The focus of the trip, and what paid my basic airfare, was a week-long retreat in the hills of Julian (4 hours drive south of LA) with the Younger Leaders Network. This amazing group of people (50 adults and 12 children this year) has been meeting annually for 14 years. They started out with about a dozen people and each year spouses and friends have been added. The retreats alternate between east and west coasts. People came from all over the USA as well as NZ (not just me), Canada and Mozambique. They covenant to attend each year if at all possible. They are a very diverse group of people in age, occupations – filmmakers, artists, teachers, professors, an entymologist, urban mission workers, a lobbyist, students, pastors, designers - ethnicity, outlook, and circumstances. The thread that runs through the group is a commitment to environmental and justice issues.

Their statement of ‘agreements’ says,
‘We are Christians who advocate and work for peace, cultural renewal, the protection of human life, creation care, and racial, gender, and economic justice as an expression of our faith in Jesus Christ.
These activities, along with prayer, worship, evangelism and spiritual renewal are all central to following Jesus. We challenge ourselves and all Christians to obey the call of the kingdom regardless of cost or sacrifice.’

Each year they invite a resource person (me this year) to contribute. They asked me to talk about urban mission ie Urban Seed, emerging church/Emergent issues, and worship generally. The week was very leisurely with a range of other seminars and workshops offered by participants. These were as diverse as the group – power yoga, mosaic-ing, art, making transitions, neural research…. Some sessions are repeated each year – annual meeting, Arts Worship event, Ideas Incubator (people raise projects or life issues for group discernment and advice). I felt very honoured to be part of the experience and to meet some great people who are doing similar things to Urban Seed, and others who had strong interests in worship and the arts.

I was impressed with their commitment to each other and to the process of making their gatherings work well for everyone involved. It was wonderful to catch up with some friends I had made as visitors to Cityside Baptist in Auckland, and those I had met previously in other parts of the world. Five of the group in all. A very pleasant surprise.

I was delighted and inspired by the Buffalo New York crew who live in a very poor and abandoned part of the city’s Westside and lead ministries among the people there. Some of the team have been there for 10 years.

The group responded very warmly to the worship I curated and to the issues I
addressed and introduced them to. There were many hours of informal discussions at all hours of the day and night! It was a good occasion for me to re-shape some of my ideas about worship and how to present them. Particularly the ‘slow church’ ideas.

The following 12 days were divided between Los Angeles, Newberg, and Portland, (both in Oregon).

In LA I stayed with friends Rebecca, her husband David, and their adult daughter Simone. David is a professional musician, singer, drummer, and producer. Rebecca is Director of the Los Angeles Film Studies School. Together they lead The Tribe church that meets in rented space on Wilshire Boulevard on Miracle Mile between Hollywood and Beverly Hills. They are also heavily involved in the Burning Man festival (www.burningman.com) where 30 000 people gather to do wonderfully creative things in the middle of the arid and otherwise unpopulated Black Rock desert for a week each year. I had the honour of working on the ‘white rabbit art car’ and learning more about this event that has inspired me for some years, although I have never fulfilled my ambition to attend it.

Other than the general inspiration of hanging around very creative people for four days, participating in Tribe worship was a highlight. I ended up being the ‘short order’ preacher. We started with a sit down meal for 30 and moved to the next room when a drumming beat began. The feature of Tribe worship is their drum circle. Chairs in a single circle, everyone is offered or brings drums, maracas, shakers etc. David leads from his drum kit and a synthesiser providing a rhythm track. He also leads the ‘songs’ with words put up on a screen. Several people ‘danced’ in another part of the room set apart by net drapes. The drumming rises and falls as a prayer is spoken, instrumental played etc. The drumming lasted about 25 minutes. Then Communion, offering, art space were offered simultaneously. I spoke and led the Benediction. We talked and packed out and got home about 11pm. It was a great occasion.

Newberg is a small town of about 20 000 people 40 minutes drive from Portland, Oregon. I stayed with friends who are ‘Friends’ ie Quakers! Stan and Cathy pastor one of the four Friends churches in Newberg. They are wonderfully creative and deeply spiritual people. I had the privilege of talking to a group from their congregation at a church dinner (another ‘short order’ arrangement!) and over the next few days to have many other conversations about worship and different forms of church. I learned more about how their ‘unprogrammed worship’ ie silence with spontaneous contributions, works. Their form of eclessiology sees the pastor at the bottom and the congregation at the top. Very much the servant-leader role that I prefer. Unfortunately I was not around on a Sunday to participate in their worship.

Sunday I was in Portland with Ken and Deborah who lead The Bridge church (www.thebridgeportland.org). They are wonderful people. 11.30am service (‘sunrise’ service for this crew!) at a community space a few blocks away. The congregation/community is made up of all manner of people from middle class to homeless and street people, old and young. Ken and Deb have been building relationships with street people for 8 years, visiting the city centre several times a week.

