jonnybaker

scotland shapers confession and liturgy

the church of scotland's report church without walls identifies five shapers for the life of the church. these are: spirituality of grace, the gospels, locality, friendship, and the gifts of the spirit. i wrote this confession and liturgy around those shapers (inspired by grace's ethos confession and doors liturgy) which i used in the worship session i led at the national gathering. i am making this worship trick 32 in series 3

Confession

When we have acted out of judgement rather than grace
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy

When we have forgotten your story and been shaped by the story of the Western Dream of the good life
Christ have mercy
Christ have mercy

When church has taken all our energy and we've not had time to get stuck into our locality
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy

When all our friends have become Christians and we haven't made new friendships
Christ have mercy
Christ have mercy

When we have acted in our own strength and forgotten the gifts of your Spirit
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy

But when we are filled with grace,
live out the gospel
in our locality
make good friends
and share the gifts of the Spirit
then God rejoices with us 

Almighty God who forgives all who who truly repent
have mercy on us
pardon and deliver us from our sins
and keep us in life eternal
through Jesus Christ our Lord
Amen

Shape Our Lives Liturgy

Shape our lives with generosity and gift
Help us love without judging and with no strings attached
We will enter the Kingdom through the door marked 'grace'

Your life, death and resurrection are good news
Let your story shape our story and imagination
We will enter the Kingdom through the door marked 'gospels'

You became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood
Shape our lives with vision that can be lived close at hand and not far away
We will enter the Kingdom through the door marked 'local'

You have called us friends
Shape us into faithful and kind friends for others
We will enter the Kingdom through the door marked 'friendship'

We will do through these doors in the power of the Spirit,
sharing in the gifts of the Spirit
knowing that Jesus has gone through them first.
Amen

linkage and worship trick 31 - sunday

a few news/link type things...

mike morris has started blogging.

beyond church has had it's first worship gathering that looks like it was a lot of fun. and their next event should be hilarious with the brilliant comedian milton jones...

ian adams is branching out into other creative areas and projects offering spiritual direction amongst other things

moby gratis is free music from moby for non commercial ventures. it's film score type stuff - ideal for worship background?

20 questions to use in a small group to get to know people

and darren wright has a whole worship experience called sunday that is free and downloadable. it was originally used at the australian black stump festival. i am making that worship trick 31

holy ground::holy city

holy ground::holy city looks wonderful. i love the scale of it.

i am looking forward to going to melbourne later this year to do some stuff around alt worship with cheryl.

this prayer of cheryl's is brilliant (and gets added to the worship tricks as no 30)

glimpses of redemption
already unfolding.

acts of justice;
of pre-meditated
unprovoked,
love.

surges of liberation
pre-emptive strikes of hope.

do not wait to see the flames
in a burning bush.
the flames are everywhere:
held in every piece of gravel
as pervasive as the grime that gathers on the walls of buildings

do not be stopped simply by the absence of a voice telling you to go:
it’s there, waiting to be heard
within the relentless beeping of a pedestrian crossing
in the squeal of tram tracks
the background hum of airconditioning units

liberation is waiting to unfold
on every streetcorner
in every city square.

we choose, in our everyday
- just like moses did:

will we place ourselves on the side of life

or not?

go back the way you came - worship trick 29

i have just got round to adding the outline of the last grace service on elijah to the grace archive...

i actually didn't make it as i was ill but have led something similar a couple of times since. 1 kings 19 is a wonderful passage and there was some great stuff we came across or used.

i'm making the whole outline a worship trick but you might particularly want to look out for the planet earth desert video sequence which we showed with this blessing/sending out piece go back the way you came which i wrote and is below. the video sequence is where water comes in the desert and where the desert blooms - truly astonishing.

then i found a really neat earthquake sequence from semiconductor worlds in flux dvd and we used the brilliant noise sequence of footage of the sun for fire from the same dvd. steve gave me the dvd for my birthday which proved timely.

Go back the way you came...

The desert and the parched land will be glad

Go back the way you came...

Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert

Go back the way you came...

