The Dangerous Saints we've met in past years are pictured below.
Click on any of the pictures below to see what we dug up on them.
Dangerous Saints – the title is intentionally provocative – invites us to look at the actual lives of three famous Christian figures and discover just how saintly they really were, and how they sometimes weren’t. click for more»
In the process we might discover that a saint is not just somebody very good and very dead, but actually a real human being with loves, hates, passions and weaknesses. Some of them would be intensely embarrassed to find themselves memorialised in a statue or a stained glass window. Most of us know some part of their stories, perhaps in a sanitised version suitable for children. But we seldom enough encounter for example -
- Joan the stroppy teenager,
- Ruth the undesirable alien, or
- John provoking Salome's naughty Dance of the Seven Veils.
Commonly, Dangerous Saints consists of house group studies on weekday evenings, linked with all-age church services at The parish church on Sundays. There is also an online Coversation Zone.
Discussions are lively and sometimes contentious. Orthodox views may be challenged. On occasion participants have to ‘agree to disagree’. But at the very least we come to an understanding of what each other is talking about, and why.
Each discussion is complete in itself and self-contained. Though each connects with all the others, missing one session does not handicap you from participating in the others.
Coupled with the adult discussions are family services where the themes and
demonstrations are designed for all-age appreciation of the same stories.
All the children's material appears above a clearly marked 'Plimsoll Line'
-- the contentious stuff is underneath.
Some of the hymns we use are the obvious ones, like 'O when the saints go marching in'
click for music»
and the church's favourite, 'For All the Saints'
click for words and music».
There's a nice children's song as well click for words and music».
The series was designed by Richard Spence.
(There is a Saint Richard»,
but he isn’t it.)
For more information , email Richard at dr.dick@xtra.co.nz»
or txt/call him on 027 222 1660.