The Bridge encourages participation in music making, and has a history of involvement with the punk and circuit-bending scenes. Today is acoustic worship rather than ‘worship band’. They have 4 or 5 worship bands that rotate. Not your traditional worship band though. People are banging drums, many have drumsticks or pieces of dowel and are drumming on tables, chairs, bins and the floor. Some have kitchen utensils. One guy is creating feedback via a Fisher Price children’s guitar amp and microphone (circuit bending is an art form here). Sixty adults sit in a large circle. The cacophony of drums beating on the floor/chairs/tables/each other with sticks, miscellaneous people writing poetry and yelling it into the microphone, gets so loud that I have to step outside for 20 minutes. My ears hurt! But it is truly indigenous worship. Absolutely appropriate for the community at worship and fully integrated. Wonderful stuff.

The drumming goes on for 45 minutes! Then Crystal gives some notices about events and introduces me as ‘The Thunder From Downunder’ It is the most interesting interview I have ever done. After asking me about the community I come from she asks for ‘one word or less’ response to the questions…
1. Is your accent real or just a ploy to get chicks?
2. Do you know Hugh Jackman?
3. Has a dingo ever really eaten a baby?
4. Who would win in a boxing match – Nicole Kidman or a kangaroo?
5. Is the Australian National Anthem really ‘We come from a land downunder…’?
6. Vegemite – what’s the deal?
7. Does a digeree really doo?
8. Koala Bears – friend or foe?
9. Is crocodile Dundee a real guy or just some ass trying to make money off your country?
10. Glow worm caves – really cool or really just a cave full of creepy bugs?
11. Was the ‘Lord of the Rings’ really filmed in NZ?
12. Do you know Gandolf or Liv Tyler?
13. Portland – your new home away from home or the devils playground?

Apparently this morning is less controlled than usual. Trader Joes provides a huge pile of fresh food every Sunday that is free for anyone to take. People come off the street just to get the food - and a meal follows the service. The ethos and values behind The Bridge are very similar to those at Urban Seed.

Ken is 61 and Deb is 54. They are experienced at life and at building community. I believe this is an often overlooked key to building a church community. After talking with many people connected with the very diverse and dissimilar groups I spent time with, I am more convinced than ever that the future of the church lies at least as much in emerged leaders and in inherited churches as it does in the so called emerging leaders and emerging churches. Our definitions of what will build the Kingdom of God in our changing cultures has been far too narrow and we have been too quick to write off what has been with us for decades.

The emerged groups and their leaders that I have hung out with and had the privilege of working with on this trip have all been very open to new ways of operating and are searching for substance not just froth and bubble. They are interested in the values and theology that will undergird a community of faith in the emerging cultures/subcultures. I’d like to see the wider church and parachurch organisations and Trusts putting more resources into supporting and encouraging some reshaping of inherited churches to better do mission in the emerging culture. To not do so would be an incredible waste of resources.

In September 2004, after a few weeks in the UK I wrote,
(I think) we should be funding ‘emerged leaders’ rather than just ‘emerging leaders’. Emerged leaders who have a track record of being able to engage with their local communities and provide rituals from a Christian worldview that engage with the needs of those communities. Pastoral giftings, creativity, integrity, openness, hospitality and life experience should be some of the primary criteria for church leaders and planters. These people may need retraining to understand the new world they are part of, and to be exposed to some new ways of doing the old tasks of pastoral care, servant leadership, worship that engages the whole person, stages of spiritual formation etc. But we shouldn’t make age a primary criteria for pastoral selection.’

The rest of that report is at http://cityside.org.nz/node/2 (under ‘UK Trip’)
I’m surprised that after 2 years I stand by those comments and the others made in that report. I haven’t see much in the Emerging Church movement that gives me hope for the Church in Australia or New Zealand. I was interested in the USA to find that I had to differentiate between emerging church and Emergent. The terms are not at all interchangeable. I was often called on to describe the history of both. While the terms seems to have widespread reach, they don’t carry any significant content for many church people. ‘Emerging church’ almost seems to be a luxury item for those who can afford it.

Eugene Peterson sums it up beautifully in the introduction to his book, 'Working the Angles'. He writes of the USA but what he says is true of anywhere in the West.
"(P)astors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an
alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other
jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the
church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But
they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring
after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of
pastoral ministry hasn't the remotest connection with what the church's
pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been
deserted....It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people
whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of
pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do
not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss
influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not
grist for their mills.

(P)astors have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers,
and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with
shopkeeper's concerns-how to keep the customers happy, how to lure
customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the
goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers,
pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is
still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping
all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy
the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the
kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.”

Community building, pastoral care, servant leadership…I don’t see a lot of emphasis on any of those in what is being promoted as the emerging church. But they do often exist in inherited churches. So if we could help inherited churches to renew their worship in ways that sustained mission and connected with the cultures around them, that seems to me to be a better way forward than to start new ‘churches’ that struggle, cost a lot of money, and focus on worship rather than spiritual formation and community development etc.

But worship isn’t always being done well in emerging churches either. We seem to assume that because an emerging church leader is young, has some theological education (perhaps), and doesn’t like the inherited church, that he (and it is usually a male) knows how to curate worship and lead a community. Worship and mission form an endless and seamless loop. Each informs, builds, and strengthens the other. Both need to be well informed and practiced. I think we sell our communities short far too often, and probably far more often than they or their leaders realise. I think we have a crisis of worship in the Church.

