I have to admit here that I am not an unbiased reviewer. I’ve known Jonny for more years than I want to admit, eaten lunch in his kitchen, slept on his sofa more than once, and regularly swapped notes with him on what we used to call Alternative Worship, and has subsequently been tagged Emerging, Emergent, Pioneer, Fresh Expressions etc – and although, in common with Jonny, I don’t buy the idea that incarnating a Christian worshipping community in contemporary culture necessarily means cutting ties with traditional church, both Jonny and I have played on either side of the edge of tradition.

From that edge-of-church culture has emerged the term “curating” for worship. I think it might have been Mark Pierson who used the term first, but various people have given it their own take, and it’s a term that raises all sorts of interesting possibilties.

Why? because it bypasses the many difficulties that occur from the notion of “leading” worship. The culture of the “worship leader” pitches the lucky few to the front of the room in the starring role, either as Vicars or rock-star musicians, and the backlash against church hierarchies and worship superstars has created the fanciful idea that communities will coalesce without any leadership at all. “Curating”, which just as it sounds is drawn from the world of art, museum and exhibition, acknowledges creative leadership without making the curator the centre of attention.

These are the issues Jonny addresses here, and I like the way he does so, first by giving us a well thought out essay of his own, and then by giving attention through analysis and interview to a few of the practitioners of this mode of organisation and creative output.

The interview technique is a tricky one to pull off – if you are not faithful to the transcript the writer can be very unfaithful to the interviewee, but a straight transcript is usually rather boring. Jonny, though, has recorded (and I would guess tidied up as it reads well) proper conversation: rather than asking one-line questions and letting the interviewee set the agenda. Thus he manages to weave the thoughts of some leading practitioners together with his own considerable expertise. It’s a good read, and great to feel like a fly on the wall to these conversations.

Jonny’s choice of practitioners was very smart: he has chosen people who take the idea of “curating” differently – such as Laura Drane who sees herself as artist as well as curator, and Steve Taylor who (while being no less creative) takes the more traditionally invisible curator’s role. And – most unusual for a Christian writer in this quarter of the church, Jonny actually includes women’s and men’s voices in equal measure, and on an equal footing – and, given that in the apparently culturally hip world of edgy, contemporary church, in which the old sexism remains mostly unchallenged, this aspect of Jonny’s book is not just “fair” but prophetic.

I have to say, though, that the best bit of the book is the two short essays at the beginning, in which Jonny explains why engaging “hands on” in a created world is in itself a transformative experience that goes far beyond the intellectual exercise of reasoning out one’s belief. The imagination is engaged in a different way when your whole body is committed to the experience, which Jonny illustrates with accounts of his own visits to large-scale art installations and then translates into the world of spiritual transformation. I would buy this book for the opening two chapters alone. Oh yes, and the cover.

Hats off, Jonny, Lots of stars.

Phil Groom/Matt Wardman et al to the rescue – Phil has compiled a summary of how things are here:

New Ways of Being Bookshop « UKCBD: The Christian Bookshops Blog.

And Simon Jones of Bromley writes about the bookshop as a “missional” space on the high street.