jonnybaker

coldcut kit tour

a few of us at greenbelt were having a discussion about coldcut and how they do the audio visual stuff live. mark blogged a link to a video talk through the kit by matt black.

coldcut at greenbelt festival

coldcut at greenbelt festival, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

 

greenbelt

greenbelt was my second festival of the summer. i think it was the busiest i can remember. i help co-ordinate the worship programme across site so there is always lots to do for that, but i was also relaunching proost and we had a stand in the marketplace venue as well as a number of events across the festival. on top of that jenny was ill... so it felt like a bit of a whirlwind. a sure sign of this is that i didn't take any photos - well i have six, 5 of which were taken the first morning before the festival started - have a look at the latest in my flickr stream if you want to see them! but it was a fab greenbelt - the weather was amazing. i can't quite believe that this summer i have been to two festivals and both have had incredible weather. it could have been so different if they had been on other weekends.
thanks to everyone who was involved in worship at greenbelt or who came to worship.
thanks to dean for pulling together the grace communion by numbers.
thanks to  my friend shannon who  spearheaded the proost relaunch
thanks to everyone who visited proost and made encouraging noises about the new approach/postcards/content/website

here's me and jon cracking open the champagne at the relaunch celebration in the cms tent (thanks for the pic sarah)

off to greenbelt

so off to greenbelt festival.

the 5 day forecast on the bbc for cheltenham made me happy this morning!

back from holiday and gearing up for greenbelt 07

just back from two weeks family holiday in portugal...

it was my first visit to portugal and we had a great time. we stayed near obidos, about an hour north of lisbon on the atlantic coast.

i now have one day turnaround and then heading off to greenbelt festival which i am looking forward to as ever. it's going to be a busy weekend. along with gayle and a team of other volunteers, i co-ordinate and plan the worship programme. if you're going, greenbelt is unique for a festival in terms of worship - there is so much diversity. i write a monthly column on greenbelt worship for the church times. each month i have focused in on a particular theme or worship group. but for the latest (possibly the current issue? not having been in the office i haven't checked) i chose to write the latest one on the breadth of the programme so i have cut and pasted most of it here to give you the sense of what is going to be happening.

The New Forms café is the venue dedicated to new and alternative worship led by communities round the UK. Join in Emerging Matins with Feig from Gloucester or meditate on feminine images of God and the mystery of birth with Park from Sheffield. These are both very young communities making Greenbelt debut’s. Sanctuary from Birmingham bring a multicultural flavour fusing Asian spirituality with alternative worship. They have inspired others to go on a similar journey so we actually have five groups from Birmingham this year. DJs and VJs will mix it up while you get the best coffee on site.

The familiar alternative worship groups will also be there – Visions lead a Trance Mass, Ikon the God Delusion and Grace take you on an Emmaus Rd journey in the Arena guided by the Big Screen. Sanctus1 will be leading this year’s Sunday morning communion service across two venues around the story of the wedding at Cana – one traditional and the other more leftfield but united in sharing bread and wine (and by video feed!).

Soul Space is the most wonderful venue on site in the panoramic café at the top of the Grandstand overlooking the racecourse. It is a fitting location for contemplative worship. Expect a full immersive experience of music and scripture with Molten Meditation, bathe in the ancient stillness of liturgy with Nchant, be silent, join in Evening Prayer with bishops’ thoughts or go to Orthodox Great Vespers.

Taize and Iona have both been renewing streams in the worship of UK churches and will be leading services across the site. Join in the Iona Wild Goose Big Sing on Saturday afternoon. And if you really like singing, elsewhere you can catch Matt Redman, the Love and Joy Gospel Choir, Vineyard, rock worship and even ska with Sounds of Salvation (think Madness playing choruses). Or have a go yourself at the open mic worship.

If you prefer black and purple to white and beige then join the late night Goths. And if you really fancy something a little bit quieter join the Cheltenham quakers or visit the Fransiscans on the camp site with a daily rhythm of liturgies. John Taverner is at this year’s festival for the first time which should be quite a treat if you like your music on a classical tip.

To encourage new young talent there is also a project Unusual Suspects being launched by proost at this year’s festival. Three young talented suspects – Cntrst, Sophie Dutton and Isaac Everett will be showing movies, DJing, reading liturgy and poems, and performing music across the site. Proost’s Jon Birch will also be leading worship with a mix of new animations, reflections and tunes.

