This is a space for practitioners to talk about what they are doing and the projects they are involved in - and links to websites etc. There seems to be quite a lot going (of the different streams listed in the background page) but little is know about what you are doing - so come on go public!!

To add your story to the list in Alphabetic order of surname - please click on the edit content button to the right on the page toolbox >>>
Johannes Arens, Saturday Sanctuary, Manston (Leeds). Our story here in Manston started with a battleground I inherited from my predecessor: the monthly Parade Service. This developed into something with which everybody was unhappy: the music was too happy clappy, the children too noisy, the nave altar a disgrace, the music group horrible, the music too old-fashioned, the service too long, too short etc. Trying to give something to every group quid pro quo helped, but a considerable group of people were not happy with the services on offer and kept asking for something different. The time was ripe to try something different: there was a nucleus of people happy not only to complain but to work for something different (and to take responsibility for something new) and there was an obvious mission target: the population of our church school.
I am used to a Vigil Mass, in my two previous parishes we had them as well, but they were fairly standard services (less formal family Mass). The idea to be more radical developed in Walsingham (of all places) during the children's pilgrimage: excellent eucharistic worship, accessible for children without dumbing the message down. If they can do it...
Saturday Sanctuary tries to be truly and fully church, not a stepping stone towards something else. It is weekly, it is sacramental, liturgical and eucharistic even though about half the people attending do not receive communion (yet). The timing is perfect: 5.30pm seems to be so much easier for families. Otherwise it is not too different from a Family Eucharist: we use a projector and a screen, hence nobody needs to bother with sheets or books and we can use pictures and short movies during presentations (thanks to Fr Simon Rundell, he helped a lot!). We sit and stand in the sanctuary and stand around the altar together during the Eucharistic Prayer, praying towards the East and the coming Lord. So far about 60 people attend this service, half of them children. This is work in progress: the large proportion of children asks for even more radical thinking about how to make the Eucharist accessible (and to stay legal). The huge challenge is not to bowdlerise our faith for children. Again, Walsingham taught me that children are happy to attend a Youth Mass which takes 90 minutes if they are taken seriously and the music is right. Get in touch if you would like to know more, or come along and see!

Francis Jon, Sacred Space, Romford. Not sure whether our small initiatives really count under this banner, but having listened to so many of those who have recently joined us I have begun two new - small - ventures. An informal, short Saturday evening Mass and a Sunday half-hour which I have called 'sacredspace@standrews.romford' Half an hour of silence/reflective music, prayer/readings - not all at the same time) before the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar. The former is already showing that there's a need (someone even drove up from Kent to attend!!) but no one has come to the latter. But I find it of value and I believe that, in opening the church more often, people will 'find' the space. It's there for whoever passes by and wants to drop in.

Contemplative Rhythms & Michael Hart. Like many others interested in contemplative prayer I have been excited by many new opportunities for alternative forms of worship and community. As a priest associate of the Sisters of the Love of God, an Anglican Contemplative order based in Oxford, I have been looking for ways to enable people to engage with contemplative prayer. After a Diocesan Conference on Alternative Worship and following on from conversations with some members of Moot it seemed appropriate to do three experimental services in Southwark Cathedral.
The idea was to have a safe space for busy people to think , pause, stop and worship. The one hour service contains silence , ritual, worship and time for contemplation. Each service reflects a seasonal theme. The first of the Contemplative Rhythm services was held on 20th March 2007and in July a Contemplative Eucharist to complete the Spring/Summer Programme of three CR services. The Autumn series, again on Tuesday at 7pm, will be October 16th; Nov 13th; and December 4th. The venue is Southwark Cathedral near London Bridge,( entry via the North west door, Lancelot Link). More details from Fr. Michael Hart. (Michael is Canon Missioner for the Southwark Diocese)

Andy Macqueen & "Stillness on Sunday"
Here's what we've been up to....

We are a four church urban Team parish, with the town centre church holding Evensong on Sunday evenings. It seemed to me that there could be a place for an additional, alternative monthly evening worship event in our daughter churchwww.allsaintsbasingstoke.org.uk. I pondered a number of possible ideas, based on things I've done in the past, but wasn't sure what would work best.

I believe there is constituency of people in the town who might see themselves as "spiritual seekers", but are not presently engaged by our Sunday morning Sung Eucharist, for a variety of different reasons. There are also core and fringe members of the Team churches, who would value an approach to spirituality and worship that is different, or additional, to their Sunday services. In my mind's eye, my "target group" was young adults, 18-30, with some residual attachment to matters of faith, or who are seeking to make sense of their experience of the transcendent and the meaning of life's events.

