[ hold :: this space ]

i’m at the beginning of three days off, but i just wanted to put up a quick thought from the workshop i did yesterday for people at Synod. One and a half hours is no time at all… we raced through everything, but it seemed to have a really good feel, and lots of interesting conversations during and afterwards. there was a lovely spirit of generosity and graciousness in the group. it felt like something might have shifted in the atmosphere. i’m looking at everything through the lens of abundant thinking at the moment - where are the places where people think there’s only a certain amount of ’stuff’ [money, friendship, love, truth, air...] that has to be fought over; where are the places that people realise there’s more than enough to go around… This was an abundant space - no protection of boundaries, no feeling threatened, just graciousness, exploration and encounter.

we talked about singing in worship, and how that seems to be more cemented into the ‘must have’ category in worship than praying or reading the bible. someone said afterwards that people in the community love singing, and, of course, cited the example of people who go to footy games. it’s interesting though that only the winners sing at the footy - there are no songs for losers… i remember going to one game years ago, and the unexpected team won - carlton? - and no-one knew the song.

i’ve never had someone leave worship / sacred space i’ve curated, saying ‘i wish we’d sung, that would have made it real worship’. i’m not saying there’s not a place for singing in worship. i just wonder what’s made it the sacred cow.

[optional reading: the whingy bit.

i don’t know whether the following is any good [i'm not looking for affirmation - i don't really care if it's any good!], but in the spirit of what i always tell people in workshops about unearthing their creativity, i’m putting it out there purely because it’s something. and sometimes the only way to get to something good is to go first with the something.]

This is a series of stations based around Luke 16:19-31, to use in the workshop on Sunday. i won’t be setting all of these up for Sunday, just one or two, and we’ll talk through the others. there are also a couple of stations still missing in the series [i think they'll be about the judgement] - i want to finish them with the group.

Station: At the gates [1]

setup: a length of purple satin, safety pins.

We are led to believe it is inevitable that there are the rich and the poor in this world.
The call of faith is to work against the inevitable.

Wait here in the silence
for your confession to emerge.

if you would like, rip a piece of fabric and pin it to your clothing. Wear it as a proclamation of the times you have been complicit to the way of the world.

Station: At the gates [2]

setup: movie of beggars in the street with their signs. a series of cardboard signs framing the images with the pleas of beggars written on them; extra pieces of cardboard and black markers

Every beggar has a story that deserves to be told.

Sit in their presence and let them speak to you.

if you know of someone whose story needs to be told, write it on a piece of cardboard and add it to the wall.

Station: Do I have the faith of Abraham?

setup: large piece of black plastic covered in a thick layer of sand, bucket of sand nearby.

Like there’s room in the sky for all the stars
and space in the desert for all the sand
in Abraham’s world, there’s a home for all.

No one is left outside the gates.

If this is a vision to which your faith calls you
add a handful of sand to the pile.

And if this is a vision of which you need reminding, put some sand in your pocket.
let it become the grit by which your everyday actions rub up against.

Station: The words of the prophets
setup: recordings of different voices reading from the books of the prophets, as found in the lectionary readings from the preceding and following weeks - Habbakuk, Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah. the voices reading the passages overlap each other.

the following questions written onto a large sheet of card on the ground.

What is the call you have been avoiding?
what is the prophetic message you need to tell the world?

When you are ready, add your responses to the card.

Station: The water
setup: jugs and glasses filled with cold water; music - Foy Vance’s ‘Gabriel and the Vagabond’

Take a glass of water.

It may be that you have had a lifetime of waiting at the gates for someone to throw you a lifeline
a scrap of food
a glass of clean water.

This is for you.
May it hold enough grace to help you survive the harshness of today
and to give you hope for an unknown tomorrow.

It may be that you do not feel you deserve this water.
and probably you don’t

but, nonetheless, this is for you.
May it hold enough grace to let you begin again today
and give you the hope to live differently tomorrow.

I’m preparing for a workshop on sunday at the synod meeting. When i’m preparing a workshop i try to make the practical examples and ideas fit with the lectionary reading for the following Sunday. The workshop is on alternative worship within a mission context - what to do when the church’s traditional ‘them’ becomes the ‘us’ in our worship. it’s a hard topic to do a workshop on, i have to say.

it couldn’t be more fitting, though, that the lectionary readings include Luke 16:19-31 and Amos 6:1-7 - we stand convicted… I’m not sure how i’ll use this yet - if i had a dozen directional speakers i’d set it up as a whispering sound installation…

you are the beggar sitting outside our gate

the awkwardness at the edge of our experience

the provocation that challenges our perception of the world

the discomfort that urges us to action

the anger that confuses our theology

the shadow in the corner of our eye that defies us to deviate from our path

the pain that cripples our indulgence

the melancholy that interferes with the party

the discomfort that disturbs our assuredness

the dream that interrupts our sleep

the grief that halts our play

the sorrow that pervades our celebrations

the anxiety that will not let us be complacent

the silence that confounds our judgement

the void that undermines our confidence

the disruption that will not leave us in peace…

I’m back in the office. This is the easiest i’ve ever done jetlag but i’m still feeling tired to my bones.

