Holy Experiments

There are lots of suggestions for new ways of being church at the moment. The modernist approach would be to decide that one of them was right and to pursue it until it succeeds or fails. purpose-driven seems to be the flavour of the month in the States at present.

I think that a postmodernist approach might be to adopt the notion of holy experiment: try lots of different things and see where the Spirit leads. If one thing doesn't work (in the sense that no-one is able to connect with it - or, more importantly, to connect with God through it) or if it runs out of steam, try something else. Have faith that the emergent result of all these experiments will be what God desires.

You can see glimmerings of this approach in some settings. Spring harvest here is the UK (a large evangelical celebration held over five days each year) has different evening celebrations with different styles. But they are all variations on the same theme.

Even Saddleback (home of purpose driving) offers something 'brand new': a range of worship venues on their campus ("What is a worship venue? It's a live feed of the message on a large bright LED screen. It's live bands with different styles than in the Worship Center. It's a smaller, more intimate atmosphere for worship. AND you can even bring your coffee with you into the service!") They offer Worship Center (Saddleback Style), Praise! (Large Gospel Choir), Over Drive (Rock 'n Roll), unplugged (intimate, acoustic), elevation (Saddleback with an edge), and Passion (intimate, younger).

This is good but what I had in mind is a bigger mix still. Something like this, perhaps: Taize, alt.worship, Book of Common Prayer, praise services, contemplative, etc. Funnily enough we had all these at St Mary's, Ealing while I was there. So what's new? Well, for me I think that I did not value the diversity in a proper way - I loved all of them and I wanted everyone else to love all of them as well. Most others seemed to feel that one style was more important or better than the rest. So we had BCP once a quarter at 10:30 (and lots of people didn't like that). What I am thinking of now is to have BCP every week and work to build a BCP church, as well as an alt.worship church and a Taize church.

Sure, some people might go to all of them (like me, though I wouldn't go to all of them all the time) but most would find a way which enables them to get closer to God and would stick with it for as long as it 'worked'. You could have multiple churches meeting in the same church. Perhaps they'd come together sometimes but you'd never get everybody together, just as a service at a cathedral will never attract all the Christians in a diocese. I'll say a bit more on this another time.