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Why......
a few members of the church were just desperately waiting for something new to happen! I was bored, bored, bored with standard evangelical stuff. I had been leading young peoples' groups merely as an excuse to get out of church services.
The catalyst came with a curate, Mike Starkey. Someone with enough clout to get things done and a bit of time but also in a hurry. The fact that curates have such short times in a post was an important factor because it stopped both of us Mikes deciding to wait and enter into long and meaningful dialogue with the PCC etc etc. We just had to do it.
I was interested anyway. I had been to the Nine O'clock Service and their previous incarnations and had read with interest some of the stuff written by Graham Cray. As young peoples’ work co-ordinator I had had to analyse 'All God’s Children' from the Church of England's General Synod, and I was becoming increasingly concerned at the huge drop off in church attendance by young people.
But perhaps more than that it was a self-centered act. I knew that if things didn’t change for me there was a good chance that the reality chasm between my life and my church would become so big that one side would win (and I didn’t reckon it would be 'Songs of Fellowship').
[Mike Rose]
Grace 1.0 1993-95
Mike Starkey approached me initially in the summer of 1993). Perhaps because of discussions we'd had about St. Mary's being a bit too straight, perhaps because he knew I’d been to NOS and was interested in what they did, or because I had a large record collection, or perhaps just because I insisted in wearing hats in church and was a pain in the ass.
He had already broached the idea of trying an ‘alternative worship’ event with the then vicar and had received a great deal of support. I was dead keen and together we talked about other possible people. One guy because he understood PAs and sound, a woman who played the flute well and another guy who was unconventional and had interesting opinions on most things. My wife Jill was also recruited to play keyboard.
We decided not to hang about but to plan a series of services, two each month, and see if anyone came. We had no budget and decided this was generally a good thing. A day conference with Graham Cray at the Greenhouse in 1992 and another with Paul Roberts in 1993 had convinced us that big plans and big budgets were not the way to go - a better approach might be to keep it small and manageable and produce services that you’d like to take your friends to. A few planning meetings, some exceedingly poor music rehearsals (we had decided to write our own music and had a guitar, a flute, a keyboard and a £60 drum machine) and a lot of excitement later and we were ready to go.
On Sunday 7 November 1993 the first Grace service took place. It started when everyone who had promised to come had arrived - about 35 people in total! Dave Tomlinson was guest speaker, on the subject of 'Grace'. The service contained many elements still used by Grace today - ‘homemade’ music, visuals and liturgy; plenty of ambient and chilled out music to accompany readings and prayers and a sense of freedom and space to explore God in different ways.
It was brilliant. The room was crap, poor lights, terrible sound and total lack of musical genius but I knew something had been born. Church was no longer something that happened to me but something I could take responsibility for. There didn’t need to be a conflict between the rest of the week and Sunday. I was proud of my church for the first time since I had been a child watching my dad preach!!! The second service had a comic, Milton Jones, as its star turn and we arranged the Polygon as a comedy club (and tried to write worship songs about humour). When Elaine Storkey came as guest speaker we created a 'love grotto'.
Planning these services opened our eyes to some truths about God which we’d forgotten or ignored over the years. God accepts us because he’s decided to, it’s got nothing to do with ‘deserving’ his love. He knows what we’re like and what we will be like. There is nothing that can keep God from accepting us. The grace of God, this unconditional love, frees us from the fear of failure as we try to express our belief in a loving God in ways that we find relevant and real.
In the summer of 1995 Mike Starkey left for a new job. At one of the last services that ‘term’ (an outdoor service that we held inside because of the crap weather) I had been introduced to Jonny Baker by the vicar. In fact we had embraced as part of the service, something which I know Jonny thoroughly enjoyed and still thinks about. By this time I was suffering from total burn out. From the five original members, three had left the church or were just about to and one more wanted to step down from being involved. We had a break. We’d run out of energy and ideas and Grace had a holiday.
