So now we enter into the 6 weeks season of the resurrection as Easter, and I think we don’t focus enough on ways of engaging with the season after the intensity of Lent, the Passion and Holy Week.
One way to keep focused on the spirituality of the season of the resurrection is by keeping Stations of the Resurrection in the life of the ecclesial community: a good example is here.
I have just been to a book launch of Jonny Baker’s new book – Curating Worship. This book is well overdue, and draws on the expertise of a number of practitioners of those who were involved in Alternative Worship, including Ana Draper, Sue Wallace, Steve Collins, Laura Drane, Nic Hughes and Kester Brewin, Pete Rollins and Jonny McEwen in the UK, Cheryl Lawrie from Australia, Dave White and Steve Taylor from New Zealand and others.
Why is this book important? Well – for me, it is because quality in contextual and creative worship is important. Alternative or creative worship has become synonymous in some places as just putting up a white sheet or getting out the crayons and sometimes with very little content. What this book emphasises, is that this form of worship is a skill, and needs much thinking and engagement with theological thinking, engagement with metaphorical meaning, liturgy and ritual.
When Curation is done well, its potential is world changing and can aid mission. When it is done badly (my contention) it just gets patronising and overly conceptual that may help some dechurched people get stuff off their chest, but doesn’t often enable wonder and encounter of the divine. We have experienced this in Moot, and so have stopped doing alternative worship for a bit, exploring more participative and contemplative forms of worship for a season.
The work of groups like Grace, Vaux, L8r, Visions were important in my own Christian formation through a dechurched root. I have been holding onto the question whilst reading this book “Alt worship and curation are important for reaching and enabling dechurched people to request with Christian Spirituality – but what does curation of worship look like for those who are completely never churched, with no baggage or previous understandings?” This I think is the very real challenge of where we go next. How do we curate worship, in fact how do we curate church as a creative event of worship, mission and community in an increasingly post-secular culture where we can expect the numbers of the dechurched to reduce as ‘being churched’ increasingly becomes a minority sport.
This book is a great start to exploring this question, and an important resource for all those who want to develop creative and artistic and cultural accessible forms of worship that is challenging and justice orientated. Well done Jonny et al, this is a great book. I have read it almost in one go as it held me that much!
Came across a great blog post today by Andrew which explores the issue of Trinitarian informed approaches to Christian worship. I really like what Andrew has to say. Continuing in my addiction of Trinitarian theology, I am reading Paul Fiddes book ‘Participating in God’, a pastoral and theological response to the doctrine of the Trinity. Its a good but dense book. One thing I am hearing loud and clear from reading, is the need for Ekklesia not only to imitate God in how it is a relational community, but further and more importantly, the call to participate in God as a life of Christian discipleship. It is this shift from imitating to ‘participating in’ that has really got me thinking.
My community Moot as a new monastic community I think has focused on imitating through its relational and participative approach to worship, mission and community, but I still think we have only been scratching the surface. It is this call to shift from imitating to participating in that I think is the greatest challenge. So not only do we have a Rhythm of Life, but that we need practices centres on praxis as participation which is the next step… food for thought and stuff I am reflecting on at the moment.
I have now finished two out of the three lectures I am giving at Carey Baptist College in Auckland. Today I explored the socio-cultural forces behind neo-spirituality driven by information technology and consumerism, and then explored a Trinitarian Ecclesiology as a basis of Christian Spirituality to engage with a context of neo-mysticism. Finally, we looked at issues around leadership as all the denominations face the challenge of reframing from a Christendom to a post-Christendom context.
It was a good day, I forcused on the need to let go of an attractional model of church born of Christendom as incompatible with a post-christendom context of neo-mysticism, and the importance of a missional relational model of Christian Community. Matt Stone has written a great blog on this, so check that out. So my use of New Monasticism is a form of missional model, where the communities Rhythm of life lies at the heart of the community. So offer the model below of a more new monastic missional model.
My reflections on the training morning with Baptist Pastors, is just how entrenched the attractional model is. There is still a desire to form sexy forms of worship to get people in, but as I said then, this just recycles Christians rather than makes an impact with unchurched people. It is hard to conceive of the missional model if you are operating within a model of attraction within a worldview of Christendom. My hope is that the training will play a small part to enable people to shift their worldviews to be able to see the need for an incarnational and missional model of church.
So I think the world church has much to learn from the likes of Missioners such as Vincent J Donovan of an Incarnational model of church, that seeks to use a methodology using a synthetic or transcendent contextual theological model. A good day, but we so need need to help people get beyond an attractional model of mission.
I am really pleased to say, that I think my small contribution to exploring new ways of being church in the context of Australia and New Zealand, has created some fruit, through some increased energy and interest in developing specifically Anglican and missional new ways of being church to engage with our post-religious, post-Christian, post-secular culture of spiritual tourism.
Accordingly, and following discussions with people, I have just set up a new Anglimergent Australia and New Zealand group which I hope will encourage the development of new networks in Australia and New Zealand, to then develop this indigenously.
So if you are interested in joining this and contributing to developing this new network within a global network, please click here