Tag Archives: alternative worship

Road trip…

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We are back home after a great few days.

It started out with a long drive down to Coalbrookdale, Telford, where we met up with some great folk who are part of the Tautoko network.

We met some great people, and had a chance to share hopes and dreams with others who are experimenting with new forms of church, mission and worship. It was strange to meet people from so many groups who I had heard of, visited on line, and perhaps even used ideas/material from.

I always find the process of being thrown into a sea of new people like this difficult at first. Michaela was in her element, swimming strongly, whereas I paddled in the shadows for a while. But by the end of the weekend, I hope we began to make some real connections- with people with whom we will get to know more in the future. Certainly it will make attendance at Greenbelt Festival very different, as there will be so many more familiar faces involved in planning and running parallel events.

I hesitate to mention any names, as we met so many folk, and had such great conversations- and typically I will get the names wrong! But I will risk mentioning a few…

Great to meet Laura Drane (thanks for the invite!) and chums from Sanctus 1 in Manchester. Also Jonny Baker, Mark Berry, Jenny from Spirited Exchanges, and Julie Wilson from Big stuff up here in Scotland. I also enjoyed meeting Martin and hearing about Beyond, down in Brighton- and loved the beach hut advent calender thing they did last year.

After all this, we had a great day out at the Blists Hill living museum– a step into Victorian industrial life.

We then visited family up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I spent a day and a half renovating my mothers garden pond (not a recommended pastime) and the kids visited Matlock Bath, and took the cable cars up the Heights of Abraham.

Here are a few assorted photo’s. Click to enlarge…

Worshipping with wood…

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I spent a few hours this afternoon cutting slices of wood to use as part of a worship installation that Aoradh are putting together for Greenbelt.

It occurred to me that this too was worship.

Each cut, all noise and spewing sawdust. Each tree-disc a little slice of branch, still holding the shape of years of growth.

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I was suddenly aware that every one of these pieces of wood was intended to be held in someone’s hand. People I have never met will be asked to use these things as prayers and statements of hope for life.

And that what I was doing was holy.

Worship.

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The new book is out!

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Forgive the conceit, because here is a plug for my new book!

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‘Listing’ is a collection of poetry and meditations mostly inspired by some of those great lists in the Bible- the fruit of the Spirit, the Beatitudes, the ‘love’ passage in Corinthians and the ‘seasons’ passage in Ecclesiastes 3.

It is published by Proost- and available by clicking here.

Here is the Proost blurb from Jonny Baker;

Listing is a little gem, a surprise that came Proost’s way over the horizon from Chris Goan. 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’. The books is available as both hard copy or to download as pdf.

Thanks Jonny!

Go on- Buy two and give one away…

Networking with alt. worship folk…

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We heard about this meeting of the Tautoko network and Michaela and I are hoping to go. Thanks for the invite Laura!

This is what it is all about;

It’s been too long but finally a weekend gathering has been planned for the tautoko network in July 2009 at the Coalbrookdale Youth Hostel in Shropshire. We really hope you will join us. It will be a relaxed weekend to chill out, catch up, share and cook some choice food and drink, reflect, worship and pray together, with plenty of space for conversation.

The tautoko network was originally formed out of friends connected with alternative worship, emerging church, or missional communities (funny old thing language eh?!). Why? Well mainly because we love hanging out together. The network was made a bit more intentional/formal recognising that there were plenty of others involved in the same kind of stuff who didn’t necessarily have the history of friendships but could gain a ton from being part of it. These were the words we put together to describe why it exists and they still seem a pretty fair reflection…

  • To share the journey with others who face similar mission challenges.
  • For mutual friendship, encouragement, solidarity, support, gift giving, discernment, resource sharing, ideas and learning
  • To see what emerges as creative people connect.

And the ethos/values we try and shape the friendships around are…

Open set | Spin free | Generous | Vulnerable | Questioning

Sounds really good…

Said Michaela- ‘wouldn’t it be lovely to go to something like this that we were not responsible for?’ I think I know what she means.

Aoradh @ Greenbelt, ’09…

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I finally managed to get our booking form into Greenbelt yesterday- with a day to spare! Last minute as always!

This year, Aoradh are going to do some worship in ‘New Forms Cafe’- a space that is used as an alternative worship space for various groups. It looks as though about 7 of us will be going, and setting up an installation based loosely around a theme of ‘time’.

We will also be setting up some kind of poetry graffiti, on boards around the site- based around the ‘Ecclesiastes 3’ theme. Some of this poetry I have used on the blog, and will be part of a new book called ‘Listing’, published by Proost, hopefully out before the festival.

Speaking of Proost, Jonny tells me that they will be setting up a couple of evenings where Proost contributors will be doing their thing. I will probably be contributing to these in some way.

If you are going to Greenbelt, and read this blog, it would be great to say hello!

It is a considerable undertaking to get down to Greenbelt from Scotland. The distance is quite something, and it does not fit the school holidays up here- we have to take the kids out of school. But for me, the journey is made worth it for these reasons-

  1. Our group is small and isolated, and needs connections with the wider movement of God in our time
  2. We also need ideas and inspiration, and to connect with the creativity of others
  3. It is a safe place to continue exploring faith- full of people who adventure outwards in their engagement with the Word and the world
  4. It is a way that our ‘small theologies’ (worked out in small community) connect with ‘big theologies’ (worked out in culture)

hope to see to see you there!

Angels on Dunoon pier…

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We (aoradh that is) are just home after spending most of the day dismantling a worship/mediation space on Dunoon pier on the theme of Angels, as a celebration of Michaelmas

We used a vacant pavillion building on Dunoon pier- it used to be a bar/disco but has been largely unused for years. We have used it in the past as a 24/7 prayer room, and also as a space for a mediation labyrinth (check this out for more info on the labyrinth- you can get a kit from Proost also…)

It is a lovely liminal space- out above the water, close by the town centre,  with the passing of many feet as the ferries disgorge their passengers. In the daytime, it is bathed in a lovely light, and at night, it becomes a beacon out on the dark waters.

This time we worked with Kimberley Bohan – minister of the local Episcopal church, who brought the idea of Michaelmas to us. As with all of these community things we have done, we wanted to offer a place where people could just come in and encounter God. With no other agendas- no hard sell. Just hospitality and the rest up to the Holy Spirit.

The stations we set up in this space included a community collage, ‘messages’, The story of Raphael, a holy space, and a way of responding using post cards with Angel words.

I hope it was meaningful to people.

Here are some photos;

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So what do we think about Angels then?

We have just embarked on a plan to set up a worship space on Dunoon pier using the premise of Michaelmas- the festival of Michael and all Angels ( 27th of September… 12 noon till 8. You would be welcome!)

This idea was floated by Kimberley, minister at our local Episcopal church, and fellow blogger, and we had a lovely creative round-table planning meeting a couple of evenings ago. For some reason Michaela had sprinkled the table with glitter to bring a little angel-dust sparkle to the proceedings- and as ever with glitter, it is now everywhere, and on everything…

For me, the creation of these happenings is where the real worship of God can happen- a small community who seek to place God at the centre of everything, and celebrate this together.

But, as a confession, I struggled with the idea a little at first. To set up worship spaces like the one seems to demand a theme that allows creative, even playful, engagement- and I struggled with Angels as a theme…

Angels- Christmas cards, and New Age nonsense… this was my starting point.

But, I soon found that a little persistence can be very fruitful.

Kimberley had a whole set of words and ideas about Angels, and I soon discovered that Angel literally means ‘gods messenger’. Other folks had paintings, and ideas about how we could use the space, and what ‘stations’ we could prepare, and we were off and running.

One of the ideas was to use postcards to encourage people to send their own messages. I used wordle to generate an image from Kimberley’s words, and ordered some postcards.

Here is the image;