Over the past few months on the 3rd Sunday evening of the month, we have been gathering together to explore growing our faith through worship in familiar and unfamiliar ways. We have done this for three reasons, one, to benefit the AYM band, enabling it to practice and lead together on a regular basis. Another is to offer the opportunity for youth leaders, who give out week in, week out, to simply come and be refreshed together. Still another is the knowledge that we are all different, we learn in a variety of ways, we have a variety of spiritual styles, learning styles, personalities and more, yet our services are limited to certain types. So, we asked ourselves what would it look like if we offered something a little different, and what would that look like?
We opened our service to the first third (all those who are in the first third of their lives) thinking of young people, and their leaders, but children, parents are welcome as well. The challenge is, our learning less about the expert up the front, and more about taking our subject and going deep in a variety of ways. It’s a bit like, being given a project to do around the subject of the month. There is a reason why, when we are at learning institutions, we are given assignments, projects, and exams. It is so that we have to think critically about and do something with our learning. So it is with our worship, doing something with the information we are given helps us to think critically and wonder how it may apply to us, how God might be inviting us to go deeper. How God’s wisdom and guidance might transform our lives, little bit by little bit.
Over this season we are exploring the Fruits of the Spirit. Thus far we have explored Love, Joy, Peace & Patience. We learn a little through a five-ish minute homily, and then we work our way around various stations. Each station explores a different aspect of the topic. For instance, the week we explored love, our stations were Jesus, the Model, Love as foundation, Love as belonging & Love as action. Each station has questions to think about, things to engage with and time for prayer and reflection or conversation with each other. We may also work together to create things, or create individually, be silent, or talk, use our bodies or our minds.
The kaupapa is about all being empowered to seek God and grow in faith in their own way. We are community together, and all are welcome. It is simple, it is different, and it may not be comfortable for everyone expecting a service like any other. There are also deeply familiar parts of the service, music and communal prayers. We are simply choosing to learn together, differently with grace for each other.
Our general home is at St John-the-Baptist, in Northcote, but we will also be heading around the city as well, in June we are giving Northcote a break and heading over the bridge to St Georges, Papatoetoe. Come check us out, you never know, you might just experience God through curiosity, imagination and creativity!
Tags: creative, first third, Intentional, worship