The burning sand will become a pool and thirsty ground bubbling springs.

Go back the way you came...

You're not the only one

Go back the way you came...

Build in time for rest, food and drink

Go back the way you came...

What are you doing here?

Go back the way you came...

The wilderness will rejoice and blossom, like the crocus it will burst into bloom

Go back the way you came...

Be strong. Do not fear. Your God will come.

Go back the way you came...

May gladness and joy overtake you and sorrow and sighing flee away

Go back the way you came...

holy fool and francis blessing

mark berry seems back to his blogging self after going easy for a while...

i am making holy fool and francis blessing worship trick 28, which means mark has two in a row as his passion pictures were no 27, which is probably a first! the francis blessing is being used on brian maclaren's everything must change tour which is going well by all accounts. to go with holy fool see also what would a fool say?

off to stamford bridge to see chelsea v fernabace in a few minutes for the second leg of the european champions league quarter final. i watched the first in a soccer bar in new york last week at about 3 in the afternoon. the bar had 14 screens, 12 of which had the arsenal v liverpool game on and the bar was full of arsenal and liverpool fans singing and chanting. then there were about 3 chelsea fans watching that game so when fernabace scored twice the whole bar was cheering apart from 3 of us!!! then with one voice they all sang 'if you hate chelsea clap your hands'! it was quite surreal... so we are 2-1 down going into this leg - hope we can pull it off...

passion pictures

mark berry has posted a series of passion pictures

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

i am making these worship trick 27 series 3

holy week reflections - worship trick 26

i can't quite believe we're almost in holy week... where did lent go?

anyway i'm sure the blogosphere will be full of creative reflections and links to accompany the journey this year. so to get the ball rolling have a look at holy week reflections from lifewords. jeremy williams at short film in worship put me on to this. there's is a movie/animation/reflection for each day. just click on the day number to watch the movie. i don't know what the deal is with downloading them. but if you use flock (as i do) the way i find out the address of flash movies is as follows:
click on tools - page info - select media tab - highlight the animation and you can see where the movie url is. so day 2 is at http://www.sgmlifewords.com/easter/films/easter2.swf - then click file - save as and you can save that animation so you don't have to be online to watch it. i assume that this is an ok piece of info to pass on?... if you don't use flock, find your own work around - see the source code to find the url etc...

anyway that's eight short movie reflections right there...

shooting jesus - easter resource

cms and the diocese of london have collaborated together to produce a new schoools resource for easter. this is partly inspired by the change of holidays meaning schools are still in action in holy week.

dennis morris, a photographer who toured with the sex pistols, was invited to give easter a visual makeover. the resulting images are pretty unusual and contemporary. they form part of a schools resource pack and the good news is you can download the images and pack free from cms! if you want a hard copy you can buy it from the cms shop.

congrats to ben bell, bob mayo, anita matthews, russell price and jenny baker who are the people i know who worked on it. i'm sure there were some others at the diocese end as well. the resource is aimed at 7-11 year olds. and as you'll work out if you download the resource, churches in the london diocese get sent a box of artefacts and so on to out on the workshops. you'll need to improvise if you are not in the london diocese...

if you use the images with young people (or anyone esle) i'd love to hear how they go down, how you use them and what connects or doesn't...

i'm making these images worship trick 25, series 3

you are the god who sees

the outline for the feb grace service hagar is now in the grace archive.

i loved steve's blessing you are the god who sees and am making it worship trick 24 series 3

spirit2go: worship trick 23

steve taylor always comes up with creative ideas for advent and lent...

this year he has developed spirit2go. as he puts it the thinking behind it is...

Working toward Lent this year, I have also been seeking a way for people to do spirituality without any physical link to church, while retaining some sense of shared life. How could people do a shared task, but in their own timestyles, yet be encouraged by each other? In the old days it was meet physically, same time, same place. But is that the only way?

there are creative tasks to do and share what you get up to in the comments under each of the assignment blog posts or e-mail them in. i guess you could do this alone, with a family, with friends - a global interactive worship experience of sorts...