[Mike Rose]
Grace returned in January 1996, in a monthly format which was easier to manage. A new group of people had emerged to help Mike. Jonny and Jenny Baker brought creative worship talents honed through years of youthwork experience. Jonny's high profile and wide connections in British youthwork, and his access to a recording studio and publishing outlet, would have a huge impact on Grace's visibility in the years to come. Photography teacher Dave Holme brought his slide collection, artistic talents, knowledge of Catholic and Celtic liturgies, his wife, four children, and an old VW bus to carry things around in. Mark Waddington brought video and creative skills from his work as a creative producer for the BBC. James Quartley produced proper flyers featuring a new Grace logo by Abundant designer Nic Hughes.
Abundant was a Christian nightclub organisation in London co-run by Jonny's brother Steve, and many of the Abundant crowd came to Grace, especially when the two shared a weekend. Numbers were averaging over 60 at services, occasionally hitting 100. Grace was now part of a vibrant young Christian scene at that time in London, which ranged from other alternative worship groups such as Epicentre and Holy Joes through to the creative parts of evangelical churches and organisations, all seeking engagement with contemporary culture, with many of the connections running through Abundant.
Grace began to be noticed. It appeared in Arena magazine ["echoes of chill-out ambience"], and on TV at Christmas 1996, as one programme in Channel 4's 'God in the House' contemporary worship series. This provoked the following piece, in Mixmag January 1997 issue:
TV to screen 'rave style' christmas services
Channel 4 are broadcasting a series of Christian rave services over the festive period, seemingly aimed at clubbers. Entitled 'God in the House', the programmes feature worshippers getting down to a range of dance music including techno and ambient, and claim "funky Christian services did not end with the Chris Brain Nine O'clock Service scandal. in fact, Chris Brain's services marked the beginning of a vibrant new movement." The programmes run at 12.30pm from December 24th to the 30th.
Unbelievably, the final programme, subtitled 'Grace', describes itself as a 'chill-out after-hours service, and ideal way to end a hectic weekend,' and compares itself to Café del Mar in Ibiza.
In March 1997 the album 'Grace' was released, featuring songs written or adapted by Jonny Baker and Jon Birch for Grace, along with "Images for Worship', a video of Grace visuals and featuring a brief clip of Grace itself.
So here we are in February 1997. Grace services take place regularly in Ealing and we are releasing an album of our tunes and a video of our visuals. We offer them as a resource. Grace really is homespun, not slick. It doesn't happen because of technology [the PA, projectors and TVs are all borrowed!]. Like lots of similar services around the country, it happens because a group have found a space to reimagine worship and want to make it happen. Anyone can do it... our hope is that these tunes and visuals will be a help to new groups and to those already doing stuff, and that they may spark more new music, visuals and liturgies.
We are pleased that we are still part of St. Mary's church and form one of its congregations. Grace has meant that the dissatisfaction has ben replaced by hope, hope that wins through when it gets really tough and it seems that no-one has any time, energy or ideas for the next service.
[Jonny Baker, from the sleevenotes of the 'Grace' album]
As part of this mission to resource the wider church, Grace began to do 'guest appearances' at youthwork conferences and in other churches, hoping to spark people's imaginations about reimagining worship. At Greenbelt 1997 [the year of the mud] Grace staged five services, complete with all electrical devices, in a marquee, which was an experience not to be lightly repeated. For the next few years there would be a recurring joke about buying a tour bus and going on the road permanently.
Meanwhile in Ealing, Adam Baxter turned up in the second half of 96, liked what he saw and wondered how to get involved. This resulted in him turning up at service and saying "I've made Grace a website...". The first site mimicked the flyer for the services that started 1997.
And in November Live On Planet Earth introduced Grace to their Labyrinth service - which was to become a regular feature and bear surprising fruit three years hence.
In 1998 we began to explore the Eucharist, as a missing part of our liturgical menu and a vital Christian tradition that we hadn't yet engaged with. After an inaugural café-style version we held a eucharist service on the fourth Sunday of every month, called eucharist@grace.london. This lasted for a couple of years until lack of heating in the church and a development in our understanding caused us to relocate it to people's homes as a ritual meal called Gracelet. As a spin-off from our explorations we created the mainstage eucharist for Greenbelt 1999, also available as the 'Eucharist' album.
