Participatory Worship
At Cityside, the morning worship is normally structured by means of an order of service. This order of service is basically the same each week, and comprises a call to worship, a singing/reflection slot, a prayer of confession, a reading, a sermon, notices, prayers for others and the speaking of the benediction to one another, followed by morning tea. However, the content within each of the sections varies greatly from week to week because each of these service elements is prepared and led by a different member of the congregation. This means that on any given week, there can be up to about six different people inviting the congregation to participate in the act of worship they have designed. Those who have prepared a part of the service are not given any prescribed content, and it is not usual for there to be any planned thematic links between the sections. The input covers a variety of different modes. Sometimes it is kinesthetic, sometimes visual, or aural. The content ranges from anecdotal and humorous, to more serious and intellectually or emotionally demanding.
The service is arranged this way because of our belief that for worship to be meaningful to a congregation, there needs to be a high level of participation. Worship needs to be sourced in the life experiences and understandings of God that are held among the people who are worshipping, or what happens on Sunday will have no means of connecting to the everyday lives of the congregation. Full participation is much more than just inviting everybody to sing, or to come forward for communion. It requires that a variety of voices in the congregation are represented in what is said and heard and seen and done. When there is a lack of participation in worship, the images of God available to the worshippers’ imaginations will consistently reflect the theology of one person, or a small group. Genuine participation gives the congregation access to a myriad of images and perspectives by which their own view of God can be enriched. And when participation is honest and authentic, people bring their experiences into the worship space rather than leaving them behind at the door. During the service, we hear others’ stories about their insights, struggles, circumstances and journeying. For those of us who listen and share, these stories provide food for our own travels (and travails).
One of the effects of arranging the morning service this way is to encourage a decentralised understanding of church. The content of the service is not dominated by a single powerful voice, and what may be said is not controlled or authorised. Instead, there is a high level of trust that the congregation will act wisely and sensitively in choosing how they lead us in worship. It is inevitable that in any given week, some things that are said and done will not be to everyone’s liking. However, the following week, there will be a different arrangement of input that might connect in a different way with the congregation. The assumption is that those who worship at Cityside are committed to pursuing maturity of faith independently of church services, and can be discerning about what input they choose to allow to shape their lives. We do not consider it to be the church’s responsibility to offer pre-packaged worship events that provide a correct formula for Christian living and thinking.
Some consideration has been given to ways that the content in a given service might be made to cohere a bit more, although for some the random interaction of disconnected input is part of the value in the service being arranged in this way. One possibility is to use a thematic approach and to invite those leading worship on a given Sunday to tie their ideas into the theme. Another alternative is to encourage familiarity with the lectionary readings for the day as a resource for planning worship activity.
The Roster
Every three or four months the congregation is invited to volunteer to be on the services roster for the next period of the year. People can choose to volunteer for specific slots, such as prayer of confession. The roster is co-ordinated by one or two people in the church, who try to ensure that any given person is only scheduled to do their thing once every few weeks. There are aspects of the roster that don’t involve public speaking or activity – people can volunteer to be on the door, or to provide morning tea, or to prepare a visual display in the worship space. There are usually spaces left on the roster for those who have one-off ideas for some part of the service. There are readings and other material available to those who want to be on the roster but don’t want to create their own content. The roster is printed and sent to everyone on it… but for the forgetful, or organisationally challenged, there is also a system of weekly reminder phone calls.
The shape of the service
There is no real central peak of intensity in the service – each section has its own identity and may be longer or shorter depending on who is bringing it. However, the sermon tends to be the longest thing that happens at about 20 minutes. The other sections run to about five minutes each. The service aims towards an hour’s duration and we try very hard to avoid running over the 75 minute mark. Sometimes, the service suffers a bit from having too much of the same kind of activity in it — sitting and listening to people speak, for example, or several people on the roster having chosen a CD track to listen to, or lots of responsive prayers. However, a variety of approach is more usual. The different sections flow from one to another, generally without specific announcement. Usually, the roster participants are familiar with the order of service and at the relevant time simply move from where they are sitting to the front of the space to introduce themselves and the part of the service they are leading.
The role of curator
There is always a person responsible for co-ordinating the service. I refer to this role as the service ‘curator’, in accordance with my belief that art curation provides a good model for understanding worship planning. That is, the provision of a worship ‘event’ such as a church service is more about creating contexts than providing content, and arranging various elements in space and time in such a way that those who experience the service have maximum interaction with what happens and can receive what is being communicated on a number of different levels. (See Section 1 ‘Curating Worship’ (1107), and The Prodigal Project:journey into the emerging church, Riddell, Pierson, Kilpatrick, London: SPCK, 2000 page 61f,)
The Sunday morning service has a number of ‘givens’ because of the order of service: what happens and in what order is to some extent predetermined. Therefore, the curator’s role consists of arranging the space beforehand, choosing music or video loops to run at various parts of the service, ensuring that each section of the service is taken care of (filling in any gaps in the roster), moving the service along, noticing what specific input (eg a prayer or time of silence or reflection) might be needed at different points in the service, checking that the people leading parts of the service have what they need for their section, assisting with technical things (playing videos, CDs, overhead), keeping an eye on heat and light during the service and dealing with any interruptions to the service. The curator welcomes the congregation, facilitates the sharing of notices/news, and introduces the benediction. The curator is also responsible for the practical oversight of cleaning and locking up after the service.