I was surprised and delighted to discover that I have a strong intuitive sense of what works and what doesn’t in any worship service I am part of. As I travelled I found myself involved in many, many conversations about worship and was able to offer suggestions about how the current worship could be improved - without changing the style. My comments were about ways to add depth (which isn’t the same as density) and breadth to the worship, both vital aspects sadly missing from much worship. My comments were well received (having been mostly, but not always, requested) and feedback suggests their implementation has in many cases made a real and significant difference to the worship encounter. This experience has confirmed my desire to continue to offer writing and speaking around these issues whenever there is the opportunity. I realised that I have a contribution to make. That in itself was worth the trip!

I’ve been wondering what the implications of some emerging and converging technologies might be for the Church – its structure, leadership, worship, mission…. -for how we do some of our traditional activities as well as how we might use the technologies. I want to think about:-
Downloading
Sideloading
Convergence
Time shifting
Space shifting
Portability
MySpace
YouTube – has 2 million downloads a day and 65 000 uploads. (or is that a week?)
Technology services the idea
The average time spent on MySpace is 51 minutes, on most websites 5 minutes is a very long time
There are 2.5 billion mobile phones in the world today. 3 Billion in a few years.
Record companies now prefer to be called content companies
From 10 years old, the average spend through a lifetime on mobile phone calls is expected to be $30 000
(and a useless but local piece of info, LonelyGirl15 turns out to be an aspiring Kiwi actress Jessica Grace who is trying to break in to Hollywood!) She has created a new art form.

‘You don’t change the world by hiding in the woods, wearing a hair shirt, or buying indulgences in the form of SAVE THE EARTH bumper stickers. You do it by articulating a vision for the future and pursuing it with all the ingenuity humanity can muster. Indeed, being green at the start of the 21st century requires a whole hearted commitment to upgrading civilisation.‘ Alex Nikolai Steffen, ‘The Next Green Revolution’, p 40, Wired Magazine, May 2006.

The quote could easily be rewritten for a church context.

I’ll let Eugene Peterson have the last word,
“The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are,
instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in
towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and
does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the
sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the
community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community
attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in
spades."
Mark Pierson, September 01, 2006.

ps The day after I returned to Melbourne Amazon Books sent me one of their nuisance emails. The kind that lists some books they think you’d like to buy, ‘Amazon.co.uk has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own.’ This was surprising since I haven’t purchased anything from Amazon UK for several years. Even more surprising was that they recommended I purchase ‘The Prodigal Project: journey into the emerging church’. This is a book I co-wrote in 2000! I also own six of the other seven books they recommended I buy, so their prediction was quite accurate.

At a meeting of the core group of Urban Seed church after worship on Sunday 8 April, 15 adults and two children stayed out of the 20 + 2 who were at worship that night! Not a bad core group. At that meeting I explained that due to my difficult personal circumstances I wasn’t able to continue to provide leadership at the level I had been doing for the previous 12 months. In fact I needed to take a complete break, and as no one else was willing to take it on, it was likely that we would shut up shop.

So our Easter Saturday service was to be our last at Mission to Seafarers. We went for Easter Saturday because it’s traditionally a ‘dead’ day in the Easter period. Nice and dark, hopeless, ‘on the road to nowhere’ sort of themes. The sort of stuff that is meat to a depressed melancholic cynic. I was also due to go to the USA on Easter Sunday! It was great working with Cheryl Lawrie and Jeff and Paul and Rachael and Blythe on the initial theme. ‘Waiting’. ‘Dead Man Waiting’. Nice. The service was a cracker. 30 punters turned up despite it being a holiday weekend. A good time was had by all if the responses are anything to go by. Behind the scenes the service was a mess. I’d spent more time than I should have on setting up the environment, and not enough time briefing those involved in leading parts of the service. Apparently no one noticed. But I did. Fortunately God is very gracious and she turned up, once again, to transform a very meagre offering in to something that touched the heart of many present. (I have had this experience many times in the last 13 years of doing alt. worship stuff. It only seems to happen if the work is done beforehand, and not if I don’t put the work in. Its as if God needs something to work with – my commitment to the task. Just thinking out loud).

Cheryl Lawrie (my co-conspirator) has blogged nicely about the service, and put up some pix (http://alternative.victas.uca.org.au/, as has Marcus Curnow (http://www.urbanseed.org/journal/mt/mc/archives/2006/05/dead_man_waitin.html). Their technical abilities are far beyond mine, so look there for more info, but basically the venue, which is a large round concrete dome, had as a centrepiece a huge pile of crushed and block ice. Above it hung a ‘crown of thorns’ (barbed wire) with about 8 red conical ‘iceblocks’ hanging off it. These dripped (one drip every 5 seconds from each) on to the clear clean ice. Very nice. Lighting was from projector spill (three data projectors – one either side of the dome roof running the same loop continuously, and one on a sheet in front of the door opening running a triptych loop), and 4 black-light tubes and a few candles. Very minimalist and simple. The service was built around repeating the text of John 16/7 (CEV) ‘But I tell you that I am going to do what is best for you. That is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you.’ This was repeated 5 times with a second voice responding in a questioning tone. The 5 segments roughly followed the 5 stages of grief. We went through all the segments, then introduced 5 stations for reflection, based on the same readings and responses. Cheryl lists all these.

