Sunday 26 June: A good night. 14 adults. Nothing in particular to write about. Full order of service. It all seemed to go OK. Marcus finally got the pizza delivery boy to visit us after the service. Nice time of sitting around drinking beer and eating pizza.

Sunday 03 July: no service tonight. We were off at the ‘Dangerous Stories Conference’ run by Forge in Melbourne. I was supposed to be curating worship for the end of the conference. Instead I’m lying on my couch watching a very uninspiringly edited version of Live8. Forge ended up with more people at the conference than they expected (500+) so there wasn’t room in the venue for the stations based worship I’d been working on for several weeks. Since I didn’t really want to participate in static talking-head worship I headed home. It’s a pity, what we had planned would have been a good end to a good conference and it would have modelled some new possibilities in worship for the punters. Urban Seed:church acquires a few hundred candles, pebbles, plastic bins and other essential worship miscellany.

Sunday July 10: 26 adults and 2 children turned up. I’m always surprised that anyone does. Marcus and John have been working on a set of stations based around the waters edge stories in the gospels. Tonight we offered five of those as the core of our worship. They’ve done a good job putting them together and people participated well. It was Sea Sunday (when the role of seafarers is recognised) so we connected with that theme.

Back to my angst. I’m wracked by wondering if I have missed something at Urban Seed:church. Have I been too prescriptive in the way I have set it up? Does it really reflect the mission and theology of the Urban Seed community or have I imposed a pattern on that? (I have imposed a pattern, but is it the best one?) Are we openended enough or too tight in what we do and the way we do our worship? I’d certainly love to increase the level and depth of creativity and participation. I know that will take time but I wonder if I have set up the best context for it to flourish in? And in the meantime I’m frustrated as I wait. I also have this dream of a church in downtown Melbourne that is involved creatively and compassionately in the life of the city. One that engages with the jazz festival, comedy festival, film festivals, and artistic edges of city life as well as the social justice, hospitality and disadvantaged-people issues of the city. A place where the arts and justice and Christian spirituality interact. A church that is a good neighbour to all its neighbours. I can see it in my mind, smell it, feel it…I just can’t see how it can happen. Urban Seed Church isn’t happening in the best location to have that role. Why is there more creativity and risk taking outside the Church than in it? What are we scared of? Offending who? (or is it whom?). Losing what? Why do we understand so poorly and give so little credence to the creative process when we serve the God who is THE creator? Peterson has Jesus saying in John 8, ‘You’re tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms…’ God, let me see beyond the horizon.

Roll on summer. Winter blues get me down. At least last night was 100 seconds shorter than the one before. I’ll be seeing my grandsons in New Zealand next week. That’ll make a difference.

Mark Pierson July 12, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )