Interested in worship with integrity? Check out Just Worship, a gathering in Christchurch, New Zealand, on curating worship that sustains mission, mercy and justice, being held over Queens Birthday Weekend, June 4-7, 2010. Mark Pierson describes the weekend as a gathering of people involved in or interested in designing and delivering (curating) worship that encourages people to engage with God and with the issues facing their world.
The Just Worship Gathering is intended to shift participants understanding of corporate worship from being primarily a static and front-led event, to being an art form that is interactive and participatory. It’s not about changing to a particular style of worship but enhancing what you already have. It will also introduce participants to ways of creating sacred spaces outside of church buildings. The focus of Just Worship will be station based and art installation based worship events ie the non-singing parts of worship.
The Gathering will be coordinated by Rev Mark Pierson, founding pastor of Cityside Baptist Church (host of Parallel Universe), co-founder of Mainstage Music Festival, and co-author of “The Prodigal Project: journey into the emerging church”. Mark currently works with World Vision New Zealand where part of his role is to enable churches to better engage with issues of justice both locally and overseas. He is publishing a new book this year, due out on October 1. The tentative title is “The Art of Worship: building a new vocabulary and language for designing corporate worship”. He’s also working on a book focusing on 24/7 curated installation spaces, due out in late 2011.
The Just Worship event will include “show and tell” contributions from practitioners on two sides of the Tasman: Cheryl Lawrie, Marcus Curnow, Dave White, and Peter Majendie. Subject to bandwidth and time zones the organisers expect to have live video links with Len Sweet, Brian McLaren, Bruce Ramus (Lighting Director, U2 tours), and others with an interesting contribution to make to the worship and arts conversation.
Cheryl Lawrie works with the Uniting Church in Australia exploring ways to connect spirituality with local culture and context, particularly with those who don’t find their home in church. She curates ritual experiences and public installations that engage with everyday themes of life: bewilderment, fear, hope, fragility, and temporality. Her specialities are basement carpark and prison based sacred spaces. She regularly writes on spirituality for the Melbourne Age, and has a secret desire to be a landscape gardener. Cheryl lives in Melbourne, and blogs at www.holdthisspace.org.au.
Marcus Curnow hangs out with the Urban Seed mob, a downtown hospitality and advocacy ministry with marginalised people in Melbourne. He also coordinates a network of worshipping missional communities committed to worship that sustains mission. His passion is worship that engages with contemporary culture and issues of justice. When not curating or sharing child-minding duties with his wife, Marcus specialises in running Laneway Cricket matches between street people and corporates, and making Cornish Pasties. See more at Seeds.
Dave White is lives in Hamilton, New Zealand. His best work is inspired by the slippery, magical, mysterious taniwhas on every bend of the Waikato river. For the last six years he has curated large-scale, week long, Easter Stations of the Cross in the public Hamilton Gardens. He also invites the Hamilton community to participate in ‘Trees at the Meteor‘ in Advent. Here, a cathedral and a theatre, linked by a footpath, combine for a nativity journey in South Pacific christmas-tree art, the week before Christmas.
Peter Majendie (with Joyce) is world famous, in the world, for his large-scale outdoor, public sacred spaces and worship events at Christmas and Easter in Christchurch. Their 1000 straw-bale Peace Labyrinth (www.christmaslabyrinth.co.nz/) takes over Lattimer Square and opens 24 hours a day for 5 days. Shipping containers, 8 metre lengths of hand-made paper, thousands of pavers and a 1000 umbrellas have been his recent materials for creating worship events inside and outside the church.
The Just Worship Gathering is a collaboration between Mark Pierson, World Vision New Zealand, the Just Worship Collective, Transient Worship Collective and the Parallel Universe Worship Collective.