From now on, I'm calling it multi-sensory

I've just decided: I don't like the phrase 'Alternative worship.' If you hear me using it, shoot me. (Or at least give me a good 'iding.)

The Link

I'm writing an article for Veritasse, a magazine which exists to promote Christian artists and their work in whatever field - visual, literary or performance. I've been struggling for a few days with linking two ideas together; in order to do it, I've had to do some historical research, and I'm no historian.

I persevered, and today, I've found The Link. I'm pretty happy. So on goes the article, and I'm enjoying it again.

Alternative Worship: Not Just Kids' Stuff

Educational institutions for disabled children have acknowledged the importance of multi-sensory learning since, like, forever - well, at least since the developmental psychologist Piaget. Maybe it's not surprising that this morning I'm asking myself whether - in all the times I was staring at blinking lights, waving glowsticks in the air, and lying back in awe at the 'spacious firmament' projected onto the ceiling as a young child - perhaps, God was speaking to me.

Flash forward to 2006: I've just been perusing blogs all over the net about alternative worship. And by Jove, I think they've got it. What massive potential alternative worship has - non-prescriptive, thought-provoking, varied, sacramental, experiential, multi-sensory - to be a fantastic leveller. We are not all predisposed to sitting and listening to sermons, however well they are preached; it is more of a fundamental issue than that. We are not all chiefly cognitive - accepting analytical brain-feeding as the only path to spiritual enlightenment (with a small-case 'e', or a large 'E', take your pick). The only thing that we as people have in common: we are all on a spiritual journey, and none of us have arrived at our destination yet. Yep, it's true: all those in the 'all-that's-just-a-bunch-of-trendy-postmodern-claptrap-isn't-it?' camp, read Hebrews, if you don't believe me. We are in awe of God, yes; we are captivated by him; but also confused and spoon-fed cognitive philosophies everywhere. Ecclesiastes is in our canon for a reason. Yeah, Ecclesiastes - I bet you forgot about that one didn't you.

Children have been doing it for years in Sunday kids' church - cutting out paper, glueing, fingerpainting, acting out stories, walking. In short, they know a bit about 'placing ourselves in the stories.' Let's face it: we are players in The Big Story of salvation history, which (possible heresy ahead, cover your ears/eyes) didn't finish with the Bible. We all want to learn experientially: don't just tell us about an interesting concept, we want to get our hands dirty and grab hold of it.

We are kids, grown ups, black, white, Asian, male, female, disabled, able-bodied, sporty, arty. Multi-sensory, creative worship is a way forward for everyone. It is a great potential leveller, disciminative to no-one, welcome to all. It's D.I.Y.

Alternative worship: it's not just kids' stuff.

Politics and Machine Guns

I was wheeling about Uxbridge today thinking about blogging, and the fact that I might get to the end of the day without anything interesting to write. Not likely. I wheeled past a charity collector (they stand around waiting to ambush passers-by like tax collectors must've done in Jesus' day - oh, the irony) who shouted to me, "Oi you, don't run anyone over will you?"

I wasn't quite sure what to say to that, so I didn't. But if I could count the amount of times people have said to me-and-my-wheelchair, "Wow, Speedy Gonzalez, don't run anyone over," I could have filled fourty War and Peace-sized books by now. Another interesting one my mates used to say is (holding one of my crutches horizontally in the air), "You could use these as guns", following that by making machine gun noises with their mouths.

The charity collector I'm sure, as did my old mates, thought that he was being highly original. 'That's life, and I can't deny it.'

Now, off to an Italian restaurant for Valentine's dinner with my lovely wife, who is so lovingly unsympathetic to my disability, that I even have to remind myself of it sometimes.

St John's, Plastic Cattle and the Cloth Tabernacle

Naz and I have just started going to St. John the Baptist church in Hillingdon. It's an intimate, old, yet refreshingly innovative Anglican church in Hillingdon. Sunday was amazing. This won't be a chronological account (I'm too excited about the place to be chronological, get over it), but this is the gist of what went on.

The reading was Ephesians 2:19-22:

'So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.'

