Awe

Saturday evening I went round to dave P new house, he was complaining it was a bit cold and required warming up a bit. There were a lot of people there trying to help warm the house. David supplied some home brew to aid the process, it was really good too. The only downside was knowing that I'd have to get up sun morn to set up church seeing as there would only be a few of us again. JC was speaking which reminded me of the pulp song where jarvis sings "I am not Jesus, though I have the same initials". Likewise JC isn't jesus either, and has a reputation of being rather dull. However, the service was really nice and the singing was great despite the few numbers. JC had some good things to say, but continued often down irrelevent tangents which extends the time she's talking so you loose the thread.

Sunday eve we held our monthly circuit alternative service, AWE, following our theme of the trinity, we were looking at the Spirit. We met up at the host church about 3:30 to begin the setup. At the planning meeting we had decided to make a visual aid for the service, and so clearing the front of the alter and chairs and advent candles, emma and andrew started an Art Attack to produce something from a mass of coloured paper and crete paper, incorporating 4 tv screens. Whilst they were busy arranging these items around a cross, Matt was busy producing a video of a fire that would be shown on the above mentioned tv screens. The transformation was really amazing and probably quite difficult to describe how it looked in words, but I thought it was really effective, Dave brought along some lights to light it up in red/orange, with his lava lamp running at the front too.

We also moved all the chairs out of the way to make the space more open, placing chairs at random, so that people could just sit wherever they liked, in groups or whatever, to get away from the formal lines of people.

After the band had finished practising, the first people began to arrive who usually go to this particular church for the eve service every sunday. It was interesting to hear how appalled one person was that 'her chair' was not there, and she couldn't sit in her usual place, so the minister had to patiently explain that it was an alternative service and by it's nature it challenges some of our traditional expectations of church. I thought he did really well, as i just can't understand why a chair can be of such importance. However, most of the regulars actually found the experience refreshing.

The service started with some Taize music, followed by discussion time, bit if singing, visual meditation, talk, bit more singing. It was a wonderful service in my opinion, and the visual display was really stunning, the Spirit of creativity at work for sure. I still don't fully understand the trinity, but the talk described the Spirit as the paracleet, the word translated in numerous ways into english to try and describe it 'being alongside' JS described the Spirit as that which cements relationships, interweaving in a dance with the Godhead. Which i think fits well with the idea of conversation from earlier AWE services. The Spirit is that which gels the relationship with the Godhead together and also gels the relationship of God with the people, enabling conversation to be within and with the trinity.