The next few weeks are very big. Synod is happening next week. i’m only going to be there on the sunday afternoon where i’m doing a workshop on alternative worship - which i think is full. I’ll be taking a few days leave after that.

Mark Pierson will be back in town for a couple of weeks in october, which i’m looking forward to greatly. He is leading an Advent in Art workshop at the CTM on October 6. Details about registering for that can be found here.

I’m in Sydney the weekend after that for the Alternative Worship Nosh, and then on November 10 I’m leading a Stations in Worship Workshop. You can download a pdf which has all the details for that here: stations_flyer.pdf.

And then [ignoring advent and christmas in an effort to hold onto my sanity today], next year: jonny baker is coming out from London to speak at an Urban Mission Forum which is being organised by the Mission Participation Unit in the Synod from May 29 to June 1st . We’re going to add a 3 day alternative worship event onto Jonny’s visit, which will be held from Wednesday 4th June to Friday 6th June. We’ll have a couple of other smaller events to coincide with his visit too. I’m so looking forward to this.

And, of course, if you’ve been following the Greenbelt and UK trip, you might be interested in joining us next year when we do it again. we’ll have advance publicity and some [obviously sketchy] details out about that in October.

[look! a pretty new header! thanks claire and mike.]

today’s my last day in the office for 5 weeks… i’m off to the UK on Tuesday. As a result, blogging will be very sporadic, but i wanted to let you know first about a couple of things happening later in the year.

If you’ve been reading this blog over the last few weeks, you’ll have noticed a plethora of alternative worship workshops that are coming up. We had scheduled a stations workshop for October 20, but we’re moving that to November 10, so there is some breathing space between all the opportunities. It will still be held in the basement carpark in the city. The idea for the day is to ‘ground’ the theory of stations worship in developing Advent spaces. It’s going to be a good day.

We’ve also got some big stuff coming up in May / June next year, if you’re interested in urban ministry and alternative worship. I’ll be able to say more about that on my return, but keep the last weekend of May and the first weekend of June free if you can. i’m very excited about this.

There are about 11 of us who’ll be travelling together in the UK over the next few weeks, from Victoria and NSW, researching alternative forms of worship and community. It’s a really diverse group who’ll be going. i’m looking forward to the energy and imagination that the trip will provoke… i’m looking forward to soaking up greenbelt, and the wisdom of those we’ll be meeting afterwards… i’m looking forward to face to face conversations with people who inspire me from thousands of kilometres away. the timing couldn’t be better.

as someone said to me in an email this week, it’s obvious by the length of blog posts that things have been busy. sorry if it’s been a bit heavy here over the last few weeks! it will be lovely to take a breath and let things just unfold for a while…

October is jam-packed with alt worship opportunities, including this unmissable one from Mark Pierson:

The Visitation: Elizabeth Meets Mary at the C-Bar Over Skinny Decaf Cappuccino and Carrot Cake: Jan Hynes, 2002, Oil on canvas, 120 x 150 cm, Private collection

Art at Advent Seminar: resourcing corporate worship and personal reflection this Advent season. Conversations with Townsville artist Jan Hynes, lecturer in art history and spirituality (Yarra Theological Union, Box Hill) Claire Renkin, and worship curator Mark Pierson, about Jan’s stunning contemporary renderings of the Christmas story and approaches to using them in worship.

This is a rare opportunity to engage with this witty and laconic Australian artist, and to consider how contemporary art can help vitalise our experience of the Incarnation.

A series of Advent in Art cards featuring five of Jan Hynes’ works will be available to order. The cards include reflections prepared by Mark Pierson, ideal for personal meditation during Advent, and for integration into worship settings. A sample card set will be available for viewing and orders taken.

Saturday 6 October, 9.30am for 10 am start; finishing by 1pm.

Centre for Theology and Ministry

$25 (inc GST) includes refreshments.

Credit card payment can be arranged by phone.

(Registrations very helpful, but not essential unless all places are filled in advance.)

Registration and enquiries: to Jo Yeaman at the Centre for Theology and Ministry
03-9340 8800 or info@ctm.uca.edu.au

More information about Jan’s work, and the Advent in Art cards is available at www.seeds.org.au
The Centre for Theology and Ministry is located at 1 Morrison Close, Parkville. The entrance is located on College Crescent, opposite the Melbourne General Cemetery main gates. (Melway 2B D3)

Public Transport: Catch the No 19 Coburg tram from the city up Elizabeth Street to stop 13 at Gatehouse Street or a number of trams up Swanston Street to Melbourne University (corner of Swanston and Elgin Streets). The CTM is then a short walk around College Crescent.

