jonnybaker

you are the message

you are the message, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

as part of the week we taught at lancaster seminary the students created a worship experience. it was around a passge from 1 thessalonians 1 - not an easy one! we only had around an hour we spent planning but somehow pulled together a really amazing worship experience. the central idea in the passage is that the apostles imitate christ, the macedonians have imitated the apostles, and now the thessalonians are imitating them. it's like a chain of modeling. but it is effective because in the end if it is real it will be visible in peoples lives. i guess it's like leslie newbigin's idea of the hermeneutic of the congregation, or like christ's simple words - if you love one another people will know you are my disciples. so taking this idea the central ritual involved people coming up and looking in a mirror which had an icon of christ on and of paul, the idea being to see how we might reflect christ. as people walked back to their seat they passed another mirror with the words you are the message written on - simple but very powerful. that line is from the message translation of the passage...

transforming preaching

back in 2005 i wrote a chapter for a book on preaching that was subsequently rejected. i called it 'throwing a hand grenade in the fruitbowl' so maybe i was asking for trouble. deep down i was perversely proud of its rejection in a funny kind of way. i guess i am a reluctant preacher - i am a big fan of creative communication but find preaching invariably one head talking and it dulls me way too often. i like it when i am surprised and it is a lost art that can uplift and inspire and challenge. anyway... all that by way of saying that i then turned that chapter into a free pdf online. much to my surprise it's had quite a life of downloads - even being used in college courses as a set reading for preachers!

grove books contacted me earlier this year asking if i could beef it up a bit as they would like to publish it which i have done. the title has changed though the hand grenade in the fruit bowl line is still in there as the title of the first section! when i got back into the office yesterday a pile of grove books was waiting for me... so if you want a booklet on preaching by me it's out. oh the irony :-) it's actually not on the web site yet but if i notice it appears i'll let you know but it's called transforming preaching, is in their evangelism series, and is book no ev86.

guerilla worship on crosby beach

on the plane on the way over here i read the improv everywhere book and really enjoyed it. i think there are lots of possibilities for thinking creatively around alt worship type events in public spaces. anyway i just noticed dream are planning a second guerilla worship event on 18 july on crosby beach (a wonderful place to visit anyway) so if you are anywhere near liverpool head over...

alternative worship in the USA...

jen and i have arrived in the US and are teaching at the summer academy at lancaster seminary. we are doing a week on alternative worship. we kicked off this morning which seemed to go well... each year bruce epperley plans to have a week like this at lancaster with an emerging culture focus. next year i think doug paggitt is booked to come...

so it may be a little quiet on the blog but a few links meantime

run video is a new site launched by run - slightly different emphasis to proost though this makes us look brilliant value!

i can't remember if i have blogged this before or not (old age?!) but rob ryan tells his story so far of starting out as an ordained pioneer in rochester from nothing which is a wonderful read...

and i liked this story surprise surprise from tom brackett - a cheap sustainable way of planting a church in the episcopal setting - pay an ordained priest for doing the essentials and that's it! nice...

maybe i'm catholic?! a review of 'fresh expressions in the sacramental tradition'

fresh expressions in the sacramental tradition is a collection of reflections/essays edited by ian mobsby and steven croft. it's a very welcome book. a fear that is often expressed is that fresh expressions is the play thing of evangelicals but a read of this shows that this clearly isn't the case. i wasn't expecting to think this but it made me think i'm more catholic than i realised! i actually prefer to resist those sort of tribal labels anyway - i've blogged/ranted about evangelical identity before and i don't find that helpful at all - being a follower of christ is enough for me. but here's a couple of the things that made me think i may be more catholic than i knew...

rowan williams opening chapter identifies these features of catholic spirituality:
non verbal expressions of faith
a central place to sacramental action
seeing christian life as taking time and use of the christian year
faith is a community experience and not just an individual one

then steven croft locates the movement in the tradition of catholic mission in the vein of vincent donavon and roland allen - with central themes of the missio dei, incarnation, and the formation of disciples in community

steven croft's chapter is brilliant - he uses the story of gamaliel in acts 5 who cautioned the sanhedrin to wait before judging the early church. steven croft suggests half the clergy in the church might be in that position of caution and writes his chapter to persuade them to come off the fence. he also makes the point that the resistors/conservatives are in every part of the church and my experience has been that conservative evangelicals have been the most resistant group to ideas of contextual mission as they seem convinced that their way of doing things is the gospel itself! steven croft led the fresh expressions team for 5 years, has spoken with every diocese and lots of groups around the country. he is a wise man who brokered so much in what was a relatively short period so i really valued what i see as his parting reflection. he is now bishop in sheffield.

