sustain:if:able kiwi

labour day worship

This weekend in New Zealand was Labour Day Weekend, with a public on Monday in celebration of the 40 hour working week.

In order to let this weekend shape our worship, I taped 25 metre long and 30 cm wide rolls of paper to the floor, down the centre of the church aisles. The whiteness of the paper was broken by Micah 6:8; See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey God, and caused discussion and comment as the community gathered.

Leading up to the offering, I invited people to write on the Post-it stickers “ways they had laboured”; and to “post” these onto to the white paper rolls close to them. (playing Dido’s Life to Rent)

Then as we collected the offering and brought it to the front, there was a sense that we were gathering up not just money, but gathering up all our lives and all the ways we labour. The offering became a tactile and communal response, embedded in a New Zealand celebration of Labour Day.

The white sheets, now brightly decorated with our “labours,” can now be hung at the front of the worship space.