Well, Glen has created a new compound noun - Prism-Style-Worship (I'm not sure I'd go for capitals there, Glen; sounds like you're shouting!) - and raised two really interesting points (see the comments on the previous post).
I think prism-style-worship taps into Christian tradition and practice through story telling and ritual acts. The Sunday morning communion is a case in point. our celebration of the Eucharist happened in three parts. The first involved cake with individual wine glasses stuck in it and as we sat around the tables we told stories of when Jesus partied, when he was guest at a dinner or host; what he did and what he said on those occasions.
So people spontaneously told the story of the wedding at Cana, the feeding of the five thousand, the tea with Zacchaeus, the bread breaking at Emmaus and many more. We shared how we felt when we heard such stories, what they meant to us, what they revealed to us about Jesus and why we want to follow him.
Then we produced a French loaf nailed to a plank of wood and invited people to share stories of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem, from Palm Sunday, through Maundy Thursday to Good Friday, stories of adulation and rejection, bonhomie and betrayal, friendship and fearful denial; and ultimately stories of the lonely death of the one who more than any other revealed God to us.
The contrast between the cake and the loaf caused a sharp intake of breath among a number of people around the table, even some tears. It was a stark reminder of the meaning of the meal. The stories of Jesus' suffering seem to be given context by the ritual, something tactile and visual, even visceral, was entered into our memory and story telling. And it was powerful.
In the course of these two sections - lasting about an hour, probably slightly less - worshippers were exposed to more scripture than the average church goer gets in a month. Not only that, there was opportunity to reflect on that scripture and extract reactions and responses to it.
This is just a single example of how this approach to constructing a gathering enables people to interact with one another and the Christian story at quite a deep level.
Because prismstyleworship (see I've now made a single word of it) is interactive and participatory, those engaging in it are able to ask questions, seek clarification, add insights, unwrap, probe and explore a single thought at length, write something down, draw or paint a response or reflection. The learning that happens in such a context is likely to be more lasting than that gained from just listening.
I think it ought to be an essential part of the mix of activities we offer in church but probably not the only way of teaching and learning, engaging with God and encouraging one another because one size does not fit all.
Showing posts with label alt.worship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alt.worship. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
What in the world are we doing?
A final thought on the Baptist Assembly. Glen (here) has raised an interesting question in his reflections about the style of what we do at Prism that I want to muse on. I think alt worship is actually a bad name for what we do because it implies that we are merely seeking a replacement for the more traditional activities that the church calls ‘worship’ (wrongly in my view – but that’s for another post) such as singing and listening to sermons. Rather, I think we are seeking to do a number of things simultaneously.
The first is to help people see the world differently, from a strange, even obtuse angle with unexpected shafts of light falling on it. We were helped in this by the theme of the Assembly – One World, One Mission – but it is one of the key considerations I always have uppermost when planning an event – be it, a church Sunday gathering or home group. This is because we gather to engage with God who calls us to embody his values in the world in which we live and work. So having an understanding of that world is important.
It means that we need to hear what the world is saying about itself and not only what we want to say about it. Now, I appreciate that the world speaks with many voices and we will inevitably be selective in what we turn our ears and eyes to. But it seems to me that it’s essential that we hear voices from the world as clearly as we can.
The second is to suggest that God is to be found already working in this world and that if we look carefully we’ll see his shadow falling across it, notice his finger print on all we’re seeing. So, we listen to a Patty Smith album and become aware that she talks more and more intelligently about God than the average ‘worship’ album; or we see a movement working justice that inspires us even though its motivation is avowedly not religious; or we see vital theological issues being played out in a movie or the plot of a novel.
This helps us in the key task of bridging the gap that Christians are often guilty of maintaining between the world we live in day-by-day and the faith we express in our worship; the gap we express when we say ‘I come to church to focus on God without being distracted by all the awful things in the news’ or ‘we are going into the world to take the presence of God with us.’
The third is to help us see ourselves in a different way as a result of the first two. In focusing on what’s going on the world, we see that God is bigger and that our lives are more significant than we thought. We find ourselves caught up in the story of God, the creating, covenant-making, coming King; and we see that God has given us a key role in how that story unfolds in our world.
My hope is that people leave an event like Prism, with a fresh way of living in the world. I guess this is the hope of traditional gatherings, but I wonder if the traditional model tends to focus on me and God and take the world for granted as a fixed entity from which we’ve withdrawn in order to worship before we go back into the world with a changed view of ourselves and perhaps a better take on God.