one of the things he talks about is whether the language of fresh expressions is helpful and says we had to have some language to 'talk about this movement of forming new ecclesial communities through contextual mission'. and it was that sentence where i thought - yes that is why this is so exciting!  'emerging church' 'alternative worship' 'emergent' 'postmodern mission' may come and go but if it has helped us recover contextual approaches to mission at the heart of what the church is about then it is an amazing thing...

there are chapters on various communities such as contemplative fire (i must blog about them another time), new monasticism, a couple of helpful pieces on liturgy and sacraments, and a few US authors such as karen ward, paige blair and phyllis tickle in the mix if you are looking for a book to help lever discussion in the episcopal context in the US.

congrats to ian and steven on this book (which i noticed was the window display in church house bookshop last week). it's not just another book on this stuff - it has a particular story to tell and role to play.

what would you have done differently?

i really enjoyed meeting tom brackett earlier this year - we've become good friends in a short space of time. he works for/with the episcopal church in the USA nudging it in the direction of church planting and redevelopment. he connects with, networks and encourages new edges and leaders. he has a great piece on his blog what might you have done differently? . when he was in the UK he asked people the following question:

If you knew twenty years ago what you know today about the impact of secularization on the relationship of Culture to Church and vice versa, what might you have done differently to prepare the institution for those emerging realities, back then?

the answers come down to two dominant themes -

• we should not have let young people drift out of church (which meant we gradually lost sight of the gap between church culture and the wider culture)
• we should not have lost sight of how to nurture the prophetic voice in our midst.

so playing it back to leaders in the USA tom strongly advocates

Invite faith-filled young leaders into your communities. Listen. Try on new ideas. Experiment.

she who has ears to hear let her hear...

the project - if you're in scotland...

the project is on 20 june in edinburgh, a day of

arts – faith – theology – ecology – politics –philosophy - spirituality - justice
…or basically celebration, inspiration, irreverence, profundity, laughter, tears, questions, argument, friendship, shivers up the spine - add your own noun to the list.

there's a listing of the programme here (scroll down) which it includes the likes of beki bateson, doug gay, steve butler, julie wilson, john bell, iain archer. looks wonderful!

turbulence at the boundary

several years back at greenbelt we did some silent movies for worship - 4 alt worship groups rose to the challenge. i really liked the whole thing...

turbulence at the boundary was vaux's offering. if you never got to experience it that is now up on proost. it's silent but there is a recommended soundtrack at the end of the movie and on the movie page. it's 20 minutes long and is a bargain at the regular movie price of £1.99

The M25 is 120 miles or thereabouts of road looping round London often known as a car park due to its clogged lanes of traffic. This film from Vaux turns a trip round the M25 into a meditation on ourselves, on our cities and on God finding turbulence at the boundary. The film is shot on Super8 and has four sequences/meditations:
Looking back
Looking Out
Looking in
Looking forward

If you live in the UK London's M25 is iconic. If you are elsewhere it's urban spirituality that we hope will connect.

kore

kore is a new website, care of matt and juls hollidge. i remember sitting in the scooter cafe hearing their ideas about it a couple of years back. it's a very neat looking site. their passion is equipping the church creatively with resources and helping with training. the likes of proost's jon birch and andi mac have helped contribute resources/media. there's lots on there. go and explore....

worship curation [5]: creating a public

worship curation [1]: opening up a series of reflections
worship curation [2]: the making of a world
worship curation [3]: negotiating newness
worship curation [4]: curating beyond the canon

a museum director's first task is to create a public - not just to do great shows, but to create an audience that trusts the institution

so says pontus hultén in a brief history of curating. this struck me quite forcibly for the simple reason that most of the people i know involved in curating worship at least in the alternative worship tradition (?!) are most interested in the creative process. i include myself in that. the processes of articulation, imagination and continuity are energising. dreaming up ideas and working out how to make them happen out of few resources, both alone and in a group of artists is like breathing air - easy and we don't have to think about it too hard. but there are a lot of events and installations and so on that are wonderfully creative and take my breath away but there is only a very small group who is fortunate enough to find this gold mine.

