greenbelt 05

greenbelt was great... 20 000 people, sunshine and a beer tent. my role for greenbelt with others is co-ordinating the worship programme. this year's had so much going on. new forms is home to alternative worship. it was exciting to see so many new groups taking part this year including COTA from the US and Kubik from Germany as well as several UK groups. i loved the ikon services again. paul hobbs installation holy ground was amazing (more about that later) - was nice to see that come to fruition after two years dreaming (it's the thing i have been blogging about getting shoes for). grace which i am involved in ran the creation installation that we had run at easter. over 500 people experienced it. (kits are now available in the uk from proost - more about that later as well!). that venue had some brilliant pieces in this year.

one of the things i was looking forward to beforehand was the new Ikon CD Dubh. i was expecting to blog about it before i left but we ended up with a series of manufacturing errors which delayed it so i left for greenbelt last thursday decidedly frustrated and depressed thinking we were not going to manage to get the CDs in time... but they finally arrived on friday evening which i was very relieved and excited about. the next blog entry will be a review of the CD which you simply must get a copy of.

i also got back from greenbelt to find our phone line dead and have had to report the fault so far three times and it still isn't fixed - so am without phone and internet at home which is incredibly frustrating... amazing how we take these things for granted now. good old BT's usual service...
[update: it's now fixed :-) ]

i have sort of got out of the habit of blogging for a few weeks. i guess that's a sign of a good few weeks holiday! apparently andrew jones mentioned i was doing a blog fast in a seminar on the spirituality of blogging. i actually was just on holiday - but maybe it's the same thing. we did have a funny moment when we both realised that we were at greenbelt with just a paper notebook and pen.

i did my usual thing at greenbelt of bumping into loads of people i know and hadn't seen and not managing to attend much! i realised when i got back that i didn't take many photos. but here are a couple of snaps...

tlb did a couple of stencils on the theme tree of life. the idea is that the one tree has lots of different things going on in it at different times as it develops.

i mentioned the txt worship before which went well. this is adam who was running the new media side of things (wonderful big video screen finally made it this year after a few years trying to persuade gb it was worth the investment). adam worked incredibly hard and typifies the kind of person who makes gb happen by putting hours of time in as a volunteer. anyway i caught him here sending out the gb txt thought for the day by his tent at 8am texting wirelessly through his mobile...

the communion service this year was led by revive. simon smith seemed to be one of the key people behind it (he designed the 40 animation which is now on sale on a CD ROM btw). anyway the level of creative effort was brilliant. they had done a set of eight comics by different artists on the theme tree of life. everybody got one - you could buy the set later if you wanted. there was a wonderful story that was used as the eucharistic prayer that i think was written by tess ward. i want to try and get a copy - i'll post it if i get permission. anyway well done revive - it's a difficult service to pull off because of the scale and the expectations.

perhaps the weirdest thing and a first was one group getting evacuated because of a bomb scare. the fire crew thought one of the people looked suspicious and had left a bag there. it turned out he was part of the group running the service. a depressing experience for echoes that could easily have been avoided... most of us involved in alt worship probably look suspicious!...

Technorati Tags: proost, greenbelt2005, alternative worship

Comments

[ash]

Ah yes, I thought the Eucharistic story was wonderful too. Do please post it if you can, that would be most appreciated.

I saw you on the panel about blogging, along with maggi... very interesting discussions there... I will probably be posting my reflections on that in due course.

[Ben]

good to see you there jonny, I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to catch up properly - it was difficult to talk over Gilles Peterson!

I loved the worshiping the creator installation.

[tim]

jonny good to see you at gb05 and it's good to have you back blogging again.!, will try to make it to grace v soon...the highlight for me was COTA and the Kubik service was fantastic, black tape and all.!

[moya]

hi. look forward to hearing some ikon tunes.
top tip - BT - they are doing free evening and weekend land line calls for 3 months if you sign up quick - first 100000 or something. you can cancel after 3 months or they'll start charging.
BT customer service though- I totally agree. Even on huge contracts they stuff up alot alledgedly I am v reliably informed.

[michael]

not just bt, broken internet must be a greenbelt effect, i got home to discover ntl broadband down. reporting it wed am, ivr said over the bh weekend they'd put out a remote upgrade that had broken! several hundred of their modems & were having to visit to replace! the repair guy came fri pm, took 5 mins, so could have been worse. link has my gb pblog incl live entries from the blog session.