I'm pretty wary of this sort of language nowadays, I think, but I don't say this lightly: God began speaking to me when this was read. My wife and I have been searching for so long for a church community where we can really belong, really belong, and everything about this service was saying that at last, we did belong at St John's: we had 'arrived'. Our 'temple' was made up of the people standing (and sitting) around us, gathered around God's foundations.

We were led through an imaginative meditation (!!!): what do we call home? We were asked to go, in our imaginations, to the most familiar place in our home, to which we retreat whenever we are stressed or upset. God wants to be that for us: the familiar place, the 'welcome' sign on your doormat when you get in from the cold.

And then we were told to think of the places in our homes that need a bit of work - in the case of our house, pretty much all the skirting; sanding the kitchen floor; fixing a floorboard in the dining room. We were asked to invite God into the uncomfortable places in our hearts and lives, perhaps in repentance, or perhaps we just need God's comfort because of hurts in our lives.

This led on to a time of confession where each person was invited to the altar at the front of the church, to light a candle (a simple, unfamiliar, but profoundly spiritual thing for me: more of it, please), and offer a prayer to God, confessing either something personal, or corporate. We were acknowledging that the Church - God's house - is a pretty messy place, and also needs a spring clean. A couple apologised for the mistakes that the Church makes in not welcoming everyone the way we should, and another apologised for the way we 'put up with the status quo' and sometimes get too 'comfortable' with the way the Church does things. Nice.

Rev. Rob Harrison spoke about the Old Testament tabernacle, and God's instructions for worship: among other things, that it is supposed to be corporate. Interesting point that he made: 'Church cannot be done on one's own. God instructed the Isrealites to eat a whole lamb for the passover, not a single leg, and try to do that on your own.' That's one heck of a carvery. For the Israelites, God's worship instructions were never individualistic. You just can't be 'church' on your own.

And then Rob made a 'tabernacle' out of meccano, and covered it in a yellow cloth. (It would have been a crimson colour. "Oh well," he said, "you get the idea.") "This," he said, "is the tabernacle." Don't ask me why, but this excited me. He had a bag of toy animals. He asked us to get into 'families', and then passed around sets of 'livestock' to each 'family', which meant we were each holding a handful of plastic cows, sheep, chickens (I insisted I had the Lego Darth Vader, [maybe because there's a 'dark side' in my faith, I thought afterwards]). Rob said that God would, every now and then, tell the Isrealites to pitch tent somewhere else, but that each time they should wait for God's instruction. So the church (there were about 20 of us) followed Rob round with his 'tent' and our plastic livestock. It was fun, but also moving. (Pun unintended, really.)

Finally, Rob found it particularly interesting that God instructed "be joyful." Rob was absolutely correct when he said that "even enjoyment is a command of God. We are supposed to enjoy God, and if we don't enjoy worship at church, something is wrong."

Things I learned (No three-point sermons here. Instead, we were trusted to learn things for ourselves):

We cannot do church on our own.

God is the one who decides who settles where at church. It's not about our preference (although, as a loving God, apparently he knows exactly what we need).

God commanded that we are passionate about worship, that we have fun, and enjoy it.

To cap it off, we had Communion together. As we held the bread in the air, and then the wine, Rob said "Look around you. These are your family. God has given them to you to love, support and comfort you." I think that Naz and I were metaphorically nodding our heads in agreement.

And they gave us a good lunch and good conversation too. God bless St. John's.

I love Finding Nemo...

I concur with this entry in Conrad Gempf's blog, and laughed about it (inwardly) for quite a while this afternoon:

I don't know about you, but I am SO tired of answering questions about Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Last week it was the Discovery Channel and since they wanted to devote a whole programme to it, I doubt they'd like my comments:
Dan Brown is a novelist and The Da Vinci Code is fiction. Asking a New Testament person to comment is like asking a Marine Biologist to comment on Finding Nemo. The expert is of course going to say that sting rays do not sing and clown fish do not talk.
Enjoy the thriller for what it is, but when the lights come on it's time to leave the cinema.

Ed: Here's to the advent of the new film, then.

Buzzing, sort of.

There's a lot of stuff in my head: good stuff. It's getting late, and I'll elaborate some time (maybe tomorrow), but right now I'm off to watch the end of Eastenders with my wife and my dog. Life is good. I am a blogger, it's official.

Ttfn, L8r m8, and all th@...