Easter — Clayfire Curator

Discovering the Spirit’s Green Streak

by Guest Blogger | May 20, 2011

This post was written by Craig Goodwin.

I pastor an 85-year-old Presbyterian congregation in Spokane, Washington. Over the last seven years we’ve been experimenting with new expressions of church life in our neighborhood and many of these new practices have landed the church at the intersections of faith and environmentalism. For example, we started a farmers’ market in our church parking lot and this week we will start our fifth season of peddling grass-fed beef and organic vegetables.

At no point did we say, “Let’s go green.” In fact I think if we had framed these new efforts within the cultural narrative of environmentalism, many in the church would have resisted. Instead, we’ve talked about paying attention to God at work in the church and neighborhood. As we do that we’re discovering that the Spirit has a green streak, not just in the church parking lot but also in the sanctuary.

Several years ago we dedicated our stewardship season of worship to reflecting on caring for God’s creation. The series culminated in a Creation Care festival in the Reception Hall and along with soliciting financial pledges we invited people to change light bulbs to CFL’s and make other green-living commitments. This was all well received, but we quickly moved on to the next series of themes for Sunday mornings. It wasn’t until a few months later that these reflections on God’s creation started to shape our worship practices.

It started at a committee meeting with a faithful servant of the church expressing frustration as she anticipated the hectic Advent season of worship. She was most concerned with how we would take care of the annual procession of sixty Poinsettia plants that adorned the front of the sanctuary. We had a long-standing tradition of having members purchase poinsettias in memory of someone. The flowers would decorate the chancel, the names of the loved ones would be featured in the Christmas Eve bulletin, and we would all get goose bumps as the light of hand-held candles flickered off the forest of red and green. But it turns out there were problems with this “sacred” tradition.

December is one of the coldest months of the year in Spokane. It wasn’t uncommon for the tropical plants to shrivel and turn black from the short trip from car to entryway of the church. And once we got them in we had to boost the heat in our cavernous sanctuary for two straight weeks, 24 hours a day, just to keep them alive. And when the last candles were blown out, we ended up throwing away half the plants because they went unclaimed. On top of that, none of us were aware of anyone who was able to keep them alive for more than a couple of weeks at home.

As we discussed all these challenges at our committee meeting we all reached the same conclusion at once, “What a waste.” We also recognized that the thought of doing away with such a tradition was the equivalent of a dad telling his children there would be no Christmas tree this year. At some point in the conversation someone brought up the series on caring for God’s creation. In light of that they proposed an alternative. “What if, instead of asking people to buy poinsettias, we invite people to donate money in memory of someone, and that money would go to plant trees in deforested regions of the world?” We did some homework and found a Christian mission agency called Plant With Purpose that takes a $1 donation and plants a tree in an impoverished village. The committee proposed that people make a $10 donation to plant 10 trees. Of course we called them “Christmas trees.”

That year we started a new tradition in our Advent worship experience and planted over 1,000 trees in Latin America. We had such a positive response we did the same with our ritual of buying dozens of lilies for Easter Sunday. We invited church members to plant trees as a sign of the resurrection. Over the last four years we have planted over 3,000 trees through Plant With Purpose.

I especially appreciate that every Easter and Christmas Eve I get to explain the significance of the names listed in the bulletin and remind the congregation that our practices of responsible stewardship and caring for creation are rooted in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus. I also can’t help but think that this is a more meaningful witness to all the visitors who join us on those Sundays. Not only do we believe that God is with us and we trust that Jesus is risen, but our faith has landed in the world and has literally taken root.

Image © iStockphoto

Craig Goodwin is the author of Year of Plenty, a story about his family’s year of consuming only items that were local, used, homegrown, or homemade. His story has been featured on NPR, PBS, and in the New York Times. He writes a popular blog that focuses on food, faith, and justice in the rich agricultural region of the Inland Northwest. He is a Presbyterian pastor, a farmers’ market manager, and a master food preserver. He has a Doctorate in Missional Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary and is a Food and Justice Fellow with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Goodwin speaks regularly at schools, churches, and other community organizations about sustainable food and redemptive consumer practices.

Categories: Leadership

Gardening as an Act of Worship

by Guest Blogger | May 18, 2011

This post was written by Christine Sine.

