more worship musings - what are we afraid of?

this was what i can remember of my spiel on worship as part of the dialogue, trying to bring a bit of a missions perspective i guess...

i was introduced earlier as though i represent something new. but i'm 43! alternative worship is 20 years old. the future isn't with me. if you think i'm the new thing you're wrong. this is focused in my own mind by my teenage sons. the oldest DJs dubstep, fidget house and bassline, is into new media, animation and is a stencil artist. or my younger is a poet writing poignant hip hop. how does their world connect with worship? what will they create if given the space to express their creatvity in worship to god?

when i was standing on the millenium bridge it struck me as a picture of the challenge we face in worship. when i look one way i see st pauls's cathedral. it reminds me of the gift of tradition that has meant that the dangerous memory of jesus has been passed on to me. but culturally i don't fit there. if i look the other way i see the tate modern on the south bank in london which is always buzzing. culturally i love it, am at home there with it's postmodern, creativity. but i want to mees things up and bring the riches of the christian tradition across the bridge and the cultural world of postmodern london into the church. this gap between church culture and the wider culture exists not just in traditional churches, but in modern charismatic ones, pentecostal ones and even in the new african churches.

we need (to use john taylor's phrase in the primal vision) an adventure of the imagination that enables us to reflect on how to grow worship in and out of the local soil of the various cultures we live in in every day life so that this split is broken. cross cultural mission holds clues as to how this is done (both good and bad praactise). when i travelled to india in 2005, i am came back with the phrase the 'colonised imagination' in my head because of the disappointment of how english i felt the worship was. in many parts of the world we see the same problem and need to recover a missional imagination that enables indigenous worship and leadership. but it's an issue on our own doorsteps. we expect people to join in with our approach to become like us - the colonised imagination is alive and well.

this issue of the challenge around gospel and culture is particularly acute at the moment because of the huge cultural changes of the last 20 years. it's made the gap feel wider. how do we cultivate worship in postmodern times?

one of the windows into this change is technology. i'm not talking about the actual use of technology but more how our instincts are changing. the new electric environment (to use a macluhan phrase) is connected, relational, where community is the content, with an architecture of participation and self publishing and creativity. what might worship look like if it was an environment of gift exchange and participation rather than an environment led by experts along provier/client lines? could these new instincts help us re-discover the body of christ with her distrubuted gifts?

tradition is a good thing - but it is also something that can get stuck and needs to be renewed and broken open to remain alive. it might be helpful to consider the well know bell curve of change. a small percentage of early adopters and pioneers engage with something new. this filters through to a wider group and gradually change takes place even though there will always be a small group who resist change. perhaps we are in a wider change process like this around worship?

one of the key groups of people in moments of change are artists. artists, creatives and tricksters will pave the way to the future evoking grief and amazement (to use walter bruegemann's themes of prophecy in the prophetic imagination). is there space in our worship and churches for these kind of artists? what are we afraid of?

Comments

[David Derbyshire]

A lot of churches need catalysts to get people to use their gifts in worship otherwise they will be stuck with worship being sing-a-longs and the only way people can contribute being to butt in and say something. Often there needs to be some prior planning and organising that is open for people to take part in to generate ideas so that they can then co-ordinate their preparation. What a refreshing change it would be if this was handed over to visual artists instead of musicians or even to those working with the poor and homeless. Perhaps then worship would be more like going to an art gallery or sitting down for a meal or anything really and not just like listening to concert followed by a lecture? Is that the sort of thing you were talking about Jonny?

[Barky]

I don't know if you caught what we did at GB this year with 'the garden' but we were attempting to deconstruct the boundaries between the worship programme and the visual arts programme. I think that's the interesting territory to be in!

Basically we had an installation open over the weekend and then one evening we presented a live interactive performance within the installation space - everything was decentred, there was nowhere for people to sit - and everyone mingled and circulated around the space whilst visuals, music, readings and enactments happened and changed around them. The phrase we used to describe it was a 'visual poem' because i think like a poem we were trying to hint at things that lie beyond language and thought.

Here is the link to what we did: http://thegardenbrighton.wikispaces.com/possibility2

[Peter]

I've seen the change curve diagram in a marketing workshop I went to. One point they made is that around 1 in 100 innovations will fail! But equally important: every failure is still a step forward, still teaches lessons and is a necessary step on the path to achieving what they set out to do.

[nic]

'…is there space in our worship and churches for these kind of artists?'

Yes and No.

Artists, creatives and tricksters traverse borders, prefer deserts and caves. They are classic 'center-periphery' characters, nomadic and vibratory. The pursuit of the vague.

If church can be re-conceptualized beyond the obsolete metaphor of the body and constructed more around 'the network', then there is hope— church as assemblage.

[jonny]

the pursuit of the vague - now if vaux was going that would b a title! with the body metaphor it all depends on how you focus on it i think, but yes network and assemblage - i like it.

[Kester]

Good stuff Jonny. Brave to take the more tricky line.

Agree Nic - assemblage is the way forward. But people still need to realise that if creatives are tricksters, then they will not be able to exist at the middle. Don't push them their, or their gift will die.

[jonny]

kester this is a really important point - maybe why i struggle in my life at times!!!

[jonny]

nic can you say a bit more about assemblage or point me to something to read on it?

[Kester]

I'm just reading A New Philosophy of Society - Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity by Manuel de Landa, which I know Nic and John Rag. have read and is very good:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Philosophy-Society-Assemblage-Complexity/dp/0826491693/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221415809&sr=8-6

You're right about that struggle too. Very much part of my journey at the moment. But the tension is that the gift dies if it has no orbit too. It's the boundary that's vital - not in the middle, but not off into space either.

[David Derbyshire]

To come back to your original question ‘What are we afraid of’? Perhaps we are afraid of people in our own groupings complaining about some aspect of what we do? Maybe we fear the grumbling voices of those who don't get our attempts at leading them on in worship? Or perhaps we fear our experiments not leading to engagement in God we expected? To some extent or other I feel what we fear is failure. Isn’t it time to take that risk?