Fellow Travellers

22 04 2013

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

554779_10151399707603450_1390827641_nBack during my first year of seminary, I sat in the back row most classes. This should not, of course, be surprising, as I have been found seated at the back of most classrooms for most of my life. As an introvert, this was a great place from which to take everything in before deciding whether or not to speak.

By everything, I don’t simply mean the professor’s brilliant lecture. This bird’s eye view also afforded me the opportunity to observe the ways in which people responded to the professor, the material, and with each another.

Throughout that first year at Wycliffe College, I sat predominantly at the back of the classroom, and in most classes next to the same student. He was studying to become a priest. I had no idea why I was there. Divine will? Exploration? Youthful rebellion? Read the rest of this entry »


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A Truly Remarkable Gift

21 04 2013

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

I think what brought it all home for me, wrestling with questions of faith an spiritual gifts, these past days, was a conversation with a friend. Driving into the city together, we were sharing stories of life, and faith with its attendant joys and struggles. It was there that I first voiced much of the wrestling that turned into my previous two posts (Concerning Spiritual Gifts & More Faith Required).

It was during that conversation that I first allowed myself to consider that the gift of faith, if a gift of God’s Spirit, is just that – a gift.

More than that, and in the broader context of 1 Corinthians 12, it started to become apparent (or perhaps a little less hazy?) that what St. Paul is driving at in this passage in particular, is that we all need each other. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the words of the passage repeated to me, but I’m always surprised when something new leaps off the page, leaving me with new insight.

God’s Spirit has bestowed these diverse gifts upon us, in disproportionate measure. This is somehow part of the plan. It’s not about me, it’s not about my self esteem or sense of self-worth. It’s not about how worthy I think I am, or how worthy I think I’m not. In the end, it’s about none of these things. It’s about the gifts of God for the people of God. Read the rest of this entry »


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More Faith Required

20 04 2013

To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. (1 Corinthians 12:8-11)

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

It was a spring day in Kingston, a decade-or-so ago. Snow still melting on the ground, the sun cutting through the cold, and I was going to meet with a friend and Campus Crusade mentor to discuss my current crisis of faith. Crisis should, perhaps be put in quotation marks. it was no such thing. Challenge, perhaps. Evolution, maybe. But these words were new to me when applied to faith.

Meeting in the University Centre, we shared some time together, and then I shared my story. A story of blacks and whites fading to grey. A story in which the absolutes of childhood faith had a few more question marks attached to them. A story in which they worldview I had inherited was collapsing down around me, and in which I no longer knew how to proceed on my own. I was searching, seeking, looking for counsel. At very least, a companion on the journey.

As new as it was for me, it seemed as though faith and doubt existed in equal part.  Read the rest of this entry »


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Doubt and Resurrection

5 04 2013

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

What do you do when you no longer know how to pray?

What do you do when you find yourself searching for meaning beyond the feeble machinations of this life, yet keep finding yourself drawn down into life’s materialism. What about transcendence? What about heaven? Where is the divine – where is God – in the midst of this godforsaken world?

Faith and doubt, two sides of the same coin. Whether it’s ambivalence, or not, I’m not sure. But there are these ebbs and flows. Sometimes it feels like everything fits together. Other days it does not. I hear people regularly talking in triumphalistic tones about the way in which God has directed them to do such-and-such. But when was the last time hearing God’s voice was more than retracing the stale breadcrumbs I’d followed to get here? Read the rest of this entry »


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Occupy My Heart

19 10 2011

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

I wonder what it would be like to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

To truly want justice to roll down like a river. Righterousness like an ever-flowing stream. To desire wholeness (or the best approximation thereof) not simply for myself, but for others as well. Not just for me, for my family, but for all my relations. For all I am related to, whether I recognize it or not. For all, whether I understand their language or circumstance.

I wonder what it would be like to give myself to trying to understand another’s circumstance – not that I could, fully, but that I could try. Try to enter into their story, and to offer some space that they could enter mine. To explore friendship and mutuality. Not because it’ll get me something. Not because it’ll help me to move on up. Not because it’ll get me what I want.

Because I don’t know that I truly want justice. I don’t know that I can truly embrace what it might mean to crave justice beyond its bumper sticker definition. I don’t know that I can truly embrace something that might require something so deep of me.

Read the rest of this entry »


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Seeing in the Dark :: Faith, Film and TIFF

12 09 2011

On Wednesday September 14th, Trinity College, Church of the Redeemer, The Gateway and Imago will be hosting “Seeing in the Dark,” a conversation about Faith and Film. The event takes place at Church of the Redeemer (Avenue and Bloor) and begins at 7.30pm.

What do we see in the dark?
What are we looking for when we go to the movies?
How  might  faith  and  film  illuminate  each  other?

This event seeks to bring faith into fruitful dialogue with the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.

7:30 Panel Discussion with Mark Bowald, Sherry Corman and John Franklin.
8:15 Special Screening of ‘Kavi’
8.45 Panel & Audience Response to ‘Kavi’
9.15 Theological Reflection on the film
9.30 Reception Hosted by Imago


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Categories : Brian Walsh

Ill at Ease

21 08 2008

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

Some days it amazes me what people do to make things seem as though Everything is All Right. Some days it amazes me what I will do to tell everyone that I’m Fine. I’m fine, no really, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.

The show must go on.

And it does. Day in and day out, the show goes on. And I suspect that the show goes on because we can afford to. Or rather, we can’t afford for it not to go on. Even this week, with the passing of saxophone player LeRoi Moore – founding member of the Dave Matthews Band – the show went on without him, with a brief acknowledgment of his life during the show, and a news entry on the band’s website. Read the rest of this entry »


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