So we settled for a format that will give space for future development in a variety of possible ways. We've had two services so far, 15 people came to the first, 6 to the second - but with some different faces. We were joined on the first Sunday by a newly-arrived young Polish couple, who recognised the Taize tag. But otherwise, we've not yet seen any brand-new people from my target group, however a sub-set of regulars from across the Team have clearly found the format helpful. Even if it's just me, Him and the angels I'm happy to sit in stillness for an hour on a Sunday evening. It's still a very new fragile venture, waiting to evolve but we've agreed to commit ourselves to a year's run, gently tweak the format as we see who comes, and then do an evaluation.

The strapline is: "Stillness on Sunday - a time for being still together with God - a sacred space - a little music - a few words." The website says: "We can all sometimes find that our hearts and minds are stretched by pressures from work, relationships, decisions and the pace of modern life. When this happens, it can be good to spend time in quietness, recognising God who is at the ground of our being, ready and willing to share our burdens.

On the second Sunday evening in each month at 7.30pm, we are going to start meeting together in stillness before another busy week starts. In the peaceful atmosphere of the candle-lit church, we will share silence,some gentle words and music, a time to pray and also talk over coffee and cake. If this sounds right for you, we'd love to see you"

We start at 7.30pm, which seems a more natural time for people's evening activities than the habitual 6.30pm. We use our lovely Lady Chapel, seating in a horseshoe, subdued lighting, lots of candles, Blessed Sacrament in the aumbry, tasteful amounts of incense etc. We start with a short responsive introduction, and intersperse a couple of gentle songs with flute, three or four very short readings, space for spoken and unspoken prayer, and two substantial periods of silence - first about 4 mins, second about 10mins. We have finished with a CD of Hildegard von Bingen and: "You may stay here in the stillness as long as you wish. The service continues as long as anyone is spending time here with God. Meanwhile, there'll be coffee and cake at the back of the Church."

I believe *good* coffee and home-made cake to be part of extending our hospitality. In due course this networking element might just develop into an enquirers or study or cell group maybe in the pub or a house - both available round the corner.

Now, I'm confident there's nothing "Fresh" here; churches have being doing similar contemplative things for centuries, eg Taize, Iona, Compline, Julian Meetings, Benediction, Adoration.... And of course not forgetting Quakers. But we might just fit into the remit of this wiki. I'd be glad to hear other people's experiences of similar types of service.

Ian Mobsby's & Moot's Story. I have been on quite a spiritual journey myself in recent years - coming to faith in my late teens thorugh the charismatic evangelical tradition and input from the Visions Community in York and NOS in Sheffield and St Michel-Le-Belfrey in York. When I came to London, I wanted to do something similar so got involved with others setting up what was called 'Epicentre' as part of St Marks Battersea Rise. Increasingly I grew dissatisfied with the gap between contemporary culture and the church - desiring a church of my culture rather than living a very strange non-whole-of-life-existence. Cutting to the quick - I pursued training & Ordination - as I increasing felt called to engage with those who are spiritually searching, of finding an artistic, philosophical and post-modern expression of local church and local theology. In so doing, I discovered catholic theology through celtic and contemplative traditions, and the place of the symbolic, ritual, of the Eucharist and incarnational theology - after being catechised into an overly redemptive theological faith. Moot, the project I have had the good fortune to be involved in forming - has grown and prospered out of the dialogue of affirming catholic theology, open evangelical thinking, contextual mission, new monastic understandings, desire to be some form of public space - such as an art centre/cafe (I know Mr Rundell has just squirmed) with a desire to engage with unchurched and dechurched people in the context of those who are spiritually searching - with an expression of church that draws on the ancient reframed into an urban postmodern context. These dreams have not been realised yet, and Moot remains small and fragile, but it is attempting to do what it can with a faithful group of bright and broke people, with few resources concerning what it is trying to do. Click here for the link to Moot. I am now working full time thanks to a grant - but need to income generate to cover the increasing costs - and I have no sense of certainty about how this is going to be sustained or whether Moot will arrive at its dreams - but I remain prayerfully hopeful!! Regarding boxes - doing mission in the context of a post-secular and post-modern urban context - I don't think I fit any of the traditional boxes anymore - I feel a strong allegiance to the Emerging Church & Fresh Expressions - and somewhere on the open evangelical - affirming catholic continuum of spirituality. I hold a high regard to the different traditions, and feel part of both. I think I have always had what Jonny Baker helpfully called "The ministry of not fitting in" seeing the bigger picture of attempting to be Christian and to facilitate church in an increasingly post-Christian post-Church culture.

