‘Tis the season to Workshop Worship
June 24, 2009 at 12:27 pm | In community, emergent spirituality, movement, worship | 6 Comments
We are an experimental community. We are in process, constantly becoming. We explore a storyspace rather than adhere to a storyline. We are a “doughnut shaped” communal space – a space without a centre, without overt leadership, structure, or agenda.
While this frees us, it can also cause anxiety. Many have visited and left feeling insecure, wary of our anarchy, needful of a more assertive structure.
We do not consciously want to engender such feelings. While we accept the “prophetic” calling to create and stir, to deconstruct and remold, this is not all we are. There is also present within us a pastoral heart, a heart of hospitality where we want to come alongside those on a journey, to offer solace, healing, advice, and companionship.
And furthermore, there is amidst our chaos a heart to worship God. This pilgrim’s heart has meant that many aspects of our activities have come across as rambling, careening, or even lost. But we seek a new way, and we accept the anxiety that this calling creates.
This is not about novelty for its own sake; it is rather about apprehending what the Spirit might be doing with us, with looking for new skins for the new wine that is already flowing between us.
One thing that has become a part of our emerging spirituality is that we do not present worship as a product, but a process. As such, our worship is constantly in workshop mode. Others might put on services of worship, with slick bands, excellent choirs, or polished preaching, in order to attract a loyal consumer base with their market offerings. But as we are, we simply curate a space in which to explore, try new things, reject things, and discover a way of worshipping that will eventually become ours.
While we’d love to be able to present a more polished program, and to be a player in that marketplace, our focus at present is on becoming part of the priesthood of all believers, which was the aim of the protestant reformation nearly 500 years ago. We want an authentic set of practices to start forming that we can call our own.
And so I invite you to workshop worship. This starts now, and if you have anything to say, no matter how trivial you might think it is, you can comment on this blog. In fact, I dare you to say anything you like, right now. There are no wrong comments.
Starting on Sunday 28th at 1 Malton Rd, 10am we will continue to explore these things. Theresa will lead us in a time of prayer in movement and writing, which she entitles “Into Us”.
Consider yourself invited.
Nic
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This is good wondering what was happening this Sunday. lets emerge together family and all –
regards
Jeremybeing
Comment by jeremybeing — June 24, 2009 #
HI guys
This might be a nice opportunity to include the kids in a more meaningful way. SHould I volunteer to do a worship thing with the kids for a bit, or Thereasa will you try and include them in some way. I know that we don’t want Sunday School, but it’s great to include them in some ways, even for a bit.
Comment by kimberley — June 24, 2009 #
Very interesting. You may enjoy some of my music. If so let me know. If not let me go….transpire from faults of endless rage, I press on towards the mark of endless age.
http://martoosmusic.com/jbsandifer.htm
Comment by Jay Sandifer — June 25, 2009 #
On “…we do not present worship as a product, but a process” …
Should it not ever remain such? During 54 years of church involvement (most of it on the so-called “prophetic cutting edge”) I participated in at least five major 20th Century new developments or “movements”. In a sense, each might have been termed “emergent” in that we were heaven-bent on leaving behind what had become dead and irrelevant in order to discover or create something that would be the very opposite. Sadly in none did we make it past the 10-year mark before we too were well on the way to becoming (you guessed it) dead, irrelevant – just like every other “movement” throughout the entirety of church history!
How can we “post-modern emergents” change all that? I would suggest by never arriving, never exiting the process, ever refusing to produce a “product” – not only in terms of worship, but of everything else – beliefs, practices, service, mission – you name it!
Comment by rogerW — June 26, 2009 #
Roger
Strong stuff – much appreciated. Your view is what is needed -experience with openness.
Perhaps we might agree with John Wimber that each movement should be of its generation only, and that it is right for each movement to be subsumed by whatver comes in its wake.
“Emergent” is a provisional label. I’m planning to drop it when the time is right.
However, I think what it addresses is the changing of an age. In my 30 years of church, I’ve also thought of myself in “cutting edge” terms and grown tired. The advent of Post modernity has some features that were distinctly absent in 25 years of changing streams.
We can discuss futhrer, thank you so much for you comment.
Comment by nic paton — June 26, 2009 #
Yes, I’m sure Wimber was correct. Moreover, it seems as though the duration of those generations keeps getting shorter, and the plethora of new streams ever more prolific.
Here’s a question, though: What would be the likely development if, instead of the minority — or, as is more often the case, the ones and twos — it were to be the majority in a stream or movement who elect to move on? Has that ever happened? And could it? To get even bolder in my dreaming: What if a radical lifestyle of ongoing pilgrimage should turn out to lie at the heart of the post-modern age?
Comment by rogerW — June 30, 2009 #