UN-CHURCH

The very first Un-Church event was held at Delacombe on Sunday night. I thought that the event went well, let me know what you thought if you were there.

For those not fortunate enough to have been able to attend this unique event allow me to explain the concept of "Un-Church".

A few months ago I was reading our T.Y's (the bloke in charge of the youth stuff for the Salvo's in Australia - for the non-Salvo acronym speakers out there) blog. Dave (that's his name) was talking about the concept of an un-conference. The basic idea of an un-conference was that those attending recognise that we can all teach each other something and that we can all learn from each other. So, instead of having a keynote speaker stand up the front and talk at the crowd as so often happens at a conference, there are perhaps a few people selected to talk specifically about what they have been doing and the strengths, weaknesses and outcomes of this, and then the rest of the time is spent sharing and helping each other.

So, a few weeks ago as I travelled back from the rained out Summer Celebration in Torquay, I began to think about this un-conference concept and whether or not we could apply it in any way to church.

In The Salvation Army we believe in the concept of the priesthood of all believers. This basically means that we believe that God is at work within each believer and that we are able to minister to each other regardless of sex, age, or culture. With this in mind I began to explore what church would be like if we all were able to participate in the worship and teaching.

The idea that I came up with was that the event would start off with a pre-chosen song and then I would get up and introduce the idea of the event and the theme for the night, including reading the verse of scripture that the theme was based around. From this point on the night would be guided by the congregation. Songs would be chosen by suggestion and popular consensus and the teaching part of the evening would come from how members of the congregation interpreted what the bible verse was saying to them. The only real leadership involved in this was a little direction in terms of when what might happen, although this could be left up to the congregation also.

This style of worship depends a lot upon the participation of the congregation and so may not work with all groups, but I think that everyone enjoyed our first un-chuch event and found it a great time of worship.

For me personally, there was a moment during the song 'Jesus Lover of My Soul' that I real felt the Holy Spirit moving. During this moment I felt God say to me; "Forget what you had planned to do tonight, ask if anyone has a verse from the Bible that they want to share." So I did. It was great then to hear Ross share with us a passage that had spoken to him recently.

So, Un-Church, a new way of worship, where we all minister to each other. What do you think??