benedson

Greenbelt Worship: What not to miss

Greenbelt is just a few weeks away and as many of you will know I look after the worship and spirituality aspect of the programme.  I enjoy working with a stunningly creative sub-goup and the ideas that both they and other people involved in GB come up with are something else.

So as I think about the coming festival here are my top 5 not to miss GB worship and Spirituality events this year:

1 - The Silent Pilgrimage:  I've blogged about this already, but I'm really excited esp. now that I've got all the meditations back.  Basically, a person picks up a pair of headphones from the Angels Lounge and as they move around the site they pick up five different meditations that are being broadcast.

2 - The Worship Co-operative:  For a number of years I was feeling that the New Forms Venue was become stale, and also ideologically in a different place to most groups. It was all about come and see rather than collaborate and participate.  So we've changed it this year.  Each day different groups are collaborating to produce an act of worship that lasts all day.  At different times in the day there will be moments of focus, so that it's not just a 'station-fest'...

3 - Grace - Monday 12:00 in the Big Top:  I'm working my way through Jonny's new book 'curating worship' (robustness on the way...) and so Grace is on my mind at the moment.  No doubt they will produce something stunningly creative in the Big Top.

4 - Abide:  Abide is our new eco-spirituality venue at GB this year.  It's a tented venue, a large yurt I hope, that has a number of different groups and people leading meditations in there focused on the environment and spiritualiity.  Some of the groups leading meditations are Lawrence Freeman and the WSCM, Moot, Still Point and Earth Abbey.

5 - The Jazz Mass:  The Jazz Mass is on Friday Evening in the Big Top, it brings together Jazz music and the the Thomas Mass.  The music will no doubt be stunning and the framework of the Thomas Mass allows space for ambiguity, refelction and meditation.

The Silent Pilgrimage: Greenbelt 2010

The Silent Pilgrimage: A meditative journey through the physical space of the festival.

The temporary architecture of the Greenbelt site shapes our festival. Do we view the site merely functionally or through it can we encounter the Divine? The Silent Pilgrimage is a site-specific sound installation that takes the participant on a reflective journey around the festival site. Moments of reflection, celebration and blessing held within the common framework of the site around us all.

Away from the festival the physical environment that we inhabit shapes our being.  Whether the city or hamlet, the countryside or the town the presence of God is within them all.  The spiritual is physical; the physical is spiritual.  Do we view the environment that we inhabit functionally or is it an icon into the Divine.  The Silent Pilgrimage opens these questions exploring sideways encounters through the physical.

We have commissioned five groups to write the meditations: Frunt, Molten Meditation, Beyond, Spirit Walk and Gloppy Music. The meditations, of both words and music, will provide a unique soundscape for the site this year, reflecting on both the site location and also on a particular stage of the silent journey. 

Don't forget to book your tickets for Greenbelt

The Ubiquitous Screen

Orwell warned us of the power of the screen - albeit a two way one - but everywhere that I now look I see a screen.  A TV screen, a computer screen, a projected screen, an ipad screen, the screen that focuses our personal attention.   Many churches have embraced the screen in worship.  Liturgical words are now projected, songs projected, biblical texts projected and whilst I do this myself I also have some questions regarding what it does to our shared corporate worship.

Firstly, it takes the text out of its original context and reframes it in a new one.  The screen becomes the context.  For example I can project three verses of scripture onto a screen in a service, people will see the three verses but not the context that it was taken from.  The person leading has the potential to manipulate the text as it is not placed in its wider original context.  The screen becomes the context and in culture more widely it seems that we have the ability to discern the context that the screen is setting - i.e is this a film, a documentary, is it the BBC is it Sky.  In a church setting I'm not quite sure that we have discerned the genre of the screen.

Secondly, the screen is used for entertainment and whilst I think that church should be enjoyable, it should not be for entertainment.  When I sit down and watch the TV at home, I have the mentality that says 'entertain me' - I wonder whether people enter our churches look at the screen and think 'entertain me'.  Church and worship becomes part of the entertainment culture that we are part of rather than offering an alternative

Thirdly, how does the screen affect our corporate point of focus. When a group of people reads from a book it is a different experience to reading off a screen.  In many ways a positive one as people are no longer mumbling into books but are looking up at the people around them - but a physical element is lost as the hands are not used.   They are either free to be used or redundant with no use.  I'm convinced that posture is important in worship, for centuries the book has dictated our posture, that has now been removed and I'm not convinced that we have rethought our posture.

Anyway, we've just bought a new telly for the World Cup!  Ours was turning
everything yellow and so I would have thought England were Brazil...until they passed the ball to Heskey.


 

Gb and Lambeth

In the last two months I've led worship in two places that i never thought that i would. One was the main communion service at GB, i never thought that I'd be leading worship for 15,000. I quite enjoyed it and think that perhaps i may be called to a ministry in a mega church. ;-).

The second place was at Lambeth Palace. Today I led a service based on 'hope' in the crypt chapel of Lambeth. It was a strange experience, partly because of the history of the place and partly because of all that it represents. I think that i was more intimidated by Lambeth, partly because i was looking out on a sea of contemporaries and people i have a great deal of respect for, but I also wonder if i felt more of an inability to fail in the context of lambeth.

Just thoughts, nothing coherent yet...

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