In May 1999 we ran a service for 500 young people in Southwark Cathedral, as part of the then-Archbishop of Canterbury's 'Time Of Our Lives' Millennium youth event. During the afternoon soundcheck we were told we should be "thrown in the river and drowned" by an irate tourist who considered our music sacrilegious. Fortunately our final offering was better received.
From 1998 to 2000 Steve Collins produced a termly Grace zine, rounding up interesting bits of service material for republication.
During 1998-99 an attempt was made to create a series of alternative worship events for the Millennium, involving all the London groups. As part of this series Ana Draper of Live On Planet Earth and Clara Swinson of Epicentre wanted to stage a labyrinth service in St. Paul's Cathedral. The rest of the series failed to materialise, but their persistence with St. Paul's was rewarded by the offer of the south transept, for a week in March 2000! An organising committee was formed that included Steve Collins and Jonny Baker of Grace, and other Grace members were involved in the production and running of the labyrinth along with people from other alt worship groups. The unexpected success of the event led to a cathedral tour with Youth for Christ in 2001-02, big-selling publishing spin-offs and events in America, Australia and various other countries, and a memorable staging at Greenbelt 2000 when we had to lock the doors on the final afternoon to control the numbers.
All these activities were creating a high profile for Grace. We were discovering the power of the internet, which allows small fringe groups to have as big a voice as large institutions, and which allows individuals to have as big a voice as groups. We had always wanted to share our resources and discoveries with the wider church, as others had shared with us, and the internet opened up new ways of sharing without some of the constraints of permissions, finances and contracts. The zine material and other liturgical pieces appeared on the Grace website. Steve Collins started the smallfire.org website in 2000 to publish his photos of alt worship events, not least Grace, followed by his personal site smallritual.org. The labyrinth website labyrinth.org.uk appeared in 2001, and the alt worship directory site alternativeworship.org in 2002. Jonny Baker began his blog in 2002, followed by Steve in 2003. Proost began to sell only through the website. The Grace website and emailing list became our chief means of publicity.
However, behind all this the numbers of people coming to Grace collapsed from mid-98 onwards, for no particular reason that we could ever discern. It seems likely that some of our regulars moved on in life, the novelty wore off for others, and some had been inspired to make their own church projects. It was sometimes disheartening, when only a handful came to a service we had worked hard on for a month. We never knew how much or how little to provide. We did a Passover service for 60, and 10 turned up so we all had to eat a lot of boiled eggs. One one occasion in 2000 only one person came. As it happened, the thing we were doing turned out not to work, so perhaps it was as well.
But Grace had become an object of curiosity around the world to those interested in [what was now being called] the emerging church, through the photos on smallfire.org, through the labyrinth, and the blogosphere. The people who did turn up to Grace were from anywhere and everywhere. We began to joke about who had come furthest to a Grace service - often people from Australia and New Zealand, many of whom had met members of Grace through discussions online and were now travelling the world researching the emerging church. There was the phenomenon of the Danish youthworkers, who would turn up twenty at a time until we were sure we had met every young Christian in Denmark! And then there were visitors from other places in Britain, lay and clergy, wanting to experience alternative worship, wondering if they could do it themselves.
Someone - maybe Kester Brewin - coined the term 'donut' at this time, to describe a typical emerging church predicament in the internet age - impressive media presence and resources, all the appearances of professionalism and success, all generated by very few people - loads of tasty stuff but [almost] nothing in the middle. We embraced our unexpected global mission as a blessing - but it created strains. At times there were more 'tourists' than locals. Grace members could find it disturbing, when their worship was subject to semi-detached scrutiny rather than genuine participation. There was no continuity of congregation from one service to the next. The service was effectively a showcase, put on by the team for whoever else might turn up on the night. The planning group was often just two or three people, risking burnout or banality.
