I have had several bad experiences of alternative worship in the UK and Australia where I couldn’t even find the door to get into the building, and when I persisted (I wasn’t going to travel that far to just go home!) and did find my way into the building, I didn’t know where to go or what to do next. The standard characteristics of alt. worship — no obvious front, no pews, no stage, low light levels, people scurrying around doing last minute technical things etc. — were confusing to a first time visitor. I will always remember going to one particular service and discovering just as the service started that I was sitting on the wrong side of the main screen! i.e. outside of the ‘worship circle’. No one explained that as they walked past me.
At Cityside we face these issues every week as we have services morning and evening most Sundays. For these services most people sit or lie on the floor, so when a newcomer walks in to our standard looking church building, bringing their standard church expectations — even if it’s just from watching the Vicar of Dibley or some preacher on television — they have certain expectations about how the space will be laid out and what will happen. And they often expect more anonymity than we plan to provide. Evening services are mostly non-interactive, i.e. people arrive and leave in silence so it’s important they know what is going on. We have tried to deal with this in at least three ways.
- Pews/chairs around the edge of the space. This defines the space and gives a familiar place to park oneself. The walls are a safe place to be.
- Good people on the door to welcome and invite in. Also to give some explanation when necessary. It’s hard to find people who are good at this.
- A large sign at the door explaining the process for evening services i.e. “Welcome to… please feel free to come in and take a seat on the floor or a pew, wherever feels most comfortable to you. Also feel free to move around during the service. Toilets are… Join us for tea and coffee afterwards in … “or when it is a reflective service or a labyrinth that people are coming and going from ”Tonight’s service is open ended, following the communion you may stay or leave as you wish… “. These services tend to be in relative darkness and individualistic in approach and so provide some anonymity that way.
We are also very careful to explain well what we expect of people during the various elements of the service, and to give people the opportunity to not participate, without embarrassment.
These tasks fall under the responsibility of the service curator. This role has been described in detail in an article in Section 1.
Of course we often fail. People do fall through the cracks. But we work hard at it. And we need to be constantly working at it. We get comfortable with ourselves very quickly and forget outsiders. I have found that having theological students assigned to Cityside is a good opportunity to check out our frontlines and get some objective feedback. These students join us on the understanding that we will ignore them and treat them as any other punter in the congregation. No welcome from the front, no special introductions, no implied authority. So they experience what it is like to be a newcomer ‘in the pew’, without the trappings of power that usually go with being a minister. Their feedback has been very helpful.
All of the services that follow have been curated at least once, and sometimes three or four times. It may be that some of the details are missing and the shorthand unintelligible. Often services are curated intuitively and changes made on the run and the details not recorded. If you want more information about the detail of any service please email fractals@cityside.org.nz and we’ll see if we can remember what we did. It is unlikely that any of these services will go well in your venue and with your people. But you may find ideas or elements that you can modify and make your own. That’s how most of them have come to us. They start with an idea, a piece of music, an image, a phrase and we build from there. We apologise if anything has not been credited to its true owner or source. Material is reframed and remediated so often that its origin can easily get lost. Sometimes more than one version has been included to indicate how services can evolve in the curating for more than one setting. We acknowledge the heritage of creative worshippers around the world and through all times.
Glossary of Terms
TRACK refers to a recorded music track, usually off compact disc, # refers to the track number on the album, ( X.XX) to the running time of the track in minutes and seconds.
VID or VIDEO refers to a piece of video that may be on tape or DVD. Usually these are played without the original audio.
LOOPED means the video or audio clip has been repeated anything from once to 50 times depending on the length of the clip and the duration it is to be used for.
LINK refers to some spoken words that link two sections of the service or make a transition.
RANT is a monologue, similar to a rave!
PUNTER is a term for any person who attends a service.
FX is shorthand for ‘effects’ i.e. some sort of special effect, often involving fire.
Parallel Universe refers to an alternative worship service we ran for several years a decade ago in various public bars around the area Cityside is located in.
Unless stated otherwise the services have been curated by Mark Pierson.
The Curator’s Notes have been grouped into three main sections:
- services based on a day or season in the church year
- services using stations
- services with a general theme.