Simon Rundell and the experience of Blesséd. I've never been conventional: always been in trouble, always been at the back of class irritating the authorities who tell us how it should be done, and why it has to be like it is. Blesséd is, I suppose a reflection of this: the loose collection of individuals and their charisms that almost on purpose seeks to take what we know and love and do it differently. On one level, Blesséd is solidly traditional - deeply sacramental, unashamedly anglocatholic, soaked in gin and the cycle of the daily office, and on another it seeks to blow that world apart - to declare the whole of creation as sacramental, and our approach to God as immersive, multisensory and wildly, rabidly inclusive. As God moved within me, and I sensed His calling to the sacred priesthood, I was moved by sign and symbol, by sacrament and order and so I gravitated towards the anglocatholic. Intense religious experience at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham suggested that rather than turning from a past in IT and Youth Work, I should seek to embrace that within my priestly ministry; and so having begun to engage with Young People and Gen X's whilst a Youth Leader in Sussex, then at theological college at the College of the Resurrection and as a curate in urban Portsmouth, God pulled the strings to create something new. Unlike many practitioners in this space, I am a Parish Priest first: a vicar with the cure of 16500 souls in Gosport, and Blesséd has to inhabit the space around that given. Being catholic is not just about incense and candles (staple tools of alternative worship), it is more than Gregorian chant and any of the other affectations of faux catholicism, but is about a fundamental way of looking at the incarnation and the world as affected by the incarnation: the unknowable can be made partially known and the sacraments can provide a mechanism to that encounter – we should not be concerned with immediate effect [‘the souls won for Jesus’ requirement], but trust in the power of Christ to capture the spiritual yearning within most people young and old. The original multisensory worship was the liturgy celebrated in the Basilica of the 8th Century: a place where sight, sound, smell and taste ensured that we seek to engage with God’s wondrous creation and to try to express the inexpressible. By worshipping with more than just our lips and seeking faith without necessarily seeking understanding, we celebrate our humanity as glorified by the incarnation in all its diversity. In 2002, Blesséd was born - eucharist with funky backbeats, gloria with dancing, sacrament with attitude. Blesséd was a group which sought to be unconventional, to remain true to its anglocatholic heritage and yet embrace new ways of encountering God through sign and symbol and most especially through the sacraments. Fundamentally, I believe that our primary encounter with God in worship is not an intellectual one, but an emotive one. Worship is one of the first ways that seekers of faith encounter Christ, and when asked about their first dip in the worship ocean, they do not reflect on worship in terms of reason or logic: whether they were convinced by the argument, but how it made them feel. The mountaintop experience of the Transfiguration came about by a wondrous encounter with the divine, not by intellectual engagement. Blesséd sought therefore to replace the rather simplistic approach of evangelism: ‘let me tell you a story about Jesus, kids…’ and replace it with an emotional experience and a glimpse of the divine. Principally, this focused attention upon the Mass, but not exclusively, for God can be encountered through all nine of his sacraments. Sacraments are ‘an outward visible sign of an inward spiritual grace’ and are therefore a way for humans to seek to comprehend a facit of God’s nature by something tangible but without limiting God by either physicality or the boundaries of our own intelligence. When originally planned an act of worship, a number of our young people involved all said independently “well, it has to be a mass doesn’t it?” They sought to define themselves in terms of their relationship to the sacrament and yet not to be constrained by the traditions of it. Each element of the mass was seen as being up for grabs, for a radical interpretation and a retelling of the story. As Pete Ward discussed in his book Mass Culture the mass is an evangelistic opportunity and a missionary tool. It provides a unique opportunity for expressing the salvation story and the joy of the resurrection in word, song, action and ritual. The mass provides both fixed points of reference and an ever-changing cycle of encounter with God, and this mix of the familiar and the challenging provides a framework on which to hang new explorations of worship; rather than being a limit to fresh expressions of worship, it forms a skeleton upon which a new creation is formed. Within Blesséd we have spoken unashamedly of the Mass because it is a classical English word, and although has in recent years been hijacked by Roman Catholicism, it is the only word which describes effectively the whole service of word and sacrament joined together: ‘holy communion’ refers only to a small part of the whole ritual, ‘eucharist’ to a specific prayer within that ritual. It is a ‘Divine Liturgy’ in the Orthodox sense, an encounter with God in mechanisms which are not, and should not be, fully understood. Of course, given my background, they tend to be highly technological: deeply based on multimedia and recorded music, video and the sensual, probably to the detriment (and frustration) of the musicians I work with, but the tangible, visceral, community of encounter which Blesséd affords us cannot be under played. Jonathon Barnbrook is an artist whose work at the V&A Museum I value highly:



These are the mantra of Blesséd.