We knew we had to build our community. One of the first steps was to move the main service to Saturday night from September 2001, so that people could hang out longer, without feeling that they had to rush off because of work/school in the morning. To facilitate the hanging-out we added a cafe after the service, building on some experiments we'd done with cafe-format worship. And after all, some of our visitors had come a long way and needed food and drink before they went back! The prevalence of red wine as the cafe drink is a deliberate nod to the eucharist.
The move to Saturday was a success. Congregational numbers recovered to average 30 to 40 from 2003 onwards, even passing 50 on occasions. In some senses Grace's tenth anniversary in November 2003 marks a new start. After 18 months in the church halls we were back in a spectacularly restored church - a beautiful environment with sophisticated lighting, a new sound system, and movable seating to make new possibilities. There was no need to hide the building in darkness behind muslin screens any more. The restored church had neither carpet nor kneelers, so we bought giant floorcushions for informal seating. The technology had moved on too, the slide projectors, TVs and Minidiscs of old replaced by video projectors, laptops and ipods.
We had always considered Grace to be fragile and vulnerable to closure at short notice for whatever reason. Having reached our tenth birthday, and with our name and logo now enamelled permanently on the new church signboards, we began to revise our assumptions and think about some longer-term planning. Our inclusion in the Church of England's 'Mission-Shaped Church' report of 2004 marked the official acceptance and encouragement of church experiments like Grace. We had been challenged by Alan Hirsch and Mike Frost to think about becoming more missional in the local community. Many groups in the emerging church are exploring monasticism in a search for ways to sustain Christian community in an unbelieving society. The idea of the monastic 'rule' by which a community lives, prompted us to explore our own core values to see what kind of 'rule' might work for Grace. We came up with an 'ethos', a short and long list of Grace values - maybe aspirational in part, but stating them openly helps us to take conscious steps towards realising them. The headlines of the short list became our new guiding slogan for the next few years - engage [outward/missional action], participate [openness to new inputs to Grace], create - and a fourth word, risk, which kept surfacing in our discussions.
In thinking about community and mission, we realised that up to now the only way for newcomers to get involved with Grace was through planning the service. Our weekly planning meetings were also doing the job of community and social gatherings, which meant the actual planning process was inefficient. We knew that if we wanted to be more missional and grow new things we had to free up some time and energy. So from autumn 2005 we restructured. The planning meeting became monthly, concerned with the overall direction of the community rather than the next service. Individual services are now 'curated' by a volunteer who brings together a team, organises planning meetings, ensures things happen, gives feedback and publishes any resulting resources. A curator can also pull in one-off contributions from outside the core community, or from people who don't want to get involved in worship planning on a regular basis.
Gracelet has come back into the church as a small quiet service, deliberately short and simple, so that we can spend the rest of the evening in the pub across the road building community. We try to ensure an open social event or meal every month, and there is a book group which meets every couple of weeks or so. Members are encouraged to seek involvement in outside groups, such as local photography or art societies, charitable and sporting organisations, or to consider what they already do as an extension of the Grace community.
Nailing down definitions is a difficult task - in some ways who we are and what we are about is best captured in telling our story(ies). Grace is shaped by the people in it at any time and as such changes and moves on in response to an interplay between the ideas of the group, the Christian tradition, what we sense God is calling us to at that time, and the shifts in the culture around us. We have identified three things that we are about below.
Community - Grace is a Christian alternative worship community/network. It has varying degrees of importance/significance/levels of commitment for the people involved. Some are involved in other churches and Grace is a supplement, some are involved in St Mary's and Grace is part of that, for some Grace is their church. There are also the complexities of how people's partners and children fit in or are part of Grace. But it is the people and the network of friendships/relationships that makes Grace what it is.
Worship - Grace is about worship in ways and forms that we can relate to. It is an authentic offering of worship to God out of who we are, not something we target other people with. Implicit in this is the idea that if we produce worship that we relate to, we will be able to invite friends. It's pretty clear from our discussions that creating worship has been the major area of activity. This is what we do and have done well over the years.
