Friday, June 13, 2008

soak and space

soak400.jpg

We had an evaluation and planning meeting of our Soak service last nite. Soak is quite unlike any alternative worship thing I have been part of. It’s got stations AND sung worship. It’s in the main church that is beautifully lit with candles and draped with fabric. Which works stunningly well in creating a very rich space. We try to avoid theme-based stations, instead offering regular communion, confession and journalling stations, which lessens the intense creativity usually demanded by alternative worship.

Soak happens monthly on the first Sunday of the month. It starts with sung worship for about 30 minutes. It then offers a lectio divino Bible reading for about 15 minutes. The various stations are then introduced and people are invited to leave when they want to. A benediction is taped to the exit doors.

What this means is that Soak is what I, for lack of a better word, am calling an adult space. So much church spoon feeds you. Every minute is programmed and full. You are not required to do much. In contrast, at Soak, if you lack an inner world and don’t want to work that inner world, you get bored pretty quick.

Here are some of the unexpected learnings:
– some (not all) of our teenage boys love it
– people stay so long, regularly over 2 hours
– it’s genuinely redemptive with 2 people asking about baptism
– the Bible has been liberated, allowed to become a springboard for prayer rather than something to analytically dissect.

Posted by steve at 10:04 AM

1 Comment

  1. SOAK is so great. A really special time can be had. I love bringing my friends along and they love it too.

    Comment by j — June 17, 2008 @ 9:33 pm

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