Sunday, May 28, 2006
Moot in the Church Times in article by Jonny Baker
If you missed it, this is the extract on Moot...
Worship
RULES OF LIFE sound as if they belong to the old world of monks and monasteries. Yet monasticism (or “new monasticism” as some are calling it) seems to be making a come-back.
Moot are a “fresh expression of church or emerging church”. They began a few years ago and found a home as a congregation of St Matthew’s, Westminster, an Anglo-Catholic church in central London.
If you joined Moot for a worship service, you might get a mix of ancient liturgy, video projections, ritual, and a backdrop of ambient music — creatively remixing the traditions of the Church with contemporary culture.
ALTERNATIVE worship communities have been doing this wonderfully well for 15 years or so now, and most of them have made their home on the margins of Anglican churches.
But here’s the problem. When people visit these communities, they simply focus on the style of worship. It’s partly because that’s something that is immediately striking and visibly different from the usual experience of church. Perhaps it’s also because, in a consumer culture, we see everything, including churchgoing, through a lens of consumer taste. And perhaps it’s also because when you visit a community, you tend to encounter the public face of that group, the most obvious of which is worship.
Behind the scenes you’d find something else: a community of young(ish) adults struggling to work out what it means to be a Christian community today. The worship is simply the work of the people which comes out of the community and reflects their world. The kinds of questions they have been exploring relate to the challenge of shifting from a modern to a post-modern culture:
What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ, and what does formation look like in this new world?
How can we become “missional”, i.e. get away from expecting people to come to our services, and go to them instead?
In this emerging culture, what does leadership look like?
How as a community can we find a rhythm of life that fuels our faith and discipleship together rather than seems to drain it?
It is this last question that has got Moot turning towards the notion of a rule of life. They have spent the past six months trying to draw out from community discussions what shape a contemporary rule of life might take. It’s still a work in progress, but they have identified six themes: presence, acceptance, accountability, hospitality, balance, and acceptance. They are looking towards an annual re-evaluation of the rule, and commitment to be part of the community.
It’s interesting to see that many emerging churches and alternative worship communities are really wrestling with what it means to follow Christ in a serious fashion.
This year at Greenbelt, Moot will be helping to host New Forms Café, a space that will include worship led by a range of new communities.
To read in context click here
http://moot.uk.net/
Jonny Baker
Worship
RULES OF LIFE sound as if they belong to the old world of monks and monasteries. Yet monasticism (or “new monasticism” as some are calling it) seems to be making a come-back.
Moot are a “fresh expression of church or emerging church”. They began a few years ago and found a home as a congregation of St Matthew’s, Westminster, an Anglo-Catholic church in central London.
If you joined Moot for a worship service, you might get a mix of ancient liturgy, video projections, ritual, and a backdrop of ambient music — creatively remixing the traditions of the Church with contemporary culture.
ALTERNATIVE worship communities have been doing this wonderfully well for 15 years or so now, and most of them have made their home on the margins of Anglican churches.
But here’s the problem. When people visit these communities, they simply focus on the style of worship. It’s partly because that’s something that is immediately striking and visibly different from the usual experience of church. Perhaps it’s also because, in a consumer culture, we see everything, including churchgoing, through a lens of consumer taste. And perhaps it’s also because when you visit a community, you tend to encounter the public face of that group, the most obvious of which is worship.
Behind the scenes you’d find something else: a community of young(ish) adults struggling to work out what it means to be a Christian community today. The worship is simply the work of the people which comes out of the community and reflects their world. The kinds of questions they have been exploring relate to the challenge of shifting from a modern to a post-modern culture:
What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ, and what does formation look like in this new world?
How can we become “missional”, i.e. get away from expecting people to come to our services, and go to them instead?
In this emerging culture, what does leadership look like?
How as a community can we find a rhythm of life that fuels our faith and discipleship together rather than seems to drain it?
It is this last question that has got Moot turning towards the notion of a rule of life. They have spent the past six months trying to draw out from community discussions what shape a contemporary rule of life might take. It’s still a work in progress, but they have identified six themes: presence, acceptance, accountability, hospitality, balance, and acceptance. They are looking towards an annual re-evaluation of the rule, and commitment to be part of the community.
It’s interesting to see that many emerging churches and alternative worship communities are really wrestling with what it means to follow Christ in a serious fashion.
This year at Greenbelt, Moot will be helping to host New Forms Café, a space that will include worship led by a range of new communities.
To read in context click here
http://moot.uk.net/
Jonny Baker