it's true you've got to do more work to engage in this kind of worship - it requires more than sitting in a pew and singing some songs and listening to a sermon. and i think there's something about taste - [good taste obviously!] - it's a marginal pursuit for arty types who like the leftfield rather than the mainstream. these are probably scripts we play in our minds as to why events are small. but i think it's probably that the kinds of people creating this worship simply don't get round to or think about creating a public.

i had a meal with someone new to ealing recently who was involved years back in abundant, a huge christian network and club in london 15 years or so back run by my younger brother steve and others. for that they used to have reps in every church they could think of, send out fliers and campaign like crazy. so the first question this person asked about grace was how people in other churches might know about it, did we have promoters, how did we advertise locally... i mumbled somewhat embarrassed that we didn't really do a lot of that. we had a web site, an e-mail list, an annual flier (but even that doesn't get used properly), blogs (and some of those are not bad). but it was clear to me that we haven't prioritised creating a public (or a tribe if you have read seth godin's tribes). don't get me wrong we do have a public, but it's smallish...

that's it for this post - it's one thought, one blind spot i think in many people who are curators of worship or artist-curators. maybe it's time to apply the same creative energy and process to this as to the construction of a wonderful worship experience/event?!

listing - a gem

every so often something surprises me in a delightful way. i love it when that happens. the latest was when chris goan sent us at proost an idea for a book. it's a collection of poems and meditations riffing off lists in the bible - the beattitudes, the fruit of the spirit, a time to be born... i have fallen in love with the book. it really is lovely in every way. of course we said yes! and it's now out on proost this month as of yesterday. chris is part of aoradh - here's the foreword i wrote:

“Maybe the poet is gay but he’ll be heard anyway
Maybe the poet is drugged but he won’t stay under the rug
Maybe the voice of the spirit in which case you’d better hear it
Maybe he’s a woman who can touch you where you’re human”

This is penned by Bruce Cockburn in his song Maybe the Poet, a writer Chris cites as an inspiration when it comes to crafting words. I can’t help wondering if Cockburn had been reading Walter Brueggemann’s book Finally Comes the Poet in which he suggests that it is poetry rather than prose that we need too hear to shatter our settled world to create the way for newness to come.

This book is a little gem, a surprise that came Proost’s way over the horizon from Chris. He loves crafting words, playing with words, chewing over words, creating and re-creating worlds with words. His poems and meditations are a delight, spinning off from and opening up new takes on familiar verses of ancient wisdom from the scriptures.

It’s the second book from Chris on proost. The first is the wonderful meditation he wrote to go along with Si Smith’s images of Christ’s journey into the wilderness ‘40’.

“Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it…”          Proost

you can order a copy or purchase a download copy from proost

an area of quiet growth

the blog is a little quiet because i am in the middle of running the dekhomai stand at the london mind body spirit fair which tends to be full on. the surprise this year is that there are four christian stands with a presence at the festival - all with a different take. so this involvement in the new spiritualities is definitely an area of quiet growth...

my way of thinking about this is through margaret wheatley's amazing piece on networks - lifecycle which i have blogged about at least three times i think 1 | 2 | 3. in it she says that networks change things through 1. naming - getting involved in practice. several people have done that - john drane for me was the first i came across. 2. connecting - people involved in the same practice connect and share stories, experience and learning which of course is so accelerated through the digital media. 3. nourishing - fuelling the practice and network. this has happened informally and formally through training, blahs, articles, and the recent gathering. 4. illuminating - shine a light on the practice so others see and get inspired by it.

it seems to me this process has happened and there's now an intentional network of practitioners - christian travellers in the new spiritual culture that is in the process of being set up. leave a comment if you're interested in knowing more about it...

community sermons from 'average bunch of people not particularly overgifted in any direction' church

i don't really know much about ashley church other than that i have liased with sue rockhill who is part of it through the wonders of our connected world online following her being at spring harvest. anyway we liased about the labyrinth meditations but it came up in conversation that they were being used as part of a community sermon. i immediately liked the sound of it - anything is normally better than one person speaking with the rest listening as far as i am concerned. so i asked sue to tell me a bit more about it and in her words...

we were a fairly average bunch of people - not particularly overgifted in any one direction, so apart from odd bits of brilliance we are working from ordinary lives in a fairly bumbling way.