In order to facilitate this sacramental encounter, all have been welcome to participate and share in the sacrament. Within the Anglican tradition, it is customary for the sacrament to be denied to those who have not undergone sacramental preparation and the administration of another of the nine sacraments: confirmation. However, a God issues a welcome to all to encounter him; so at a Blesséd mass, the blessed sacrament will be offered to any who come forward for it. It is a valid sacrament, in the understanding of many the real body and blood of Christ (for he said that himself, and who are we to deny what Our Lord said of himself). Can any of us claim to fully understand these mysteries? Let us administer the sacrament freely and with grace and let God sort it out. Blesséd took something well loved and cherished and gave it a new slant. Nothing within the mass is not there without purpose or significance, and so it afforded opportunities for new ways of communicating this. By maintaining the shape of the liturgy as described by Dom Gregory Dix and radically at times reinterpreting them, the whole encounter with God is re-explored and new nuances and themes develop: Eucharistic prayers are mimed, Creeds are given a rave feel in a language not spoken by anyone in the audience, the Gloria is tap-danced and the liturgy is shared by all as dough is kneeded, baked and broken across a single act of worship. The end result is something which is at once both familiar and yet very challenging. The comfort found in ritual and repetition is transformed by new and risky ways of looking at them. The symbolism of a past age is brought crashing into a modern era as the gently tinkling bells of the Eucharistic elevation are replaced by a guitarist’s heavily distorted power chord. All the constituent and legal elements are there, but words authorised by Liturgical Committee or Curia? No, not ever likely! When asked to lead worship in the crypt of Lambeth Palace, the temptation is to leave a liturgical hand grenade in the fruit bowl rather than conform to neat 'catholic' expectations. Our greatest delight is our involvement at Walsingham, for so long regarded as a bastion of lemon-sucking anglocatholicism, but which welcomes the radical subversion of the form with open arms: we have put on the Labyrinth ('Labyrinth Classic') and a multisensory Via Dolorosa using MP3 players and immersive, shocking, challenging Stations of the Cross. Like many youth phenomena, the initial phase of Blesséd has passed, and the young people who came together for it have since moved on, to university, to work and at the same time to different expressions of church in which to encounter the sacred. The moment it starts to appear stale it must, like Brookside be discarded and replaced with something new, otherwise it will continue like those Christian gatherings in holiday camps which have moved from the radical to the establishment; and lose its place at the cutting edge of faith. Blesséd limps from one event to another without funding, too late and too messy for formal Fresh Expressions funding, relying on a few quid from one committed individual or other each time we come together. Yet, Blesséd in new incarnations also continues, for some time it existed as a sort of roving resource: parachuted into new environments to destabilise and reinvigorate groups of young people without a sacramental direction: to take something familiar like the mass and to give it a shocking new presentation which threatens to transform an individual’s encounter with the mystery of salvation. Latterly with my move to my own parish, S. Thomas the Apostle, Elson, Blesséd has found a permanent home and is beginning to discover what it might look like as a separate ecclesial community. To witness the achievements of the past and to see a glimpse of the future, see www.blessed.org.uk Blesséd continues to be a thorn in the side of the establishment: woefully irritating to all those Bishops who want the catholic wing to stick to authorised texts, to traditionalists who fear the advent of new paradigms of worship in their sacred spaces, to evangelicals who are challenged by the insistence that God meets us not just through the pages of a book but through our encounter with him in everything. Long may that be so, for although it may not be popular, or funded by the church or sitting nicely in class with its arms folded, Blesséd will continue to play with liturgy and meet God in his holy sacraments.

Michael Volland & Gloucester Cathedral just thought I'd say a few brief words about what I'm doing in this network.
I am an 'ordained pioneer minister', one of the first batch through last summer. In fact, in my mind at least, this is just jargon. I was ordained deacon and will be priested in a couple of months. The 'pioneer' tag simply means that the Bishop of Gloucester is releasing me to do something unfettered in the city centre. My brief is to grow a worshipping community where there isn't one at the moment. I have no team or building or budget, just the good will of the bishop, a bit of reading I've done and gut instincts. My boss is one of the canons. He is about to leave however, which means that I get passed to another, quite different canon.
I'm serving my curacy at Gloucester cathedral which, in practice means that I have a rhythm of daily prayer and Sunday worship with the cathedral community. The rest of my time is spent working towards the emergence of the new community, which is mostly, but not entirely, outside the cathedral. Obviously in real life it's all pretty meshed together and a little more complex than it's appropriate to expand on here. I've been blogging about the experience since September 06. if you're interested it's here