is the core vision which has inspired me since 1994 when I began ministering outside the traditional denominational structures. It is the core vision of the Open Episcopal Church which since 2001 has sought to make Christian ministry available to everyone outside the confines of church buildings. We have been involved in front line evangelism and have thus been able to build up a community of 16,000 members and many tens of thousands more who have attended our services.

Post the Host continues this drive to liberate Christ from the clutch of the professional priesthood and the rigidity of church structures.

You were worried that the Host should only be food for the faithful few. Can I ask you to to examine the ministry of Jesus who continually thought outside the box, who reinterpreted the traditions of old so they were unrecognisable from the ways the people of his day were practicising them, who lavished upon the people the treasures and grace of God.

Christ did not come to start a cosy club with treats for the few. He came to redeem the world and to that end , to give his life for the world.

Its a strange irony for you to believe that he would make himself fully available during his lifetime and be willing to die for us all but then want us to keep him under lock and key and away from the majority of the world.

You said that the word is the primary resource in evangelism. We agree perhaps, for Jesus is the Word, the Logos of God. That is why he goes before us to lead us to the lost and the lonely. He wants to stand at the door of the hearts of all the estranged and knock for entry.

Post the Host enables this to happen in a sacramental way. Support this bold and inspired work of God rather than try to make the walls higher still around the exclusive Christian community.

GUANTANAMO

Please no. The possibility contained in draft legislation to go before Congress to permit Guantánamo's suspected terrorists, who are facing the death penalty to plead guilty and so avoid full trial has sent a shiver down my spine.

The aberration of justice that Guantanamo has been would only be mired further by this move towards an expedient solution that is willing to be careless with life.

Our values and our democracy are based upon the sanctity of life, irrespective of the detainees actions. A full and fair trial must be at the basis of any final verdict that could result in a death penalty being passed, though the death penalty itself is also an aberration.

IRAN - THE SPECTRE OF WAR

Apparently month by month, experts chart how Iran installs more centrifuges inside its underground plant in Natanz, where these machines are used to enrich uranium. This highly sensitive process, which breaches five UN Resolutions, could be used either to produce fuel for nuclear power stations – or the essential material for an atomic bomb.

The nuclear issue here as in North Korea is threatening to destabilise world peace, either directly or through the development of the terrorist's capacity to devastate.

However we must be clear about what the volatile elements are. Thankfully Barak Obama is continuing his reconciliatory rhetoric. There is a great need for sensitive and respectful diplomacy and the requirement to understand the cultural and historical differences that exist between nations and their peoples.

Only then will we progress towards peace and overcome the darkness that looms only too near.

IN REPLY TO MICHAEL.

In response to Michael otherwise presenting himself as Cyprian.

Thank you for your recent meaningful contribution to the debate. Post the Host seeks to encourage those receiving to pray, to read the scriptures and to encounter and receive the Body of Christ. By so doing our missionary hope is that people can be drawn into deeper and closer relationship with those around them in whom the Spirit of God dwells.Post the Host does not seek to encourage dismembered reception, anymore than those receiving in hospitals or at home, rather to find ways to bring into closer contact those who are at present estranged.The internet and video resources are not to replace other more personal forms of ministry and worship but to lead to them or supplement them. As such they are evangelistic. Post the Host takes its ministerial responsibilities to those with whom we have contact very seriously as does the Open Episcopal Church. That is the very reason for our ministry outside the traditional church structures, to reach out and draw alongside the lost and the lonely.

SHIP OF FOOLS

Having read the thread discussion re Post the Host on the Ship of Fools web site I am disappointed. The quality of contribution meanders from the crass, erroneous and infantile to falling beneath any supposed standard of christian discussion. ( Damian Thompson's thread discussion is better, but not by much. )
Post the Host is one of the most important modern developments in the provision of christian ministry to have taken place and if all that Ship of Fools can produce is drivel, it is a sad indictment.
We would welcome informed and intelligent comments.

WESTMINSTER MELT DOWN

This is becoming very serious. If every MP who has fleeced the nation resigned how many would be left?

Away with their paltry excuses and weak explanations. A scam is a scam, a ride is a ride, a gravy train is a gravy train and all those aboard need to leave the train at the next station.

It may be few are left. It may be that politics needs to change for ever. It may be that revolution is the order of the day. It may be that radical means that which is beyond the sticking plasters that are being bandied around at present.

Wake up Parliament. A new era must begin.

BEACHY HEAD -In memory of the Putticks.

Oh glorious and beautiful land and seascape that makes us breathless in wonder yet chills us with its capacity to swallow us in our grief and despair.

The suffering of some knows no bounds, making this world a viscious and life denying place and it may be from that state of wretchedness that the decision to jump was taken.

However, it may have been a more determined though regrettable choice. Three family members, bound together in love who cannot conceive of life without each other and refusing to be swallowed, find in this awesome setting a doorway through which they can take the ultimate journey beyond our shores in the hope of arriving safely in the promised land.

I believe they have.

SUSAN BOYLE

Oh dear. The great and the good are now pontificating about the propriety of allowing Susan Boyle to have appeared on Britain's Got Talent. Even Nicci Gerrard's otherwise thoughtful article fails to avoid the trap of being infected by celebrititus.

It seems, in these latest minds, to be only those who are 'perfect' that will be allowed to appear on our screens. The ones with the myriad of human foibles and frailities will be brushed off stage.

Find me these perfect specimens who are not affected adversely by mass public exposure? Find me these stable personalities that have a right to perform their art because they and their families will live unscathed by the consequences?

The experience of celebrity is potent and dangerous but for the advantaged to seek to exclude others from it is disingenuous.

ON TWITTER

For any who are interested or want to dialogue:

www.twitter.com/bishopjonathan

MP'S EXPENSES

When we hear the promises being made about sweeping reform and the shock being expressed by some politicians, including the Prime Minister and Chancellor, about the corruption that has been unearthed, let us urge the journalists to keep asking the same revealing questions.

When the freedom of information request about MP's expenses was submitted years ago, did you campaign for disclosure and full transparency or were you one of those resisting to the end or keeping silent in the hope that only minimal details would emerge? If either of the latter could you do the honourable thing and resign immediately?