Community sermons happen about once every school term. The congregation is given the title and the date and left to bring what they think will add something to the subject. Recent Community Sermons have included; writing the story of Christmas in 30 words;describing bible characters and the work of the Holy Spirit in them through limericks (that was a lot of fun!) And the most recent, called In the Gap was a look at what happened between Easter and Pentecost. There are very few rules - probably none actually. Even 'Christmas in 30 words' was modified by someone of artistic leaning to be Christmas in thirty strokes of the brush.  The most recent was the most energetic Sermon, since it involved walking a labyrinth, but everything is optional and there were paintings to look at and writing people had done on the subject, as well as quiet corners to pray in and of course the coffee lounge, where we think God is most likely to be hanging around. Community Sermons demand a lot of flexibility from the leader, who will turn up on the morning perhaps knowing that one or two people have mentioned that they have something to bring, but will not know whether there is anyone else with something or not. Ours is a fairly relaxed church and if there was really nothing we would probably go and have coffee, but so far there have always been people with things to say or show, so it has never come to that!

i don't want to start a new fad (god save us from that) but i do like the notion of bumbling church or average bunch of people not particularly overgifted in any direction church. of course so called average does as sue says allow people to express their gifts and one of the pieces in the last sermon was a lead cast plaque! i am making this worship trick 65 in series 3 . the notion of the community creating worship/sermons out of the community and their gifts is what worship is all about - the work of the people and all that...

musicademy

i have been invited to contribute to musicademy - a worship blog/community. the posts there will be occasional and mainly things on worship i have reflected on here...

it's interesting that there seems to be a growing restlessness about contemporary worship from within the communities that have led it not just from those of us who have taken a different approach - see for example this piece bored with contemporary worship? or this piece on worship songs (i love the fact that the url is spelled brain maclaren!!!)

sophia network new site

jenny launched the sophia network and has put a ton of hours into it over the last eighteen months. the network exists to connect women in youth work and ministry, to access training, develop skills and share wisdom. 

it had it's own web site running under a content management system but following the redesign of my blog at the start of the year jenny asked if i thought it would work to run the sophia site in a similar way. that conversation got me helping. jenny created the structure conceptually then i have designed the site. the animated walking woman took the most time - i shot a video of a julian opie installation in new york and grabbed and cropped some stills from that and turned it into an animated gif. 

i think the site is a pretty good example of how powerful a tool typepad can be for not just running a blog but creating a web site with it's ability to create pages and so on. it's the first time i've tried creating a bar of buttons along the top and i had to mess around a little with the style sheet but it was all easy enough and i really am not a web designer.

the TWO PIECES OF BIG NEWS are

• 1. that when sophia launched it cost you money to join but now thanks to fund raising efforts and wanting to be generous it's FREE to join. so if you are a woman involved in youth ministry go and join! the events are all in the uk but it's open to anyone. the membership section is still running under the old site but i think the plan is to shift that at some point to a social network like ning.
• 2. the articles used to be available to members only but are now available to anyone including us men :-) so add the feed or follow along however you do. it's worth taking a bit of time to scroll back through. i loved this article by jen bouncing back on some of the nonsense that's around in the church on gender in certain circles (nonsense in my view that is ;-) ) rediscovering heart . also by jen is a fantastic piece on women and men in ministry if you need to do a bit of thinking about some of the passages in the bible that trip people up. it's a long piece so get a coffee/wine and take your time. there is a lot of stuff there. one i hadn't come across is this piece by sally nash - reading the bible as a woman - wow! you've got to read it. it includes this piece by nicola slee

Speaking of silence:  a reproach
The sounds of women’s silence run deep
Let us attune our ears to the sounds of women’s silence,
to attend and listen to what is not said,
what has never been said,
what is only now beginning to be said.
Let this silence cry aloud in our ears,
let it resound and reverberate inside our heads,
let it deafen our whole being with a colossal roar.

