Okay, so I'm currently trying to concoct a new kind of church service. My aim is to create a quite reflective worship space where people at differing stages of faith commitment can connect with God, where all are comfortable to explore (play with) spirituality.
Reflect is to be similar to Godly play in that worship will be about discovering God, rather than being told about God. "In most religious education children are told who God is. In 'Godly Play' children discover who God is." From http://www.godlyplay.org.uk/.
The Basic structure…
Meet and gather, chat say hello for 10 min
1) Move into the Sacred Space (with journal)
2) Light Candle and say opening prayer (based around Psalm for the day)
3) Watch a Presentation of the Reading(s) for the day (Done in some kind of intersesting way like cafe church flash presentations)
4) Reflect on the reading
5) Connect – using journal, stations (different art, prayer and other stations people go to) and wondering questions (projected on a screen) – ambient music in the background
6) Offer our thoughts, work (artwork or journal work) and money to God
7) Close – using prayer of St Francis
8) Move out of the space
Get together chat, have coffee, hear any announcements.
Any thoughts?
Reflect is to be similar to Godly play in that worship will be about discovering God, rather than being told about God. "In most religious education children are told who God is. In 'Godly Play' children discover who God is." From http://www.godlyplay.org.uk/.
The Basic structure…
Meet and gather, chat say hello for 10 min
1) Move into the Sacred Space (with journal)
2) Light Candle and say opening prayer (based around Psalm for the day)
3) Watch a Presentation of the Reading(s) for the day (Done in some kind of intersesting way like cafe church flash presentations)
4) Reflect on the reading
5) Connect – using journal, stations (different art, prayer and other stations people go to) and wondering questions (projected on a screen) – ambient music in the background
6) Offer our thoughts, work (artwork or journal work) and money to God
7) Close – using prayer of St Francis
8) Move out of the space
Get together chat, have coffee, hear any announcements.
Any thoughts?
2 comments:
Sounds pretty sweet to me, how much maintenance/upkeep/setting stuff up every week do you anticipate it requiring?
Hey Digger,
Firstly, thank you for trawling nearly a year back through my Blog to stumble upon this post.
Secondly, in answer to your question, I think this “service” would actually require fairly little maintenance / upkeep / setting stuff up every week.
Initially before everything starts you would need to do the following…
• Get a list of
o Stations
o Ways of presenting the word
o Standardise wondering questions to guide (personal, community, emotional, intellectual, etc)
• Create the space
o Candles and fairy lights
o General decorations
o Data projector
o Find Ambient / Taize Music
Once the service is up and running you’d need to do the following before each service…
• Read the word
• Form wondering questions
• Work out how to present the word
• Work out how to incorporate Psalm into the opening prayer
• Work out which stations to use
• Set up the space
As an ongoing thing you would add stations and tweak the look of the space
This may look like a lot but actually I don't think it is (I have tried to be comprehensive). You could pretty much take as much time as you'd like but I think you'd be looking at about and hour to work out what is going to happen and half an hour to set up the space.
How does that sound?
Post a Comment