Worship in the park
Some of my interview with Jenny Swan from ABC Central Queensland, is online in an article by Kim Lester: Church for those who don’t like church. I was in at ABC Coast FM when the producer Anita suggested I do a phone hook up with Rockhampton next. Jenny was keen to explore alternatives to spending lot of money on cathedrals and other purpose-built worship spaces.
Part of my thinking on this was stimulated by an experience I had when training for ministry. We had a Taize service in the park - in a rotunda much like the one pictured here. The atmosphere was great. But afterwards we realised that the content of the service had made no reference at all to the environment we were in. We’d just translated an inside experience to the park.
So what would an ‘in-the-park’ experience be like if it was designed for that environment? There might be more awareness of the sounds of silence for a start. And perhaps more use of the metaphors of the greenery.
It’s all there at ABC Capricornia.
2 Responses to “Worship in the park”
By Phil Goodacre on Oct 8, 2005 | Reply
we had a service in our local park a few months ago….now i fully admit that some of it was just an inside-experience done outside, in that we had some musicians at the front leading us in some ‘worship’.
but one of the things we did a bit later in our time together, was go for a walk round the park, as individuals or in pairs, and observe, reflect, just be. we then all came back together and shared what we’ed been thinking about (if we felt comfortable to do so). some people picked up artefacts such as leaves of flowers.
phil
By Matt Stone on Oct 9, 2005 | Reply
Duncan. I’ve posted a few thoughts at about one of our experiences here in Sydney