The trouble is that it tends to treat the world as a given on which we will act rather than something which acts on us as we seek to identify the shape that God wants us to take on to effectively embody his values in that world.
After the first Prism – which seems like a lifetime ago in Brighton in 2005 – I wrote a series of articles for the Baptist Times on ‘alt worship’. It’s my intention to dust those off over the next few days and re-post them here.
Finally got round to listening to the Mumford & Sons album - a fascinating and rather wonderful example of hearing God in the unlikeliest of places!
The first is to help people see the world differently, from a strange, even obtuse angle with unexpected shafts of light falling on it. We were helped in this by the theme of the Assembly – One World, One Mission – but it is one of the key considerations I always have uppermost when planning an event – be it, a church Sunday gathering or home group. This is because we gather to engage with God who calls us to embody his values in the world in which we live and work. So having an understanding of that world is important.
It means that we need to hear what the world is saying about itself and not only what we want to say about it. Now, I appreciate that the world speaks with many voices and we will inevitably be selective in what we turn our ears and eyes to. But it seems to me that it’s essential that we hear voices from the world as clearly as we can.
The second is to suggest that God is to be found already working in this world and that if we look carefully we’ll see his shadow falling across it, notice his finger print on all we’re seeing. So, we listen to a Patty Smith album and become aware that she talks more and more intelligently about God than the average ‘worship’ album; or we see a movement working justice that inspires us even though its motivation is avowedly not religious; or we see vital theological issues being played out in a movie or the plot of a novel.
This helps us in the key task of bridging the gap that Christians are often guilty of maintaining between the world we live in day-by-day and the faith we express in our worship; the gap we express when we say ‘I come to church to focus on God without being distracted by all the awful things in the news’ or ‘we are going into the world to take the presence of God with us.’
The third is to help us see ourselves in a different way as a result of the first two. In focusing on what’s going on the world, we see that God is bigger and that our lives are more significant than we thought. We find ourselves caught up in the story of God, the creating, covenant-making, coming King; and we see that God has given us a key role in how that story unfolds in our world.
My hope is that people leave an event like Prism, with a fresh way of living in the world. I guess this is the hope of traditional gatherings, but I wonder if the traditional model tends to focus on me and God and take the world for granted as a fixed entity from which we’ve withdrawn in order to worship before we go back into the world with a changed view of ourselves and perhaps a better take on God.
The trouble is that it tends to treat the world as a given on which we will act rather than something which acts on us as we seek to identify the shape that God wants us to take on to effectively embody his values in that world.
After the first Prism – which seems like a lifetime ago in Brighton in 2005 – I wrote a series of articles for the Baptist Times on ‘alt worship’. It’s my intention to dust those off over the next few days and re-post them here.
Finally got round to listening to the Mumford & Sons album - a fascinating and rather wonderful example of hearing God in the unlikeliest of places!
Monday, June 01, 2009
God creeping in at the edges
We had an excellent Pentecost Later Service last night. It worked really well despite being deceptively simple in structure.
We started with an explanation and then listened to three songs that in various ways explore what it means to be human in today's world - U2's Magnificent, the Killers Human (my favourite single of recent months) and Brett Dennen's Aint No Reason. People were invited to chat about how they felt about the songs as they played (they had lyric sheets to help them).
For further exploration we had three zones - one with the newspapers, one with notes on the section of Mark's Gospel we'd reached by yesterday and an art zone. In each of these people were invited to explore how we express our humanity in the worlds of work and politics, arts and culture.
The same questions were displayed in each zone - What does it mean to be human? What’s our calling as humans? What’s my calling? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with this? - plus some more specific ones.
Having meandered between zones for half an hour, we came back together for some liturgy and simple illustrative rituals - washing our hands to symbolise the cleansing that comes through the Spirit, drinking water as a symbol of refreshment and being anointed with oil as a sign of being filled with the Spirit to live as the people God calls us to be.
It was all very simple. yet it was a very profound evening. One reason for this was that we'd learned of the death of a regular member of our later service and the format gave space for those particularly affected by the news.
But I think something else was going on which is that when people are given freedom to explore a fairly well focused subject, that's what they do. And while they do that in a variety of ways, God is able to creep in around the edges and surprise us.
So, it was a good, simple and in many ways profound evening where lots of us encountered God in ways that aren't often possible in church.
We started with an explanation and then listened to three songs that in various ways explore what it means to be human in today's world - U2's Magnificent, the Killers Human (my favourite single of recent months) and Brett Dennen's Aint No Reason. People were invited to chat about how they felt about the songs as they played (they had lyric sheets to help them).
For further exploration we had three zones - one with the newspapers, one with notes on the section of Mark's Gospel we'd reached by yesterday and an art zone. In each of these people were invited to explore how we express our humanity in the worlds of work and politics, arts and culture.
The same questions were displayed in each zone - What does it mean to be human? What’s our calling as humans? What’s my calling? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with this? - plus some more specific ones.
Having meandered between zones for half an hour, we came back together for some liturgy and simple illustrative rituals - washing our hands to symbolise the cleansing that comes through the Spirit, drinking water as a symbol of refreshment and being anointed with oil as a sign of being filled with the Spirit to live as the people God calls us to be.
It was all very simple. yet it was a very profound evening. One reason for this was that we'd learned of the death of a regular member of our later service and the format gave space for those particularly affected by the news.
But I think something else was going on which is that when people are given freedom to explore a fairly well focused subject, that's what they do. And while they do that in a variety of ways, God is able to creep in around the edges and surprise us.
So, it was a good, simple and in many ways profound evening where lots of us encountered God in ways that aren't often possible in church.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Paul Simon at cafe church
In the end cafe church this coming Sunday is not quite like we did in prism - for one thing I don't have a whole day to cement broken tiles to an mdf cross (come to think of it, I don't have an mdf cross!)
I have, however, been reflecting on Paul Simon's lovely Surprise album and have cast a gathering around it and Romans 8 called 'Paul Simon and the groaning world'. Using three songs from the album - I don't believe, wartime prayers and how on earth can you live in the north-east? - we'll reflect on what the world is like and what our call is as God's heirs in the world in the light of some of Simon's observations.
I'll post my concluding monologue - about five minutes - after Sunday evening. I've found Simon's wrestling with the way of the world and his sense of being haunted by the divine very moving. it's an album of rich and deep meditations on the isolation of the human condition and the need to make some kind of connection with a power bigger than ourselves. He wonders on the opening track whether that might just be the nation we inhabit, that maybe if we rose above our cultures and religions, we might be able to live together. But those thoughts are shattered 9/11 and the subsequent war. It seems our cultures trap us in default responses - only prayer can rescue us.
And what do God's heirs have to say about this? I'll let you know...
I think Romans 8 is a rich resource for us as we dialogue with people like Paul Simon and the countless thousands on the planet he in some way speaks for. We are called to share the agony of the creation we're a part of and find the groaning God in our hearts whose presence strengthens us to play our part in bringing about redemption.
So if you're a fan of Paul Simon and live in Bromley, come and join the conversation. You can't miss us - on Sunday evening, we'll be the church playing the sweetest music!
I have, however, been reflecting on Paul Simon's lovely Surprise album and have cast a gathering around it and Romans 8 called 'Paul Simon and the groaning world'. Using three songs from the album - I don't believe, wartime prayers and how on earth can you live in the north-east? - we'll reflect on what the world is like and what our call is as God's heirs in the world in the light of some of Simon's observations.
I'll post my concluding monologue - about five minutes - after Sunday evening. I've found Simon's wrestling with the way of the world and his sense of being haunted by the divine very moving. it's an album of rich and deep meditations on the isolation of the human condition and the need to make some kind of connection with a power bigger than ourselves. He wonders on the opening track whether that might just be the nation we inhabit, that maybe if we rose above our cultures and religions, we might be able to live together. But those thoughts are shattered 9/11 and the subsequent war. It seems our cultures trap us in default responses - only prayer can rescue us.
And what do God's heirs have to say about this? I'll let you know...
I think Romans 8 is a rich resource for us as we dialogue with people like Paul Simon and the countless thousands on the planet he in some way speaks for. We are called to share the agony of the creation we're a part of and find the groaning God in our hearts whose presence strengthens us to play our part in bringing about redemption.
So if you're a fan of Paul Simon and live in Bromley, come and join the conversation. You can't miss us - on Sunday evening, we'll be the church playing the sweetest music!
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