After that it was drinks in the adjoining bar and pack out. Unfortunately since we had decided to stop meeting at Mission to Seafarers after that night we had all the accumulated junk of a years worship to move out. I was going to the USA for 3 weeks at 9am the next day. So it was a long night, one very familiar to anyone involved in alt.worship stuff. The kind of night when you discover who your friends are! Fortunately I had plenty. It was sad closing the doors for the last time. It had been a good run with a lot learnt from the experience.

Three weeks away saw me at Disneyland with my wife, daughter and grandson, and at ‘The Church Has Left the Building’ Conference in Seattle. Disneyland was fun, the conference didn’t quite deliver, and I didn’t feel that I did either. The worship I led based around the Prodigal Son story was messy (and God didn’t seem to turn up in any obvious way). Somehow it didn’t hang together. My seminar, ‘How Did an Instrument of Torture Get to be Hanging Out in Madonna’s Cleavage?’ was a new seminar and I didn’t think it went across to the very mixed audience very well. Still, I had fun and met some great people and had some inspiring conversations. And staying at the Shafer-Baillie Mansion on Capitol Hill was an outstanding experience. Wonderful Mennonite Christian hosts in a refurbished turn of the century mansion.

I came back to find that the Sunday night service, now called ‘Seeds’, was flourishing. I love it when I start something that other people carry on. I’m an initiator rather than a maintainer, although I can maintain when necessary, I just don’t enjoy it as much. I didn’t attend worship there for the first 6 weeks or so. I wanted the group to find its head without my involvement. I joined them for the first time last Sunday. 20 + adults and 4 children. Very good worship. Well curated. Good content. A bit thin on broader involvement by people, but well done. I was proud to be a part of the group. Now I’m stuck with curating and doing the rant next week which is Trinity Sunday, my least favourite Sunday in the calendar.

I also found that the wonderful brothers and sisters of the Sydney Anglican Diocese had publicly trashed our Dead Man Waiting service along with most other emerging church worship. The so called ‘journalist – and I use the term loosely – had written an article for their magazine and e-zine that quoted heavily from websites, including Cheryl’s. Misquoted and misinterpreted would be a better description. Again Cheryl covers this incident nicely on her blog. Among other things the journo attributed Urban Seed church to Cheryl and quoted from a site about a Welsh Nudist Beach Mission. She failed to see the latter was a spoof! Those references are now removed from her web article but remain in the hard copy. The Australian Broadcasting Company ran an item about her article on their national television program Mediawatch this week. http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1655730.htm
I can never understand why some branches of the Church feel they have to justify their existence by trashing other parts who think or act differently. I expect that level of lack of understanding from outside the Church, but not from within it. (Which justifies my love of the spoof, again by the ABC, of Hillsong! http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/video/default.htm?program=chaser&pres=20060526_2200 )

So that’s about up to date. Please follow Marcus’s blog and he’ll lead you to the new ‘Seeds’ website when its up if you want to know what we’re up to. We’re looking to pull together all the worship and spirituality stuff we do that is about sustaining our mission here at Urban Seed. We hope it will be helpful to others in similar situations.

I’m going to try to get my Masters thesis on Stations of the Cross finished, and get a book and CD resource on using Stations of the Cross, stations, and ambient spaces etc in mission and worship, to the printers. I’m also trying to pull together a gathering of people interested in creating and using video and audio stuff in worship. Ambience artists. That will be in Melbourne in January. And there will be the occasional worship gig done under the ‘Parallel Universe Worship Collective’ umbrella, and a visit to the West Coast of the USA for a few weeks in August...and I still work for Urban Seed…

Thanks for your interest and support.
Mark Pierson Wednesday 7 June 2006.

February 12.
Appalling service. I should have stayed in bed all day. I was very tired and carrying a fair amount of stress and didn’t put the service together at all well. Lost the Prayer of Confession at the last minute when Rachel’s Dad went missing and she couldn’t make it. 40 minutes of trying wouldn’t make the laptop talk to the data projector. So I read a bit of scripture – quite a lot actually – and read most of Bono’s message to the Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC. Pretty poor all round really.
18 adults and 2 children.

February 19.
We’re getting the hang of the space. I think we need to have 3 music stands or similar to mark 3 spots that people can go to if they are leading a segment of the service. Great having Lee back again. He’s from Guernsey and has been trying to qualify for the Commonwealth Games steeplechase. Unfortunately he hasn’t made it, but we get to hang out with him. Rachel did a good PoC (Prayer of Confession) tonight. Track from Sufjan Stevens (Oh God Where Are You Now?) with a leaf and text attached to reflect on. (9.23 minute track. Very cool.)

Lenten Reflections packs where available tonight. I think they look great. 75mm square black cardboard envelope with a 6 panel double sided heavy paper insert (ie 12 panels all up). Each panel has a reflection and ritual for each week in Lent etc. I’m very please with them. Cam has done an excellent job of design…again. We did them in conjunction with Cityside in Auckland. My comments back in Advent about design and the ‘image’ that conveys to punters was reinforced when the first 2 people I showed them to made comments straight off about the shape, the way things lined up, the symbolism of the shape and design, etc. People do notice the detail. Some do anyway. And we want to have something for those people.

The service went well tonight I thought. I like the new space. It’s so good not having to set up everything every week. We’re getting a lockable cupboard so I won’t have to carry the data projector back and forwards. Then it will be almost perfect…We’re going to do our Easter Saturday service, Dead Man Waiting, in here. I think it will be very special in the dark with multiple projections.