Over the last couple of years millions of people throughout the Western world have started growing their own vegetables. Community gardens have sprung up on vacant lots, parking strips and church properties. Congregations have enthusiastically embraced the need to grow produce, often to help provision food banks and ministries to the poor.

Unfortunately there is often a total disconnect between what is going on in the garden and the worship inside the church. Yet it seems to me that gardening is one of the most profound acts of worship we can engage in. God’s first act after completing creation was to plant a garden – the garden of Eden. And in the first sighting of Jesus after the resurrection he is mistaken by Mary Magdalene for the gardener because that is precisely what he is – the gardener of the new creation.

So much of our garden activity is performed kneeling, in the position of prayer and supplication. I kneel to weed, to plant and often to harvest and in this position I often find myself meditating and praying. If I am troubled by some seemingly insurmountable problem, there is no better place to thrash it out than on my knees in the garden. And if I am irritable or depressed, there is no better therapy than garden weeding.

However there is far more than that that makes gardening a worshipful act. I often tell people that I read about the life, death and resurrection of Christ in the bible, but in the garden I experience it. Every time I plant a tiny misshapen seed and watch it burst into life from its earthy tomb I feel as though I have seen the Easter story reenacted. Early Celtic Christians were very aware of this. Three days before sowing, farmers would sprinkle the seed with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If possible they would plant on a Friday. The moistening hastened the seed’s growth and planting on Friday was always a reminder of the Christ’s death and burial. Planting was always symbolic of the planting of Christ, the seed of the new world in which resurrection life will come for all humankind as well as creation. This year Earth Day and Good Friday converged and I wrote a liturgy that brought these observances together. But I found I could not stop there and on Easter Sunday expanded the liturgy into a new blog post Jesus has Risen, A New Creation has Begun to incorporate the resurrection of Christ as well.

There are other wonderful and worshipful lessons. I read about the the faithfulness of God to Israel in the Old Testament, but I experience it every time I watch the rain fall and nourish the seeds that have been planted. I read about the miracle of the fish and loaves but I experience just as profound a miracle every time I am overwhelmed by the generosity of God’s harvest.

So perhaps this summer we should take our worship outside into the garden and curate a whole new experience of worship for our congregations. The gospel stories come alive in the garden, not just because we understand more fully the agricultural parables which Jesus so often used, but also because the garden is the place in which we can truly anticipate God’s promise for the future. In the garden, as we watch the plants grow and bear fruit in their season it is not hard to believe that one day all creation will indeed be made whole, restored and renewed to become all that God intends it to be.

Christine Sine is the Executive Director of Mustard Seed Associates. She is also an enthusiastic gardener and author. Her most recent book is To Garden with God. She blogs about gardening, liturgy and worship at Godspace.

Categories: Formation

Interview: Todd Fadel on Worship and Play

by Eric Herron | May 11, 2011

We sat down with Todd Fadel and asked him some questions about “play” especially as it pertains to worship design. His answers were honest, challenging, and well… just a bit playful. Included at the end is a short video to help illustrate the ‘elaborate game’ that was played at The Bridge on Easter Sunday.

Curator: The Wiki-pedia entry for “Play” calls it “a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment.” It also says that though play is typically associated with children, it is “imperative for all higher-functioning animals, even adult humans.” How would you add to or adjust this definition (or would you)?

Fadel: The definition of play grows broader and broader the more I attempt to confine it. It’s similar to love in this way. But I’ll share some of the discoveries I’ve made and it’ll be a hilarious try. Play is the fertilizer for spiritual growth in the company of other humans. To play means to believe in the intrinsic value of the experiment – the “not knowing what comes next.” Play is the ongoing process of offering and accepting offers. Play, as a tool, tricks our minds into making more daring choices than we had originally thought possible and allows us to risk more because we convince ourselves “less is at stake.” Play is the (occasionally haphazard) process of actively making room for the other.

Curator: What does Play have to do with worship?

Fadel: I personally feel that the most convincing evidence of “the fall” happening in history is the disconnect that us humans gravitate to when we, at some point, obtain knowledge of the uncertainties of our existence and, in response, seek out cold facts and figures to ease our panic rather than join in the dance we are invited to by our Creator.

