"Space and Time"

With some worship experiences its as though I develop a picture of the ways in which people will be invited to engage with 'the story' or explore their faith story, from one piece of music or a scattered thought or just the theme... and then the rest of the activity fills it out!!

This worship was certainly not radical, way out, or particularly original BUT was something I thought one mob could cope with and that it might work with modifications in a range of other places... The thinking and planning process was spread over several months and inspirations included: Holy Ground worship art space in the UK; the desire to "do something different"; my resolution at the start of this year not to lead worship anywhere exactly as its normally experienced or whats normally expected... i.e. I would do 'something' which gave me integrity and challenged the comfortable familiar...; and finally a brilliant tirade from Ben Elton's recent stand up tour "Get a Grip" at the Capitol Theatre on 20 July... thats where Psalm 144 came from...

The group at Gordon UC in Sydney have been doing a 'Winter Warmers' worship series where they gather in their hall, enjoy soup and bread as part of the worship time together and still employ their rich musical possibilities in a fairly traditional way...

I took the opportunity of gathering in the hall to suggest 'something different' in response to the invitation to come and lead worship there.. On this ocassion it would be installations/stations or at least choice... that's not always what I choose...

I hold pretty strongly to the power and simplicity of Mark Pierson's "people/a person responding to God" as a simple working definition for worship and secondly that "liturgy" means "the work of the people"...

THE SPACE
was set up with lights largely off, one stand of cans lighting the space, four desk lamps facing walls like an art gallery illumination and two blacklight UV lights highlighting the confession time space... there were two walls to focus on for the initial visuals...

Three data projectors could have easily been four BUT still the worship could be adapted to suit zero projectors... as it was we used two and a looped DVD on a laptop...

We began with a spoken call, introduced 2 communally sung songs
Then came an audiovisual and soup was served!!

The audio-visual worked two screens to "Don't You Think It's Time" Bob Evans
The images were a variety of worship, youth culture and reflection inspiring images!!

The second screen included a piece of writing about 'TIME' and set the scene...
We enjoyed our soup and then began to engage with up to TEN spaces...

The Call to Worship reminded people that this was not entertainment, a concert, a workshop etc but was worship and invited them to take up the invitation... explaining the music, soup,AV and then how the time would be spent!!

STATIONS:

1. Time to Choose
Looped 'Matrix' scene of Morpheus describing that non-one can tell you what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself... with the brief guide offering you the choice of red or blue jelly beans to symbolise your discipleship choice

2. Time to Remember
An Aussie Post cardboard cylinder will play host to the scribblings of those who chose to leave a question, commitment or observation on paper... to be opened again 12 months from now...

3. Time for Games
A choice of Jenga on a table or the Deepspeak cards from St Lukes Innovative Reources.
The cards have various themes moving people from openers to different kinds of values explorations

4. Kids Talk About Heaven
Images and writing were projected on the wall and paper and textas provided for those present to experience the children's thinking and then maybe draw or write about their own stuff.

5. Time for Others
A world map and tealight candles for lighting and placement on the map were supplemented with six larger candles and the Sarah McLachlan clip for "World On Fire".
The larger candles each had a cylinder of translucent paper taped into a tube and placed over them... on the front were printed images from this weeks news...
The Sign explains that Sarah Mcl donated the normal cost of a clip to all the causes and projects listed as possible in the video...

6. Time to Own Up
Black cloth spayed with repositioning glue was taped to the wall. Phone block paper and pens offered the chance to write a confession and stick it up above two 'blacklight UV' lights...

7. Time for Action
The recent story of the young boy in the well known Fred Hollows picture [Giap] was pictured 'today' and we were reminded in the newspaper of Fred mostly working on adults until this day in the crowd a young boy tugged at his shirt... Intraoccular surgery and a miracle later and he can see, wants to teach maths and represents the great work of Fred amongst indigenous and asian communities!!
The article and reference to Jesus unrolling the scroll and naming what he had come to do "food, clothing, sight..." and also the story of the woman who'd suffered bleeding for years and who reached out and touched Jesus clothes...
People were asked to reflect on how they could act to change the world...

8. and 10. Offering Time
The Offering bags and a set of footprint cutouts gave people a chance to respond...
to offer a finacial gifts or to commit to some next steps by writing on the footprint and placing it on the floor.
Psalm 144 informed the reflection and a piece of text about how it used to be that God was seen as huge and we were 'insignificant' and wondered at God's interest in us... not the other way around!!

9. Story Time
A selection of storybooks encouraged people to see what God might be saying through the power of stories... what made them laugh... what they enjoyed reading!!

The exploration lasted 30 mins and we closed with [1] communla song and a spoken Sending Out

It went well on the whole and I have fine tuned some aspects!!
It was all just enough to now know how I would run it again and how I would do it slightly differently...

Either no communal singing or a guitar, voice and tombas...
Call and Instructions/Invitation recorded as MP3 and played as a loop attached to the initial invitational powerpoint slide!!People enter and engage and if there was singing it would be spontaneously led about 10 mins in...

I will probably cut down two Stations to increase the focus!!
But again the feedback was largely very positive from the assembled mob!!