March 2021: Space

Space is a quiet prayerful Grace that gives plenty of space for reflection, prayer and silence. It grew out of a concept called Grace TV where all the service ran on screen.

But for this service, everyone who joined on Zoom changed their screen name to 'Grace'. So that when their camera was turned off, all the windows simply read 'Grace'. The service then continued with cameras off as audio only, and often in silence, as a deliberate inversion of the normal use of Zoom. This was inspired by the gathering prayer in November's service where we all turned our cameras off and spoke into the silence.

The structure had each section led by a different person as below. At the start Steve Goble (whose idea this was) invited people to change their name to Grace and explained that the service would be audio only, and changing your name to Grace provides an experiment in anonymity when posting to the chat. Equally it gives a feeling of togetherness or community as Steve C pointed out.

For each section below we signalled by posting in the chat in capital letters: GRACE SPACE: WELCOME etc.

For the welcome people had screens on initially while Steve G intro'd it but after that it was screens off and led by audio and interaction in the chat. Slow down, wisdom, prayer had 5 minutes of silence.

Welcome - Steve Goble

Welcome everyone, explain how the flow of the service works with 4 sections each of which will have some content, a piece of music with perhaps interaction in the chat and five minutes of silence. Also talk through the screen name change to grace and explain how that will work.

Perhaps an opening prayer, or that opening prayer could be people posting a prayer in the chat to get into the way of it.

Slow down - Jonny

An activity/prayer to slow down

Song/piece of music

Silence

Wisdom - Sue

Lectio divina - the Parable of the Sower.

Song/piece of music

Prayer - Gill

Prayer - when we spoke at the meeting the idea was around dreams but it could go in any direction and lends itself to people typing prayers in the chat

Song/piece of music

Silence

Sending out - Mike

The Hope liturgy that got curtailed last time, but hopes shared via chat rather than screen share.

Blessing

Song/piece of music

Screenshots