I’m away the next 2 Sundays in New Zealand with Brian and Grace Mclaren. Brian is downunder doing some speaking for a couple of weeks. It will be a welcome break away from the tensions of work. After that I am staying in the shadows for a few more weeks as a break and Marcus will take the major responsibility week by week.

(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

Mark Pierson 28 December, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com

Because Lent starts in late February next year, I’ve also been working on our Lenten Reflections and the text and design is finished ready to be printed in January. If Jesus had died in July or August it would have made life in the church so much easier (dying ‘landscape’ rather than ‘portrait’ would have made projecting images of the cross a lot more straightforward as well!). We work with what we’ve got.

November 27: First Sunday in Advent.
Annette told the story through memorising the scripture passage. Nice. I introduced Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca (1467) and got to talk about pregnancy and other favourite topics. I love that painting. Lost my count of numbers.

December 04: Second Sunday in Advent. Grant did a great job introducing us to a painted mural of Mary and Elizabeth from Malawi. Tearing out and hanging newspaper headlines that grabbed us on a clothesline as our prayers worked well again. I dominated the service as curator after a couple of people rostered to participate didn’t turn up. Eighteen adults and four children made up the congregation.

December 11: Third Sunday in Advent. At the last minute I lost from my laptop the American Beauty clip that I had written a Prayer of Confession around – something about being overwhelmed by the ugliness and violence in our world and not seeing the beauty and goodness that was around us. So I read the words without the video. Found the video the next day. Hate that.
Our Advent liturgy stuff is shaping up nicely. The art tonight was Madonna and Child With Saints in the enclosed Garden. A couple of RC nuns and several more RC’s turned up again. Nice. They came for the art. Due to a lovers quarrel our presenter didn’t show so we had an open discussion of the art. It was good. Wide range of participation. Having Claire, an art historian, and a few other Catholics among us kept it all lively. Lost the numbers for tonight too. They were strong.

December 18: Fourth Sunday in Advent. Ray Simpson – Holy Island, Lindisfarne – was with us today. Good seminar in the afternoon about what Celtic spirituality and history has to say to the emerging church, then he spoke in the service on journey and pilgrimage. John La Farge’s Halt of the Wisemen was the art. We sang two songs, including a carol! Most unusual for us. Twenty eight adults and 2 children. It was a good service. Good worship, and a good way to end up the year. Marcus curated.

Great sigh of relief from me at the end. No more services until February 5. Summer break! I love what we do. I think we often do it very well. But for me it comes on the end of a full week and takes time and energy I struggle to find. The last few weeks have been particularly difficult at work, which has made church even harder to sustain. On top of that the venue has been in a mess each week when I’ve arrived and setting up has taken more time and energy. January is a good time to re-evaluate what we are doing.

Mark Pierson December 20, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

November 13
Rachel did a very cool Call to Worship using illustrations she’d torn out of very old children’s Bibles (the Bibles were old, not the children), and handwritten Bible text quotes.
Marcus spoke about Colossians 1 using some of Brian Walsh’s targum stuff from ‘Colossians Remixed’. Excellent book.
6 adults. Very cosy. Not a bad service tho.

November 20
Christ the King Sunday. A good time to review the year past. It’s been a long one. We hung the ‘church year clothesline’ and looked at where this Sunday fits in that year. Played some tracks from the new Pitch Black album. Nice stuff. Also used Van Morrisons ‘Ancient of Days’. A good fit. I forgot to record the number of punters, but there weren’t many of us.

(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

October 16: The four organising team plus one other made it for what was by all accounts a very nice piece of worship. I was on leave and a group who had never put worship like this together before curated it. We are planning for them to do a rerun sometime soon.

October 23: Rachael had us using ‘pray dough’ all through the service. It was nice preaching while people let their hands do the talking. We laid our pray-dough shapes on the communion table when we were sharing the elements. Marcus made some good connections to the current arts festival in Melbourne. He had quotes written on the inside of origami boats that we opened up and reflected on during prayer of confession. Very nice. Six adults and 2 children. Good worship. I had been through a difficult week and was about ready to give it all up after Sunday night, despite the worship being good. Six adults is a pretty small group. Especially when you take out the two couples who provide the core.
The next day a newcomer emailed this ps to an unrelated email…’Just so that you are aware of it – Urban seed church is grand. It pulls me along, hems me in even…just in the few times I’ve come along. What you give to the wanderers and the stayers is life-giving, and I left last night surer that life is at hand and love is the end of it.’ Well what can I say! Of course I’ll turn up next week God. Whatever gave anyone the idea I wouldn’t? Another friend sent me a postcard, ‘ “I can’t take this shit anymore!” he said mistakenly.’ Story of my introverted life.

October 30: Looked like the four of us again. Turned out to be another 14 tramped up the stairs! 18 adults and 2 children. Needed to put out more chairs, more candles, more glasses, more water….The fluctuations are really hard to cope with. It’s an emotional roller coaster for me. Marcus picked up nicely on All Saints/All Souls. We need to be more aware of introducing ourselves when we lead a segment of worship.

