Categories: uncategorized
Date: 06 June 2005 08:52:33
Thank you God for Graceland, which went brilliantly last night. It has been wonderful to have more people involved in our alt worshippy service which is only on its third session ever. We looked at the prodigal son - thanks Unordered for the wonderfully thoughtful suggestions - and by the end of the evening as we sat on cushions and ate beef sandwiches (can you have a prodigal son service without any fatted calf?) it felt like Graceland had grown up a bit.
It's an "alongside" type alt.worship project, rather than an entirely new thing - born out of a desire from people in our church to do different things and seek god differently. Yesterday we talked to him using clay, producing images of what the father's love in the story might be like, and then with candles - on a station representing the younger son ("light a candle as a symbol of a step you can take nearer home and imagine your father seeing it - and smiling"). Most people spent most time at the older son station, where you could take out a stone from a bowl of water and meditate on whether there was any hardness in your heart and how easy it was to become attached to it (it's true - i didn't want to put my stone down cos it was kind of comforting to hold). Then you could put it back in the water.
I've always been fascinated by how, despite the focus on the younger son in many sermons, most Christians identify most strongly with the elder son in the parable. That's perhaps understandable, but while preparing for this i have been shocked to learn how like that I am. When we talked to the people we were sitting next to (at a specific time during the service) about how we'd felt about all those stations - it was fascinating to hear that most people felt the same, but were really pleased to have a chance to address the issues. The liturgy was great too and its always fun to use some secular(ish) music and see how people react. This time we used
Chances (Athlete)
Babylon (David Gray)
Shoot the Moon (Norah Jones)
Streetmap (Athlete again, sorry, do they count as secularish?)
Holiday in Spain (Counting Crows)
Long and Winding Road (Beatles, of course)
So that was fun.
We learnt heaps more stuff - partly about involving the older or less able to move members of our group (one of them is 94!) we need bigger instruction sheets so they can read them at their seats and not feel left out, although everything was brought to them and explained. We could also do with - shock horror - a bit more space. There were 23 of us last night, and not all from our church, which was also great. It would be good to have more other local people involved - maybe that will happen too, but maybe only if we change the space. But it was a great group, some great chats and people had FUN as well as I think some great time with God. Taught me a lot about myself and my time with him anyway.
So I'm excited by what God's doing there and privileged to be involved. It's always terrifying beforehand, but i think we'll be doing Graceland for some time to come.
If you're still reading, thanks Dave for the kind comment. It was nervewracking to write, but I checked it out with a friend who writes for the Grauniad first too and if she approved and you approved then I'm comforted. And i'm still wearing my white band, whatever my boss says (which is a lot!)