The UK church is packed with creativity and diversity in worship and Greenbelt is a feast of it. Festival spirituality is wonderful – a chance to enjoy things on a scale that you never encounter at home, step out of your comfort zone, be renewed, have your imagination sparked, and find yourself feeling hopeful about the church again.

one thing that is quite different for me this year is that I have had nothing to do with planning the grace worship experience as i haven't been around to help plan and i am so busy with the relaunch of proost (will blog separately about that) and the wider worship programme. it sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun on sat afternoon at 3:30pm guided by the big screen in the arena following the emmaus road. rumour has it that there are lots of windmills involved. i'll be there as a punter.

the weather forecast looks to be good for the weekend which is good news as it's been a pretty weird summer for weather in the uk.

the wider programme has some great stuff in it - coldcut, nu:tone and logistics, and soweto kinch will be on my list to try and catch. then there is the usual amazing line up of speakers and seminars - i doubt i'll make many but it's great that mark yaconelli is making a greenbelt debut, as is becky garrison and i want to try and hear john o donahue for the first time. experience tells me that most spare time will be spent with friends (old and new) drinking and chatting. greenbelt always feels like a reunion.

hope to see some of you there...

mark yaconelli at greenbelt and in london after

i have enthused big time about mark yaconelli's book contemplative youth ministry before. i have also mentioned that he is going to be at greenbelt this year so i'm looking forward to meeting him. if you are around after greenbelt and anywhere near london mark is doing a day on the saturday called presence organised by diane craven from the southwark diocese (who also co-ordinates the contemplative worship at greenbelt). it wil be well worth going to...

Download Presence flyer

Download presence booking form

Download presence poster

unusual suspects at greenbelt

we're still in the throes of re-inventing proost in time for re-launch at greenbelt later this summer. we'll have lots of new content, venturing into movies and books along with the music, all downloadable, plus an annual subscription which will give access to the back catalogue and new monthly content and of course a new web site...

one of the projects we are excited about is unusual suspects - talent under the age of 25. we have three this year who will be performing at greenbelt - cntrst, isaac everett and sophie dutton showcasing DJing and movies, music and a book of liturgies respectively.

there's a write up on the greenbelt web site - unusual suspects

on the subject of greenbelt john taverner has been booked - wow!

free ticket to greenbelt

if you are looking for a free ticket to greenbelt we are looking to recruit a team of stewards in the new forms cafe venue. you'd get some meal vouchers when working too. leave a contact e-mail below if interested. it's an indoor venue and where a lot of the alt worship is happening on site.

worship outside (in) the box

my latest monthly greenbelt column for the church times which was in last week's paper...

Worship Outside (in) the Box

Last year one of my favourite contemporary art installations was The Bridge by Michael Cross at Dilston Grove in Bermondsey. The artist had constructed a pool inside the old chapel and designed a series of steps so that visitors could walk on water. The water had been blackened with dye so it looked pretty mysterious. When you stood on the first step the weight of your body as you leaned forward caused the next step to appear from under the water. It was quite a slow process, designed to be meditative and step by step you walked across the water. That experience still lives with me and when I have faced decisions requiring a step of faith I have pictured that moment.

Lots of alternative worship groups have drawn inspiration from art installations and have created interactive experiences as part of worship. These might be stations in a service or something on a grander scale. Greenbelt being an arts festival has hosted some wonderful worship art installations over the years. To much amusement at an ideas session for last year’s festival someone suggested doing ‘shed worship’. As far as I know that’s a new concept! But a few months later and lo and behold a few groups rose to the challenge of creating a worship experience with a shed that would be placed outside on site. My favourite one never took place because of health and safety – “the Scape Shed”. People were to be invited to write things on pieces of paper that they wanted rid of in their lives and post them through holes. Then at the end of the weekend the shed would be ceremoniously burned! At the festival there was a poetry shed, a graffiti shed and a shed obscura (a shed turned into a pin hole camera as a reflection on the upside down kingdom).

A mission challenge is how to take spirituality that resonates with contemporary culture and do it out in public spaces rather than inside church walls. In New Zealand, Opawa Baptist Church did precisely this last month taking the Christmas story to find a home outside the church and in the marketplace of Christchurch. Under the creative leadership of Peter and Joyce Majendie eight 20ft long containers were designed, created, wrapped and delivered to parts of the city to be unwrapped. Steve Taylor, the pastor describes it -

“Each had Scripture written on them by a local artist to provide context for the Christmas story. We had people comment "wow that's the largest I have ever seen the Bible written in the city". We had to call the police when 10 drunk santa's invaded one station. There was quite a contrast between the local cathedral who celebrated Christmas by erecting a giant Christmas tree outside with the names of all their commercial sponsors and our container about 20 feet away with planets in motion and a baby crying and people invited to make a star out of wire. About 15,000 people visited the containers. It was brilliant to watch people walk out of a station and say "that changed me" and to have over 200 church volunteers spending time in the city, engaging with people and it's rhythms.”

It sounds a fabulous way to take worship outside the box (and in to other ones!).

worship as bedazzlement

worship as bedazzlement was my latest church times column