At our start time of 5.30pm a trinity of us was present. (Wasn’t last week humbling enough God?) By 5.35pm - my latest start time regardless of numbers – we were seven; by 5.45pm 12 of us were gathered.

We pushed the order of service out a bit more. We’re building it up week by week. As well as being Trinity Sunday the day precedes a National Day of Healing in Australia on Thursday. This ‘Sorry Day’ is in recognition of the decades of Government action that forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, leading to the ‘stolen generation’. So our worship picked up on those dual themes.

Marcus led us in a great song. He had rewritten the words to the worship classic ‘Shout to the Lord’.
Why Jesus? Why favour
Those who do not like you?
All of my years
I cry bitter tears
I wonder where’s your mighty love?

And so on. It was a recognition of the dissonance that is created when we follow Christ. Picking up on the Psalms of lament rather than those of praise in the original version of the song. (You can read more about this on Marcus' journal entry for 23 May.

For the first time we shared communion together. I was very nervous about this as I plan to use bread and water as the elements. We will also have communion weekly in a short form and monthly in a longer form.

Why water instead of wine? Well, most Baptist Churches only use coloured water anyway, but my thinking is around three collections of stories. The stories of European settlement in Australia tell us how the early explorers would have died if the Aboriginal people hadn’t shown them where the water holes were (they repaid this generosity with poisoning and fencing some wells). Water was life, and still is.

In contemporary Victoria, as in much of Australia, there is longstanding drought. Australia is the driest continent on earth after Antarctica; and the highest per capita consumer of water. Every day media remind us of the water shortages in Melbourne.

Then there are the biblical stories about the ‘water of life’ in John 4 and Revelation 21 and 22.

Many other levels of connection are possible with bread and water and the compulsory detention of refugees, people in prison etc. It also means that anyone with an alcohol problem isn’t treated differently to everyone else in the worshipping community when it comes to this most central ritual of the Christian faith.

So water will be our communion ‘wine’. Will we encounter the mystery of the risen Christ in it? Why not? We’ll try it for a few weeks and see what the response is. It will always be iced water and always in a tumbler rather than a thimble. It needs to be refreshing and plentiful.

The words of institution will be ‘…Jesus took what they were eating and said….Then in the same way he took what they were drinking and said….’

We’ll see how it goes.

Here is the third and final part of the list of some of the values that will be important to us as we move forward:-
(The previous list was numbered one letter out)
x. Be institutionally minimalist and actively committed to minimising institutional inertia…
y. …and therefore create structures only when they are deemed by the community to be needed, and in a form that best meets those needs at the time rather than follows traditional institutional expectations.
z. See no distinction between ‘clergy’ and ‘laity’ in authority or practice.
aa. Be committed to grace and listening.
bb. Not mind controversy or difference in dress, theology or perspective and encourage variety of opinion and expression in worship and all aspects of the life of the community.
cc. Provide a safe place for struggle, failure, and to be ones self.
dd. Be committed to exploring questions rather than giving answers. ‘Thinking allowed. Thinking aloud allowed.’
ee. Integrate awareness and response to issues of justice, ecology and politics into its worship and teaching/preaching.
ff. Have a high view of the Eucharist.
gg. Celebrate the Eucharist weekly.
hh. Be Christocentric. Theologically conservative at its core.
ii. Provide pastoral care and a range of ritual making services to its congregation and broader community.
jj. Put minimal pressure on any of its members to do or be anything or attend anything.
kk. Take seriously the demise of Christendom, and the postmodern, secularised multi-faith environment in which it and its people operate.
ll. Seek to party extremely well.

Mark Pierson May 24, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com)