Space
One of the principles in the arrangement of the space at Cityside is that ‘the medium is the message’, that is, the way the room is set up and the kinds of movement that take place in the space communicate a great deal about how the congregation thinks about itself and about worship, within the constraints of the physical shape of the building.
At Cityside we have removed the pews, except for some placed around the edge of the room. There are a few rows of free-standing chairs that can be arranged in different ways, a large space in the middle with cushions, and a sofa up one end. Many people sit and/or recline during the service. For some people (usually visitors) there are issues of a perceived lack of seriousness, reverence or alertness in this approach. Others see it as acknowledging the ordinariness as well as the otherness of worship. Why should one be uncomfortable when meeting with others to worship God? The set up also reflects the meditative and ambulatory nature of much of the service.
There is an aspect of the ‘living room’ to the space. It is a place where people feel welcome and at home, and into which we welcome others. The space is ‘ours’, in the sense of being a place to relax and also a place where we take responsibility for what happens around us. This sense aids the transition between the corporate worship that takes place on a Sunday morning and the intentional acts of hospitality and community living that occur among the congregation throughout the rest of the week. (Citysiders have 24/7 access to the building via a codepad to use it as their own — watching tv, talking, praying, using the library, taking time out.)
There is a pulpit where most people stand to bring their material for their part of the service – it has a microphone, and the CD player and OHP are in the same general area. This creates a de facto ‘front’ to the space, but other aspects of the space try to lessen the impact of this – such as the placement of TV sets around the space running simultaneous footage, candle trays at different points in the room, and sometimes the use of stations where stimulus for worship activity is located at different points in the room. The aim is that the physical space, as well as the participatory nature of the worship, should convey a sense of decentralisation, informality (but not triviality), and commonality.
Ambience
Attention to ambience acknowledges the many sensory means by which people are enabled to worship and to meet with God. These include sound and music, visuals, symbols, smells and the interpersonal atmosphere, generated to a large extent by the language and manner of the people at the door and those who speak during the service, as well as the interactions that occur over morning tea. All of these aspects of a service should be intentional.
At Cityside, music is always played in the space as people are arriving and during morning tea, and during the collection of the offering. The music is generally the selection of the curator, and there is no requirement for it to be overtly ‘religious.’ When I curate the service, I often play jazz CDs at these times. This is not just because I like it (although that would be reason enough), but because I also see jazz as a kind of metaphor for Christianity…the interplay of different voices, the basic structure being a springboard for improvisation, the relationship of the soloist to the ensemble, the joyful spontaneity, the decentralisation, the interaction of discord and harmony.
Visually, the abundance of art pieces on the walls provide points of stimulus for worship. Many of these are from previous Stations of the Cross (see section 6). I have often heard people speak of being ‘fed’ by the images in the space as much as by the content of the service. There are banners on the wall that have been painted by members of the congregation, including one with the text that is something of a ‘motto’ for us at Cityside, the Message translation of Matthew 11: 28-30. ‘Are you tired, worn out…’
Also, anyone in the congregation is invited to create a visual display as part of the services roster. This replaces the usual ‘flower roster’. In the past these have ranged from fresh flowers, to installations such as a sculpted puff-ball dandelion with spores hanging in mid puff across the church, a sculpture made of toast, a giant cut-out wall hanging, a moving mobile of wire fish, chocolate fish ‘flowers’ and hundreds of paper poppies suspended from the ceiling. One morning in spring we entered the space to be greeted by daffodils laid out on the cushions and chairs and strewn around the space. Recently, a member of the congregation has initiated a ‘liturgically themed visual display’ roster, where people can sign up to do a visual display that links to events in the church year, such as Advent, Trinity, Pentecost etc. It also includes important seasonal events such as the equinoxes and solstices, and national or cultural events, such as New Zealand’s Waitangi Day (see section 4). The ‘display’ could be anything from a painting to the decoration of the whole worship space.
We try to pay attention to the importance of symbols in worship. Candles are used as an aid to prayer and people are welcome to go to the sand tray at the back of the church and light one at any time before, during or after the service. We also use candles to ritualise the opening of services, and the shift into communion. The wooden cross leaning against one wall is draped with the liturgical colour appropriate to the season (see section 4). There are five television sets positioned round the church and on these we play looped sequences of video images throughout the service – some of these have been created by members of the congregation, others have particular content that is used as a stimulus to reflection during communion, or during the songs/meditations part of the service. Often a video loop runs throughout the service as ‘wallpaper’. We sometimes use incense to symbolise our prayers and to enhance the intensity of the space as a place to encounter the ‘otherness’ of God.
Silence and Reflection
Silence is something that we could introduce more intentionally, but we do try to build some pauses into the order of service. It’s important for people not to feel rushed from one thing to another (especially if the input is very varied – which can lead to stimulus overload). Silence allows time for our deep selves, and our non-cognitive faculties to participate in worship. Time for silence and reflection is time to connect with God and ourselves in the rush of everyday life, and enables the processing of issues that arise in the service. Sometimes our songs and meditations slot consists entirely of 10 minutes of silence.
In the next section we offer a selection of resources created and used by Citysiders for the parts of our morning worship.
The most useful book I’ve found in this area (for someone not raised in a liturgical church) is ‘Finding Words For Worship’ by Ruth C Duck. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995). She takes each part of a liturgical service and as well as discussing what it is about she gives tips on writing words for each segment. The shape of Cityside’s worship owes much to her wisdom.