This week, Dave over at Cartoon Church recommended a video blog called Father Matthew Presents which seems to have been getting a bit of coverage across the pond. Certainly what he is doing is a bit different from the usual video-tape of a sermon that I’ve seen elsewhere.

The blogger in question is a curate, currently serving at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Yonkers, New York. Reading some of the background, as a church they have been through difficult times, ultimately closing a couple of years ago. However, the church has been re-planted, in that they have started again in the existing building, trying to grow a new congregation. As part of that, Father Matthew has been producing a regular video blog, which can be found on YouTube.

As with any other blog, some of the topics are pretty light-hearted, so for example this posting explains how much he loves his job because the building includes a Carillon allowing him to play classic video game theme tunes to anyone who is listening… Alongside this there are items explaining aspects of the gospels – take this posting about Mary Magdalene. He also does a nice line in explaining the complications of the Episcopal/Anglican Church including a Scripture, Tradition and Reason Puppet Show, and the Episcopal position on Diversity in Faith with juggling. He even gets onto the challenges facing the modern Church, including the frustration that they never taught him about marketing in seminary!

Perhaps our favourite so far, is an insight into the task of writing a sermon… Beth particularly liked hour 4. 😀

Anyway, I’ve added Father Matthew to my subscriptions in using the handy YouTube RSS Feed function, and am looking forward to see what he comes up with in the future.