Almost the end of the year. I’m looking forward to getting into Advent. Our series of ‘Advent in Art’ postcards are underway. I’ve also been working on a Lenten reflections pack for next year, and pushing on with preparations for a major Stations of the Cross event in a public building in Holy Week. I’m not sure if we can pull all this stuff off with the limited resources we have, but I’m driven to try. I’ve recently tried again to become less driven on this stuff, but failed. Maybe I could change my language to ‘God has told me to do this stuff’ and then I’d feel better. But I don’t mind feeling bad. One more Sunday of preaching and I’m back to curating. I enjoy both, and doing only one at a time has been excellent.

Mark Pierson November 02, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

I don’t like doing ‘exhibition’ worship and would normally have declined this kind of invitation, but a friend asked me to do it, and the resourcing was unusually good!

It was obvious that some kind of stations based worship was what I would do. Some parameters arose early on in the planning – the venue wouldn’t allow use of any candles or flames, so no incense either, and it was too small to get all 350 staff in at one time so two ‘sittings’ would be necessary.

While it was a huge amount of work, it was also (in retrospect) a lot of fun. The responses from punters (probably 348 of them had never experienced anything like it) were very positive, tears flowed for some and significant encounters with God were had by many. So that made it worthwhile.

The stations list went something like this:-

Sacred Space: Welcome Home
World Vision Australia Staff Day 2005.

Overall Theme: God cares for all people regardless of their situation, ethnicity, history. World Vision staff are the agents of Gods care and concern and work with God to bring about God’s purposes in a diverse world. We need to be travelling close to God to do this work.

Aim: to have all participants reflect on and interact with issues relating to their work and personal spirituality and sense of mission.

Stations List:

1. Communion Bread Station:
Concept: self serve bread stations, low so people are encouraged to kneel. Cushions around. Use trestle top with paper cloth over.
Instructions:
On the night he was betrayed, Jesus was eating a meal with his close followers when he took the bread that they were eating, gave thanks for it, broke it and said, ‘This is my body given for you; eat it and remember me.’
Remember what Jesus has done out of love for you, be thankful and encounter the risen, transforming Christ.

Reflect on Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, by those he was helping, by the community that didn’t understand who he was and what he was doing…
Have you ever felt betrayed? Have you been a betrayer? Do you know of someone somewhere in the world who has been betrayed? Use a lipstick to comment or draw on the tablecloth if you want to.
What do you want to say to betrayers? Use a lipstick to comment or draw on the tablecloth if you want to.

Know that your are forgiven by God if you have betrayed.

2. Communion Cup Station:
Concept: self-served water station.
Instructions:
Water is life and death. Christ is death and life.
“In the same way that he had taken the bread, after the meal with his close followers, Jesus took what they had been drinking and said, ‘This is my life-blood, given for you. A symbol of the new relationship I’m making possible between you and God.’“ Drink and encounter the risen Christ. Be refreshed and renewed.

When you have emptied your cup fill it with potting mix and plant a seed. Take this away with you as a reminder of the new life that Christ is growing in you.

3. Anger Station:
Concept: Tall 3 sided plinth/s that people write on with big felt pens, or spray stencil.
Instructions: What in your world, or the world around you, makes you angry?
Write, draw, make a stencil and spray, words or images that describe what you want to say to God at this time, or what God might want to say to you.

4. Confession Station:
Concept: Table running multiple small televisions with loop from Piano movie. Tvs in ‘campfire’ circle. 3-4 large black plastic bins water filled. People drop stones in as symbol of letting go and moving on.
Instructions: Pick up a stone and hold it tight in your hand. Watch the video loop for a while – at least once through the sequence. Reflect on what you might have to let go of or reduce in priority in order to move forward in your relationship with Jesus.
Drop your stone into the bucket as a symbol of your resolve to move forward. Walk away.

5. Frustration Station:
Concept: large bowls of water with different coloured corks floating. More corks around. Corks painted variety of colours on one end.
Instructions: Try to hold the corks down under the water with your hands. Reflect on how difficult this is to do. One always pops out somewhere. Working to overcome poverty and abuse, to deal with crises, is a relentless, often thankless, seemingly impossible task. Give thanks for the people who ‘hold down the corks’ with you.
Choose a cork that describes how you feel about the work that you do and place it on the large letters ‘WVA’. (Maybe in chalk on low platform nearby?)

6. Prayer Station:
Concept: people make prayer sticks (black with uv sensitive powder on end) as symbols of their prayers for self or others or a situation. Have a large pile of sand eg 2.5 x .75 metre ellipse 40mm deep, on stage at front edge so people can access it from the hall floor. Uv lamps.
Instructions: Take a stick and write on it what or who you wish to pray for. Dip the end in glue then roll that end in the powder. Plant your prayer stick in the sand as a symbol of your prayer for yourself, another person, or a situation.

7. Silent-Speaking God Station: (done in seats)
Concept: see below.
Instructions: Read through the text several times and listen for what God might be saying to you. Write that down.
I Kings 19/11-13 (New International Version) plus additions.
The Lord said (to Elijah), "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

After the fire came an atomic bomb, but the Lord was not in the atomic bomb.
After the atomic bomb came a tsunami, but the Lord was not in the tsunami.
After the tsunami came a terrorist attack, but the Lord was not in the terrorist attack.
After the terrorist attack came a war on terror, but the Lord was not in the war on terror.

And after all this came a gentle whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

8. Barbed Wire Fence Station:
Concept: A barbed wire fence section in centre of the space. Say 4 strands running 5 metres long and 2 metres high. News and magazine photos and articles about refugees, detention, imprisonment etc are attached to both sides of the fence by cable ties.
Instructions: Read an article or study a picture that attracts your attention in some way. Think about the circumstances of the people involved. Feel any injustice. What is needed to make a difference in this situation? Offer your prayers.
Cable ties are used as handcuffs in many parts of the world. Attach your cable tie to the fence as a symbol of your prayer and identification with the suffering of those detained falsely and unjustly.
Take away a barbed wire off-cut ‘cross’ to remind you that Jesus has shared that suffering and gives the promise that ultimately fences and barbed wire will be torn down. Carry the ‘cross’ in your hand.

9. Scent of Gratitude Station:
Concept: People contribute the elements of pot pourri to a central bowl as a symbol of their desire to thank God for something that has happened or is happening to them personally or through a work project. Ring of fairy lights around central bowl.
Instructions: Psalm 141/1,2 says ‘O Lord, I call to you; come quickly to me. Hear my voice when I call to you. May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.’ Drop a handful of one or more elements of the pot pourri into the central bowl. As you do, reflect on something that you’re grateful for. Give thanks to God for that.

I have some good pix but no idea how to upload them. Maybe later.

Mark Pierson October 05, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

Order of Service
1. Welcome and intro – This = combination of style of Monday morning Credo Gathering with people from the street, Tuesday evening Staff Prayers, and Sunday evening Urban Seed:church. Many of elements are common to all we do. Usually use printed words, or from memory, today for convenience we will use data projector.
2. Candle Lighting Ritual. (Text on screen.)
3. Songs: (No Intro – lyrics on screen) Gathering Song, Slow Down. accapella/hand drums/body percussion.
4. Bible Reading. (Text on screen.)
5. Credo Beatitudes ex Marcus PowerPoint
6. Discussion.
7. Communion – water/bread.
8. Prayers – candles and responsive ‘Lord Hear Us…’ (On screen) Use heating candles on the concrete floor)
9. Songs: Do Not Be Afraid, Heaven is My Home.
10. Benediction – ‘You are God’s servants…’ (Words on screen)

Very, very nice. Small group of people, mainly due to the other six worship events being promoted in the program and ours not!
Not much chance to reflect on what we had done, or to enjoy the company of others after as Ed picked me up to begin the journey back to Melbourne. I was disappointed to leave the sunshine and conversations behind, especially for more work.

Mark Pierson October 05, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

If you want to boast about starting a church, it helps to have a name. If you want status because you belong to a cool church, it helps to have a name. If you want to develop an ego about being pastor of a certain church, the church will need a name.

With all these bad reasons to get a name, are there any good reasons?

Some say you need a name to reach people, to get people to come. After all, without a name, how do people find about the church and attend? The answer: they are invited. Personally. Its not a closed club or cliché. Everyone is invited. To “church.” Without a name, the invitation would tend to be a longer, more meaningful conversation. You would have to describe what you are inviting them to in a descriptive sentence, instead of with use of an arcane or trendy name. Most important, without a name, a sign and listing, the invitation could only be personal, which could actually be cool.
Here’s why: over time, our church members will grow more connected, intimate, and vulnerable. Shared trust will develop, and this level of trust will enrich the times of worship and fellowship. Brand new people showing up will tend to lower the trust/vulnerability level, because they are unknowns. Especially brand new people who are just dropping in because they saw a sign, or a newspaper ad. But a new person who was personally invited by another member is a totally different dynamic. There is some transfer of trust, since people know that the new person was invited by John, and that invitation came out of a relationship with me, and that can be trusted.

It seems that every concern about having a name can be reduced to an interest in ‘growing’ the numbers of the church, but at a certain cost. You may grow, but you’ve already started acting a little like a business. You may grow, but you will tend toward an audience of superficial consumers.

All this led me to ask what they called churches in the very beginning. Did they come up with cool names like ‘QUEST’ ?

I’m not a scholar on these matters, but I think they just called themselves the church at Ephesus or the church at Phillipi, etc. etc.

So we could call ourselves ‘the church in Blacktown’ but that might sound incredibly pretentious and self-righteous. There are lots of churches in Bl;acktown. (when every church has its own distinct name even within one city, does that help us think of the church as unified or fractured?)

So what do I call it when I personally invite someone? I would say “we’re part of the church in Blacktown.”

So there you have it. What do you see as pros and cons of name or no-name?

Me? I’m still thinking about it.

Mark Pierson October 05, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

02 October, 2005.
A killer service for me. I flew back early from the Blackstump Festival out of Sydney in order to put it together. Marcus was at Stump with several other Urban Seeders so we were always going to be a bit thin on the ground anyway. So I finished curating worship at Stump, trained to the airport, flew to Melbourne, taxi-ed direct to the venue and set up for worship.
Virginia did an excellent call to worship using headlines from magazines that we selected and lay at the foot of the cross. Tim Costello talked with us about the ‘love your enemies’ passage. Particularly poignant in the light of further Bali bombings the day before. Surprisingly, with four regulars at Stump, 13 people turned up, including a couple of new people.

I’m heading away on holiday for a couple of weeks tomorrow.

Mark Pierson October 05, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

04 September, 2005.
15 adults, including 2 visitors tonight. Trickled in. It felt good (in the end).

I have written to the Deacons of the church I am part of in the mornings, to ask them to reconsider their decision that Urban Seed:church not meet geographically or chronologically near their services. I’m wondering if a venue closer to the rest of what Urban Seed does would integrate things better. Being at the other end of town seems to fragment us. Maybe I’m clutching at straws. Nothing wrong with that. One might hold me up.

11 September, 2005.
A significant day in history. I also launched the possibility of us doing a public Stations of the Cross art installation next Easter. The service started 15 minutes late after we waited for the Call to Worship to arrive! It was worth waiting for. Jeff wove a track by Sufjan Stevens (Casimir Pulaski Day) about loss and pain and confusion (I think), in with Psalm 22. Marcus connected terrorism in with our confession. I presented a rapid overview of what Stations of the Cross was about and showed a couple of hundred pix of previous installations I’d curated. We seem to have a few people keen. Will this be a sustaining straw or the one that breaks the camels back?
Nine adults and two children tonight.

18 September, 2005.
SONAR tonight. This is style of worship we developed at Cityside in Auckland almost 3 years ago. There it is still held monthly on a Wednesday at 8pm. The 3 elements of it are live ambient electronic music, large screen projected visuals ie film loops, and a set of 4 stations. The stations stay the same with the exception of the biblical text one that changes. It is an open space that people can drift in and out of. The intention was to give film and electronica makers a venue for their talents and interests to be used in a worship context, and to begin to bridge the gap between church and culture by providing a relatively neutral gig space that people of all faiths and none could hang out. It has never taken on the strength I think it should have at Cityside, and numbers attending are very small, but that is another story.

Cam, one of the original SONAR music and video artists, was over from Cityside and played on his laptop. The space looked good with 7 IKEA low tables (LACK for you IKEA culties) in our usual central cruciform shape carrying the stations. I’d added a couple of black tables to the usual white ones. Large screen at one end. Cushions and chairs around the walls etc. People sat, lay, stood, wandered around, listened, watched, interacted with the stations. It was just what I hoped it would be.

The roller coaster of emotions and energy levels I feel every Sunday night, and as the Sunday gets closer, is incredible and very difficult to manage. I’m still very tired constantly and don’t feel that I am giving the service the work it needs to make it take off. As I stood in the foyer at the top of the stairs welcoming people to the service, and had done so to 6 people by 5.30, I again wondered what it was all about and if I could keep doing this. By 5.45pm there were 21 adults and one child in the space and the comments after were very positive. Interestingly, of the 21 punters only 8 could be called regulars. Others came, apparently, to check out this worship combination. I’ve begun a weekly email newsletter that reminds people of what is on offer each week. No pressure, just info.

Beforehand someone I trust and respect a lot in the emerging church scene emailed me, ‘you have no idea how lovely the idea is of going to a worship that someone i trust with worship is organising - and how long it's been since that was the case... no pressure, of course!’ and after the worship, ‘it was so lovely, honestly - transcendent. hope it wound its way through you too.’ Safety in worship…transcendence in worship. I guess that’s what it’s all about. Maybe I’ll hang in for another week. No response from the Deacons. Maybe this venue will work for a while longer anyway?

Nice to have a drink downstairs after and then wander across the Docklands to show Cam a potential venue for a very public Stations of the Cross installation next Easter.

Mark Pierson September 19, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )

Sunday 17 July
14 adults and 2 children tonight. I was away in New Zealand for a break. Marcus held it together.

Sunday 24 July, Sunday 31 July
My study is in such a mess that I can’t find my running sheets or newsletters from either of these Sundays so I’ll fill in the details later.

Sunday 07 August
Peter Majendie, storyteller and comic from Christchurch New Zealand led us into communion with some stories. Excellent stuff. Paul turned up with a mid sized wooden cross he had crafted for us. Very nice. He talked about it as the Call to Worship. Laid the space out with the tables in cruciform shape. Looked good. 20 adults and 2 children. Used a great Paul Kelly song ‘If I Could Start Today Again’ as prayer of confession and gave out fabric with stitching to unpick during communion. Trying to make the point that none of us can start with a truly blank slate even though God does forgive us. The stitching always leaves a trace of its prior presence.

Last night with the Oasis team from UK present. They’ve been at Urban Seed for 3 months and made a great contribution. They’ve also swelled our numbers on a Sunday evening! Reality bites now.

Sunday 14 August.
Reality Bit! Pretty much all visitors tonight. Two major Christian conferences in Melbourne this weekend saw our regulars at other places. At 5.30pm there was only one person other than the team. I was quite happy to pack up and go home early but then six others arrived! So 11 adults and 3 children made up the muster. I led far too much of the service, but others who had been arranged didn’t make it so there was little alternative. Most of what I did I did poorly. I used Lectio Divina rather than preach. I didn’t do it well. Something inside me wanted to rush through and get out of there. The service was all over the place and had little cohesion or flow. I struggled to connect within myself let alone with a small group of predominantly visitors. I seriously wondered what I was doing there (and why anyone else was) and what it was all about. I was glad to get home and watch CSI.

Mark Pierson 16 August, 2005. www.urbanseed.org
(This column also appears at www.sacramentis.com )