This silence is eloquent, articulate of women’s pain and women’s lives.
It is compelling, hypnotic, fearful, overwhelming.
It speaks louder than words.
It utters volumes of speech.
It drowns out all other language.

Where are the women in our history, in our heritage?
Where are the stories of our women heroes, mystics, leaders and teachers?
Who will guide the footsteps of our daughters?
born today into a deafening silence about their ancestors, about themselves?

So many women’s voices have been lost in the pages of history,
erased and blotted out and passed over in silence
by the rulers of patriarchy, the makers of culture.
So few have survived in the pages,
and their stories have so often been ignored,
trivialized, marginalized, distorted.

We want to hear the sounds of our foremothers’ voices.
We want to listen to our grandmothers’ tales.
We want to speak the name of our sisters who came before us.
We need to hear their stories,
we need to hear their voices,
to hear and know who we are.

jen had done an amazing job with sophia - it's exciting to see it develop

guerrilla worship - trick 64

in the comments on the via luminosa post nic was toasting the new itinerants, the new walkers, the new turn in the organism formerly known as alt worship that is seeing it wandering in public spaces.

well on that tip dream held a geurrilla worship flash mob. they have a video of the event and describe it as follows:

We began scattered among the shoppers. At the signal, we all stopped and took off our shoes ... an ancient sign that this is "holy ground". God lives in shopping malls as well as churches!
We then made out way to the park at the centre of the mall where we sat together to form a cross ... and prayed silently for a few minutes. We remembered Easter and the cross. We prayed for the current economic situation ... for those who have lost jobs ... and for God's blessing on our city ... we prayed for hope.

i don't know what you call this turn or trend but i am going to make guerrilla worship (it was called spontaneous worship at greenbelt) a worship trick - no 64 series 3.

via luminosa

i forgot to look at this in the run up to easter and today is the last day it is on! but if you are in york have a look at the via lumnosa, an after dark series of projections following the journey of the passion. i am hoping there will be some photos to follow... again it's alt worship getting into the public space rather than church space which is a welcome trend. sue wallace and visions are the team behind it.

i think i mentioned it before but beyond in brighton had a similar public art journey - easter path which needed ongoing attention it semms . they say this about moving into public space...

It is time we stopped huddling away in our churches concentrating on our own little rituals and iconic observances and found ways to engage with those around us who are looking for some hope and inspiration and Easter is a great opportunity for that.

easter vigil - worship trick 63

grace fire logo from jonny baker on Vimeo.

i have posted a set of photos from the grace easter vigil on flickr. it was a wonderful service. in case you have not come across it (and i hadn't been to one before) it begins with an easter fire - adam had drilled a grace logo in the side which looked brilliant. after some opening words and prayer then the paschal candle is lit and everyone takes a candle and lights it from the paschal candle. people process around the church three times before entering the church. it was drizzling with rain but somehow that made everything more beautiful with the reflected light off the wet surfaces. there is then a period of waiting and reflecting with readings and meditations. at the gospel reading everyone stands and the lights are turned up. baptism vows are renewed - adam had created a sprinkler so that everyone got wet. then at midnight(ish) the bells are rung and fireworks let off to celebrate easter. prayers and the order of service will get added to the grace archive which i will link to then...

i have added some videos to my vimeo page - easter fire | vulnerable flame | grace fire logo | flickering grace

i am making the vigil a worship trick so i have a record of it - i will come back and add the detail... that is number 63, series 3

christ is risen

the grace easter vigil was wonderful last night... more photos and description to follow. but this is the moment the paschal candle was lit from the easter bonfire.

happy easter! christ is risen!

all is lost

ian adams' painting from the oxford stations of the cross - all is lost: christ is lain in the tomb. this is a smply stunning painting - go and tell him if you like it as he doesn't do much painting! i think ian is going to produce some large prints of this at some point. a perfect image for this day - easter saturday.

if you want some words for this day then you'll do no better than visiting cheryl's when hope goes to hell - a vigil she is leading in prison. i am making her stations/service worship trick 62, series 3.

We wanted a God who would take away hell and banish it forever
Instead we have a God who enters it.