Friday, September 23, 2005

An A to Z of Alternative Worship

This is a lovely piece of work on aspects of creative worship, even if it starts a bit cheesily. A is for Ambience, good. B is for Beanbags... hmmm.
Bible, bravery or brokenness would be my immediate suggestions. I like K is for kleptomania and G is for Graceful particularly.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah. interesting.... good idea although i might change a few of them. e.g. experiential. i think we focus too much already on experience to the detriment of some really important aspects of worship such as sacrifice & obedience... suggest: experimental as an encourgement to try different things. ck.

Mark Fletcher said...

Yeah, fair comment - but for those of us from a tradition which emphasises sacrifice and obedience over experience we need to answer the question. What is the authentic experience of God for us? It is fair to critisise the over experientialism of some churches - but it crutial to seek a genuine encounter with God. What does relationship with God really mean - or is our discipleship simply duty and intellectualism?

Anonymous said...

sacrifice & obedience emphasied..? yeah. but often in a negative rather than a postive way. as in what must i give up & not do in order not to make God disappointed. anyway. think clare! what constitutes a genuine encounter with God? hmm... my initial thoughts. are. that our encounters with God should be at least as diverse as our encounters with people. and they may change us to the core, tho always for the good - this must be tested - and or they might cause smaller changes to our attitude or behaviour or even not really change us at all. just make us feel a bit more loved although that would change us too probably oh maybe its all about transformation...? anyway. these encounters I believe take a whole plethora of various forms more diverse than an Islingtonians social life! suggestions: through the words of a novel (even by someone not claiming to be chrsitian), film, art, music, the beauty in creation, the love of a good friend, the discipline opf a parent, laughter, understanding. you catch my drift i hope. and. i dont think there should be a hierachy of such encounters. but. I do think it would amazing if in the expression of our faith we could reflect even a small part of the diversity and multi-faceted nature of our God. I also think that this will mean we will be more equipped to connect with people on the outside of church. would i rule out the supernatural experiences? certainly not but I would like to test the positive and negative effects on the individual & church & the mission of the church.

Mark Fletcher said...

Gosh that was good Claire. But do we then have any level of critique of genuine or counterfit encounters with God?