Trust, in essence, is undignified. David, and every psalmist like him, lays out a template of what that undignified experiment looks like. Somewhere along the way, we’ve overlaid the portrait of our sternest critics onto the true face of this extravagantly experimental Being we are supposed to all be created in the image of. Children are vibrant examples of God-honoring psalmists, pure and simple, but in our attempts to appeal to our own fallen states we, as Ken Robinson puts it, “squander them pretty ruthlessly.”

Play can be a direct re-introduction into the world of uncertainty and as we learn to be comfortable with that world, we build a trust with God and everyone else [a trust] that resembles worship and honoring and finding meaning in the overlooked things.

Curator: Can you share one of your favorite past examples of Playing in worship from your own experience?

Fadel: We did an elaborate game on Easter Sunday two weeks ago. I wasn’t sure how it all was going to look. In preparation, some friends of mine sat down with me and we took a title, “It’s All In the Wrist,” and imagined the service going *wherever* our imaginations took us at that moment. Big things. Small things. Giant projected skillets with animated flipping pancakes. Everyone in wizard hats and sparkly wands. Poetry that was improvised and recited by children. Then, we reversed engineered what we had seen in our heads, breaking down all the elements down to the minutiae of what sort of teams would have to be assembled (and how they would be trained) to accomplish the things we had envisioned.

Truly, we came to Easter Sunday with some extremely open-ended elements and we learned an incredible lesson: that not everyone is ready for that sort of thing.

But what happened was that all of the people assembled made room for things to come alive and happen. They played. And though the experiment itself could have been tighter/cleaner/focused, it was the love and generosity of the people that showed through.

Many people were not thrilled with how open-ended it was, and truth be told, there were moments I was caught up in the enjoyment of experimentation and lost sight of the clear connection people were pining for. In those moments, I may have ceased playing and began merely posturing. All in all, we came away learning *so much* about what worship needs to consist of for our community to connect.

Curator: You are a fan of games. How important are games in the context of the worshiping community?

Fadel: I think games can function as a way to get at difficult things in an indirect way. Vulnerability is not easy. Imagine a worn-out cynic having the idea to play “peekaboo” with a 4-month-old. In order for peekaboo to work PROPERLY, the Boo-er must fully immerse themselves in the world of that child. That deceptively simple game brings the cynic to a level of vulnerability that they weren’t prepared for, but the joy/enthusiasm of the child draws it out of him.

In community, so much of what we do with one another consists of expression from an “advantaged position.” Often, we take this approach to avoid the pain and humiliation of someone taking advantage of our vulnerability (again). But when we all join in a harmless game, we make a decision to take the “disadvantaged position” and something alive takes shape. This is play – this decision to accept the offer of inclusion. It is all too easy to swat away the outstretched hand. We need to be cognizant of the ways we inadvertently perpetuate a culture more concerned with being dignified then inclusive.

Curator: Is Play in worship always fun or can it ever be serious and sombre?

Fadel: In play, whimsy is allowed to be sure, but so is intense grief. We can make room for both. My 31-year-old brother passed away of cancer two years ago, and when there was room made for me to mourn – wail – the loss, I saw the true value of what laying these foundations of playfulness and experimentation were. No one was afraid to wail alongside me. No one needed to provide answers, and, in that way, they provided genuine solace.

Curator: How would you respond to the naysayer who claims that Playfulness has no legitimate place in a gathered worship environment?

Fadel: Remember, back before you held your cards so close, what sort of dreams you used to dream? Remember the scent of bubblegum and how you marveled at aquariums and kites dive-bombing so close to the sand? These moments aren’t less valuable than the high-church moments we place on these high pedestals. In fact, climb up one of those pedestals and look down for a second. Then, jump and see what happens.

Easter Sunday, 2011 at The Bridge, Portland

Though we all have eyes
we will
not
see
until we resurrect
the still
born
dreams

Todd has spent the last 25 years as a musician, improviser, collaborator and instigator in one form or another. Based in Portland, OR, he and his family helped birth pioneering US alt-worship community, The Bridge, in 1998.

There, he currently co-ordinates jalopy-gospel, arts/music collective AGENTS OF FUTURE, and has co-created over 50 punk-choir anthems, experimental films, collaborative workshops, multimedia improv games and various other hoopla with them for over a decade. His creative endeavors have landed him gigs playing piano for a grade-school choir, singing the national anthem at a local roller derby and leading communion for 15,000 Greenbelt festivalgoers in the UK.