Parking: There is ample on street parking on Saturday morning on both sides of College Crescent on Saturdays at 60 cents per hour. Disabled parking is available onsite (please phone 03 9340 8800 during business hours to arrange access)

Advent in Art 2007 and Art at Advent Seminar are projects of Urban Seed and SEEDS

with support from the Centre for Theology and Ministry, and Yarra Theological Union.

the second nosh - three days of immersing ourselves in conversations, explorations and experimentation about alt worship - is happening in sydney from october 12 - 14.

very much hoping i can get to this. thanks to dean, darren and adele for making it happen.

for more information, visit the digtree website.

Olivia Maclean is one of the team who lead the Solace emerging community in Fairfield. She’s leading a workshop this Saturday morning on “emergence” and “chaordic” forms of leadership, for aspiring entrepeneurs, risk takers, dreamers and leaders.

From the blurb: This workshop will explore inspiring models found in strange places like the world of chaos mathematics to give you hope, clarity and practical help.

The poster can be downloaded here: emergenceworkshop.pdf

i am so inspired by olivia’s work and thinking. i’ve heard her talk on this before, she’s one of the best you could hope to hear.

The Third Take Short Film Competition Awards night is on July 21 at ACMI contact Jesse through that website for tickets. There have been a stack of entries for this, from all over the country - and i think one from NZ too - which is wonderful.

Upcoming workshops…
The ins and outs of alternative worship: This elective is part of the Sunday program at the Synod meeting in September [the 23rd]. The electives are based around the concept of loving our neighbours. The blurb goes like this: The gospels show us over and over again how Jesus is found in the unexpected place and with the least likely people. In this workshop we’ll explore together how we can curate alternative worship that lets the voice of Christ speak to us from those unexpected places – from the laneways of the city to inside prison walls.

Multimedia in Worship: This workshop, on August 8, is being run in collaboration with the Continuing Education unit at the CTM. It will look at expanding our use of multimedia to include more than songwords on data projectors…

Also, the Guggenheim Collection opens at the NGV this weekend. We’ve planned a little office expedition [spend a couple of hours one afternoon wandering around the exhibition, then chat about it over a drink afterwards], was thinking we might do a similar kind of thing with anyone else who is interested… perhaps on Wednesday 11th July, from 6.00 pm. Let me know if you’re up for it.

this is a pdf of the keynote presentation i used in the alt worship workshop over the last few days at wisdom’s feast. it’s a 6mb file and there are a few things that won’t make sense from the pdf - images that turned into movies, etc.

altworship_wisdomsfeast.pdf

it also doesn’t have explanatory notes - i don’t do notes, i just go from the slides.

the workshops went OK, i think. i felt a bit out of place, going back to working with a group of [largely] ordained people, and an older group than what i’ve been working with recently, but i really enjoyed it. i really love that my pre-conceptions about who in the group will ‘get it’ are always shattered. [i have a theory about people over 70 that keeps bearing out in reality... about their willingness to explore the new, and their longing for a different kind of worship...]

the big sticking points, one of which almost led to a revolt, were reframing our concepts of community and rethinking our use of music. i mentioned at one point that i hadn’t used singing in worship for years now, and for a moment thought everyone would walk out…

At the beginning of alt worship workshops i normally throw some quotes around - including one from steve collins about planning for alt worship begins with a blank sheet of paper. in the ensuing conversation i ask people what they would find hardest to leave off the blank sheet of paper. singing is the only thing that is always mentioned [in all the workshops i've run, i've never had an exception to that]. yet when i curate alt worship spaces for those same people, they never mention that they missed the singing. ever.

but no matter how often i say ‘this is alternative, not mainstream… i’m not saying we should ditch singing from worship’, or ‘i’m not saying we should never use singing, i’m just saying we shouldn’t assume we’ll have singing’, people still get quite disconcerted.

these are the reasons why i rarely use singing
- a large part of alt worship is getting people beyond the purely cerebral - moving from the head to body - but most of our songs gets people out of their bodies and back into the cerebral realm… unless we use songs that are really repetitive, songs we know almost by heart.*

- lyrics have an agenda and a message. by inviting people to sing along to something, we’re assuming we know what will be happening in peoples heads at that moment. that seems antithetical to what we do in most of the worship i’m involved with.

- when we begin planning alternative worship the process doesn’t normally begin with asking what the prayer of confession should be, what form the sermon should take, or what hymns we should use. it asks the question ‘how do we create a context for people to encounter God through this story?’. communal singing rarely seems to be emerge as a way of encounter. someone asked whether it was because that was my preference. i honestly don’t think it is. it just doesn’t emerge organically within the context of everything we’re doing.

[of course, given that john bell was in the next room running a workshop that included - as always - beautiful singing, my point was somewhat diluted...]

community is a whole other conversation… how do we define community? do we need to change our language so we don’t talk about community, but we focus more on resonance?

*someone mentioned, which talking about singing and liminality, that in much mainstream worship, the singing is the liminal moment… i wonder whether that’s why people want the same old hymns in worship. it’s not for nostalgia, it’s to have a ‘thin’ moment, to lose yourself… something you can only do in a song which you know as well as you know your own name…