Mission - A large part of our mission has been resourcing/sparking the imagination of the wider church in the UK and round the world about alternative worship through web sites, publishing resources, Greenbelt, taking services elsewhere, and offering hospitality to visitors. A lot of energy has gone on creating worship. We hope the changes to the life of grace will open up other possibilities for mission - evangelism locally, engaging in justice issues, taking the art/media/spirituality spaces we produce into the community locally rather than expecting people to come to us.
The short list:
Create - Grace values creativity
Participate - Worship should not be a 'show' or just 'led from the front'. Grace aims to minimise the separation between those leading and the "congregation" through interaction and opportunities to contribute. The same is true of other areas of Grace.
Engage - Grace wants to maintain an outward focus by engaging with everyday life and connecting with culture. Grace offers hospitality and supports members of the community/ network in their own areas of engagement.
Risk - Grace gives itself permission to push its own edges, take risks, not be afraid to fail, think outside the Grace box, try new things, reinvent Grace
The long list:
Creativity - as above
Participation - as above
Risk taking/experimental - as above
Holistic Christian faith - life isn't split into sacred and secular. We expect to encounter God in all areas of life and culture and hence those aspects are likely to inform and be part of our worship and other activities
Minimal exclusion - Grace is shaped by the people that are involved. It's an open door, all contributions and people are welcome. We recognise that Grace is different to other groups and other churches so It won't be to everyone's taste - some will self exclude.
Consensus - everyone is to a degree constrained by being part of a wider community, but the way we plan is to all bring ideas/contributions. At times this may take courage and it requires a level of sensitivity to other people who are perhaps less confident in bringing ideas.Our ideas are a gift offered to God and the community. We make decisions together.
Low permission threshold - we are not into controlling what people do. We want to encourage involvement without things being policed.
Freedom of speech - sometimes there are hidden issues in Grace whether because of personal power or gender. Grace values listening and speech - in other words we wanat to be honest, and listen to each other.
Hospitality - to one another, to visitors, to the wider church
Outward impulse - a growing aspiration of Grace is to include other things than developing creative worship as part of who we are.
High quality - Grace understands that how worship and other activities are presented affect how they are received. We endeavour to produce events and items that are of a high quality of presentation and accessible style.
We envisage the following as being the basic (loose) structure of the life of Grace for the next season.
A Grace weekend in the summer to reflect annually on where Grace is headed, dream new ideas, and agree the direction/vision for the next year. This is open to anyone. Dates for 2006 are 5-7 May.
Grace worship service monthly The broad themes for these will be agreed in the summer at the weekend or soon after along with someone to take the lead/curating role for each service. This is communicated round Grace and people are invited to express what they would like to get involved in. The lead person might need to be proactive and encourage a few people to join their team. Some services might have 2/3 people planning, some might have 5/6. Once that group has met and started dreaming they might then want to invite other people to do things in or for that service.
Gracelet monthly. Lead role for Gracelet will be taken by one person. Gracelet may often tie in with the monthly Grace theme if appropriate.
Grace meal/social monthly
Planning meeting monthly. An opportunity for everyone to input into planning the next service for the curator and team to work from, plus anything else that needs talking about.
Grace groups For quite a few years the only Grace group has been the planning group that has met to plan worship services. If planning worship isn’t your thing then why would you get involved beyond coming to Grace? Changing the way we plan worship as outlined above is intended to create space for other kinds of groups. These groups might just meet for a task and then disband or they might meet for a longer period - it just depends on what they are set up for. They can quickly and easily be set up within a loose structure. They might be engaging with something in the local community, a group with a focus on justice, a group to create video/music for services, a film club, a group to pray and explore Christian spirituality? Ideas welcome. See the Grace groups page for what people are currently doing but it is open to anyone to suggest ideas.
Grace facilitation team (2 or 3 people) With less planning meetings a small team will be trusted to serve Grace by making sure decisions made by the group actually happen and keeping communication flowing. Currently Mike, Jen and Jonny are doing this.
Grace web site The Grace web and e-mail will be a key way of staying in touch with Grace. So make sure you bookmark the site and join the e-mail list.
Grace is about adding a new dimension to worship, engaging the mind and the senses in an encounter between God and ourselves.
By combining ancient and freshly created rituals, liturgy, music and visuals we experiment to find new connections between our worship and our everyday lives.
With the Grace and Gracelet services we get the chance both to create fresh vital worship and become friends in a community to support the creativity.
But the freedom of creativity is addictive so we don't stop there, we also work on other projects, such as the Labyrinth or events for Greenbelt, or support each other in other ventures in the wider alt worship movement.
The monthly Grace service is experimental and hence rarely the same twice. We don't work to a fixed structure, giving us the opportunity to create a space, atmosphere and service suitable to the theme that we have chosen.
Walking through the door you'll probably find soft lighting, candles, TVs and projections showing words and images. Together these define the space we are using.
Alongside the visuals will be chilled-out music shaping the atmosphere. First time round this might all seem a little unusual. If so, grab a cushion (we usually clear the pews out of the way) and feel free to just sit, or lie down, and take it all in.
Both the visuals and music connect with our lives outside of Grace. We are all used to a soundtrack in our lives, from the TV or radio in the background, to muzak in lifts, to moments of silence. The music we use forms part of our soundtrack, creating a vibe of contemplation, excitement, peace whatever is appropriate. As we use contemporary music you might recognise some of the tracks, your CD collection may even overlap with ours.
The visuals are often complementary to the other parts of the service: more than wallpaper, less intrusive than an advert, hopefully they help make connections that may be missed otherwise.
Beyond the general styling the service is less predictable. There may be things to look at, touch and do, a chance to wander around and explore, write things down or simply sit or lie still. Meditation,
discussions, readings and prayers may be said, written or read.
Just don't expect a sermon. The closest you'll get is a guest speaker but that won't just be a one way activity, there will be a chance to ask questions.
To round off Grace there's often drinks and nibbles, a chance to chat and chill.
Although the most obvious part of Grace is the styling, the experiment goes much further. It's an event which questions what a church service can be, what kind of things it can contain, what kind of issues can be
explored and what kind of questions can be asked.
Grace is an event that's different every time, but without the formalities or subtle pressures often associated with church.
Gracelet is a simple intimate service with some or all of worship, prayer, sharing, liturgy, bread and wine, ritual. Expect less technology and effort in the set up.
Some of the excitement of Grace, for us, is the feeling of what next? our journey keeps giving us new challenges and inspiration to work with. you can join us on the journey or just watch this space to see where we
go next!
Over the past few months the Grace community has been thinking about hospitality. We've run three services on the hospitality theme, read a book together, discussed and chatted. And we've written a short report, that you can download as a PDF below.
We started thinking that we need to be more hospitable, and have begun to understand that hospitality must become part of the fabric of our community life. Our thinking has led us to a list of actions. Some of them we do already, others are vague ideas. So the list is very much a work in progress...
1. Maintain a calendar of regular social events, and publicise them beyond the community via the web site and email list. Strike a balance between socials in peoples’ houses and socials held in public space.
2. Expand the list of entry points to the community, especially ‘easy’ points.
3. Reflect on the group identity of Grace. What unspoken aspects of our life do we consider central to who we are? How could we be more explicit about these things, especially to newcomers?
4. Include a ‘how to get involved’ piece in the newsletter and on the website from time to time.
5. Publicise planning meetings in the newsletter and on the website.
6. Publicise who is curating the service next month, so that people can contact the curator if they want to join the planning team.
7. Run a ‘service from scratch’ day.
8. Tell the story(ies) of Grace in a pub.
9. Offer hospitality to migrant workers and international students in Ealing.
10. Complete a ‘History of Grace’ on the website.
But don't just look at this list, read the report below.