A quick thanks to Luke for this post. In the true spirit of the emerging church, I stole his idea, changed it a bit and used it for haven last night, whilst passing it off as my own work.

Our “normal” congregational worship tends to be quite discussion based so we really appreciate the ones we do which are a bit more reflective and alt worshippy.

One of the interesting parts of last night is part of our struggle to control our environment. In the traditional model, church is a very controlled environment. We control the lighting, the seating, the set up, but also the noise level, the behaviour of people in the service and so on.

When we started our cafe congregations, it was a new experience to worship in an environment which wasn’t controlled in that way - other people used the cafe, there was a constant noise level, waiters would walk in and out in the middle of our congregational time, or even during prayer. At jeebus, some might say that it is the behaviour of the people worshipping which prevents it being a controlled environment. I enjoy jeebus, but I couldn’t have it as my regular worshipping community - the extreme chaos of the group of people involved and their interactions with each other is too far removed from my idea of church.

And last night, we were reminded that we can’t control our environment at haven because we are seeking (in part) to be a community which welcomes people with young children. Accordingly, during our reflection, we have to become used to the energy of an overexcited two year old “dancing” to the background music (which was supposed to be reflective…), jumping on and off people’s laps and generally engaging in her church experience.

Being entirely focussed and concentrating on the reflections was too much to expect in the circumstances, so in between some of the reflections, the conversation would continue between ourselves. It was very quiet and reflective in comparison to our normal congregational time, but not by any means still.

I actually found the experience quite freeing - it was a community engaging in reflective worship in a way that was comfortable for that community - rather than striving to be absolutely silent, absolutely focussed at all times. In doing so, I personally shed some of the feelings of being straightjacketed. Unconsciously I had been feeling like I had during communion when I was a kid, when I had to stop playing and sit quietly because that was an important part of church.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2004 at 10:53 am by dan and is filed under spirituality and prayers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.