i wrote this as a handout for a workshop i was intending to run back in 1998. it leans heavily on the characteristics of postmodern worship stuff i wrote. at the time it seemed there was much noise and debate about "rave worship", precious little of which was well-informed. the event which i was going to run the workshop at got cancelled, so i never got to find out if this piece would have made matters worse.
The world is always changing, and the church has always changed to keep in touch with the world. We may not realise it, but much of what we take for granted in our churches has been heavily influenced by developments in western culture over the years.
In this century, the biggest changes have been to music and liturgy. In music, we have seen a body of worship songs emerge that is heavily influenced by the folk-rock and soft rock styles of the '60s and '70s. In liturgy, the main thrust has been to use modern language, both in updating ancient liturgy, and in the writing of new liturgy. Other elements of worship have been largely left intact from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
But now we are looking towards the next century, the next millennium. In the Church of England, because of our need to replace the ASB 1980, we seem to be particularly focussed on our liturgy. But our culture is moving away from words and books towards visuals and video. Our culture is changing in other, more subtle, ways too.
One part of the church that is making a serious attempt to create worship that engages with the emerging culture of the next century is known as "Alternative Worship" (which is not a very good label, but it seems to have stuck). What I hope to do today is to present some of the thinking that has come out of "Alternative Worship".
"God's Acid House"
"Rave In The Nave"
"Rave Vicar"
Headlines. A few words, carefully designed to grab your attention. I guess that many people first came across the idea of Alternative Worship by way of a headline like that. Today I want to look behind the headlines.
The pioneers of Alternative Worship were the Nine O'Clock Service (NOS) in Sheffield. Many ideas originated from NOS. NOS were trying to do things that appealed to young adults — people in their twenties and thirties — not the traditional teenage "youth group". They started experimenting with the use of house music, dancing, and other elements from dance culture in their services in the late '80s.
NOS ran services at the Greenbelt festival in 1988 and 1992, which inspired many people in various ways, and a number of other experimental services started up around the UK. Some of these failed to last, but a number are still going (at least sixteen).
Some groups introduced these ideas into a fairly traditional youthwork framework (I would say that Holy Disorder in Gloucester is a good example of this kind of group). Others groups wanted to concentrate on twenty- and thirty-somethings like NOS had done (the "Late Late Service" in Glasgow is perhaps the best-known example of this kind of group). The latter kinds of group have acquired the label of "Alternative Worship".
I first became aware of "Alternative Worship" in 1990, and have followed the ups and downs of the "Alternative Worship" groups ever since. As the groups have experimented and evolved, we have discussed why some things worked and some things didn't. I have tried to analyse all this, and attempted to draw out the basic theological ideas that underlie their work.
The four core principles that underpin "Alternative Worship" are as follows:
These things have come out of a lot of experimentation and experience — there was no "master plan" at NOS or anywhere else.
Everyone talks a lot about community, but real community is more than a bunch of people living in the same area, more than a bunch of people doing the same activities. Community is about people being willingly interdependent. Alternative Worship groups have found that a working Christian community is vital to worship — the worship comes from the community and it also builds up the community. A number of ideas go along with the community ideal:
We have a tendency to divide and categorise things, including ourselves. For example, we often think of our bodies and minds and perhaps spirits as being separate things, and our worship often only addresses the mind and the spirit. Alternative Worship has decided that worship needs to involve the whole person. This is done in various ways:
Another thing we often divide is sacred and secular, and this is another division that Alternative Worship groups have dispensed with. Because of this they are happy to use materials and ideas from the "secular" world (e.g. music or video clips).
The effort to create culturally relevant worship is probably the best-known thing about Alternative Worship. The most obvious example of this principle (and the most publicised) was the use of dance music such as Acid House, Rave and Techno. However, the most important thing is that Alternative Worship groups accept that our culture must affect the way we do worship — imagining ourselves as Christians to be beyond cultural issues is a delusion. However, they also accept that Christians cannot accept every element of culture — there needs to be a process of evaluation, which itself requires study of the culture rather than ignoring it.
So Alternative Worship groups try to create worship that is accessible to ordinary people; worship which has no cultural barriers other than those that are essential to the Christian faith. Alternative Worship groups have focussed on the twenty-something culture of the 90s, which seems to be the first expression of a larger emerging culture of post-modernism. A number of ideas are related to the this culture:
One problem that the church as a whole faces is that our society is very culturally fragmented at the moment — there is no single culture that applies to everyone. You just need to look at the number of radio stations, and think about the audiences that they appeal to, to appreciate the number of major divisions. Largely, these are age-related. What works for twenty-somethings isn't going to work for forty-somethings. What works for forty-somethings isn't going to work for sixty-somethings.
Although it is trying to address the culture of today and perhaps tomorrow, Alternative Worship groups have found the importance of being rooted in Christian tradition, being aware of the history of that tradition, and using the resources the tradition has handed down. However, Alternative Worship groups see themselves as part of a dynamic tradition that grows and changes. This understanding is reflected in a number of ideas:
If "Alternative Worship" has got it right, then churches that wish to remain in touch with the ordinary people of our society need to take a look at these ideas and these principles. It's not enough to change the liturgy. It's not enough to play a few chart tunes and show a few slides. To make it happen, the whole way in which we construct services has to be examined.
I think that if your church really wants to create worship for the next millennium you need to: