Maggi Dawn » Alternative Worship

blind spots and perspective

maggi dawn — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:39:56 +0000

A great account of an imaginative spiritual exercise here from Jonny Baker:

“… when you arrived you were given a set of home made glasses with either red or blue filters. an exhibition was hanging with a set of images and texts to look at and you had to keep your filters on. a discussion ensued and people found they were looking at the same things but seeing something totally different. for example one of the texts if you looked with red said blessed are the peacemakers and if you looked with blue said i have not come to bring peace but a sword

taking off filters isn’t a possibiity so we need people with other perspectives to help take our blinders off, to open up a fuller view of who god is, of the world…”

whole post here

Advent: ripples in time

maggi dawn — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:07:34 +0000

Mark Pierson, one of the world’s most creative worship curators, has a post about an Advent “service” involving a pool of black water. It sounds completely gorgeous, and he includes full instructions so you can try it for yourself. Go read!

Training for Fresh expressions and pioneer ministry

maggi dawn — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:51:12 +0000

It’s an amazing thing to me, and really exciting, to look back 18 years, and see how far pioneer and emerging groups have come in that time. In early 1990 I was one of half a dozen people who started a group in South London - not knowing really what we were doing except that there were Christians we knew who didn’t want to abandon their faith, but really didn’t connect any more with traditional church activities or language. We tried to reinvent the form while staying true to the theological and liturgical threads of the tradition. As far as we knew, we were – with an appropriate mix of courage and caution – just making it up as we went along. We stayed connected in various ways to the traditional church (some of us never left the trad. Church as such, in fact) but also gave ourselves plenty of freedom to try new things. Some of them worked so well the trad. Church eventually wanted us to teach them how to do it. Some of them were not so good and we quietly abandoned them.

Anyway, eighteen years later and the Anglican and Methodist Churches have taken more steps forward in their embracing of all this alternative/emerging stuff, and Fresh Expressions is now offering training courses for people involved at all levels. I’ll be teaching on the Cambridgeshire course, and looking forward not only to the course, but to thinking about how new ways of Church demand new ways of approaching teaching and training (what a travesty it would be if we started giving lectures and assessments on this now…! ). I am dreaming about how to give away wisdom, knowledge and experience in a way that opens up the way for people, rather than boxing them into an "approved" way of doing it.

Dozens of others are involved, and the courses are springing up all over the country. Go here for more.

Beyond in Hove

maggi dawn — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:31:21 +0000

Beyond starts up in Hove later this month. Beyond is another "church" that breaks the traditional boundaries, it’s being started up by some great people, so if you are down in the Brighton/Hove area, check it out.
27th April 7pm
Old Market Theatre, Upper Market Street, Hove, BN3 1AS

Tenebrae

maggi dawn — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:28:02 +0000

A couple of years back we did a kind of "Alternative" Tenebrae service here at Robinson. Andy and Hannah Goodliff came over and joined us for that. This weekend they did a Tenebrae of their own, adapting our basic idea and adding some fresh ideas of their own. Looks great. Go here for their version