His thoughts on play, visions for inclusive community and collaborative papercraft-ephemera have been showcased by publications like Sojourners and Worship Leader Magazine and resourced by Sparkhouse, Wild Goose Festival, Festival of Faith and Music and Crowder’s Fantastical Church Music Conference.

Categories: Curation

April Project: Easter Weekend Art

by Eric Herron | May 2, 2011

Presented here are three truly creative offerings from the Clayfire community, submitted for our April Project: He’s Alive! Each item shared below – a collaborative poem, a prayer labyrinth, and an interactive music/art piece – was used Easter weekend, 2011.

I encourage you to follow the provided links to further check out the work of these unique artists and curators.

This Changes Everything

A ‘poem of poems of poems,’ compiled by Mark Polet from the contributions of the worshippers at the Holy Saturday service, 2011, St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Edmonton, Canada.

This changes everything!
I, broken and flawed
I, broken and healed
have my sin broken and my spirit freed

I am preciously loved by the Saviour of our souls
Nurtured by our raised-again Creator
I surrender to His Grace
I yield only to Him
I fall deeper in love with my Christ
I sit at His feet

I am no longer ashamed
I am no longer scared
I am no longer confused
I hold my head up
I clearly see
I no longer flee

In carrying this cross,
I have been lifted of a great weight

I, healed and whole,
will love others as
I am loved by Him

I choose to do God’s will
I decide to accept the gift
I am made for this time and place
I will run the good race
I will see God’s will be done in heaven and on earth
I, now standing, do
I, having done all, now stand

I have a purpose
in the mystical Body of Christ
I am ready to serve Him

I salute the great I AM
Who sees the who I am
I, who finally knows my self
can be selfless
for I am me
one of a kind
And God loves me

So, let’s make the you and I an us
And take the first step
On our road to Emmaus

About the poetic process: Interface stages an annual Holy Saturday service, The Rending of the Veil. This poem was not written in anticipation of the event, but rather created during the service by our bard Mark, using congregational responses to prayer stations.

For the service, there were numerous stations with themes reflecting elements of Christ’s cross experience… what he encountered, what he drew on, what he expressed and did. Each station had a scriptural reference and a physical metaphor for the element. Also, each station had a poem depicting in the first-person the thoughts of a Passion Story character that related to the station’s theme. The poem was mounted on a poster, with ample space for people to write their responses and reflections to the poem-station, knowing that Mark would be gathering their comments into a poem at the end of the evening. This occurred during a ‘walk-about’ meditative time mid-service. Most people responded in verse or prose.

While the congregation had communion, Mark reviewed the responses, organized, considered, prayed, sequenced and sometimes paraphrased. He then presented the poem, which became the close to our service, for we abandoned the liturgy and let the poem become our benediction. It was an amazing experience to hear each others’ hearts, hopes, desires and commitment spoken through this gathered work.

As curator, my (Jim Robertson) interpretation of what occurred is: Through the medium of this service, God spoke to us, and then gave us voices and space to speak and sing back to Him. He then gathered our voices into the Body’s Voice, and spoke and sang back to us, both personally and corporately, through this Voice. It was a blessed event.

This submission prepared by Kathleen Pate, Mark Polet and Jim Robertson on behalf of Interface Worship.

Living Labyrinth

A member of the church works at a nature center which is plagued by vines so they have an ongoing project to clear them off the trees. When I mentioned that I wanted to make a labyrinth but had no budget, she had this great idea.

This submission by Mandy Smith from University Christian Church, Cincinnatti, Ohio.

Image © Mandy Smith

Interactive Worship with Wii Controllers

Weiv made an appearance Lutheran Church of Hope: CityBranch Easter service, engaging seven congregants with Wii controllers during worship. Each Wii controller flung “paint” onto the screen, creating a colorful collage, perfect for Easter.

Link to video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIuOG5YMZHQ

Weiv is a software platform that uses the expressive power of videogames to enhance live performances. It allows a group of people to become a “visual band” that can create animations to the beat of the music or explore a virtual world. By using motion sensing devices, people can turn the natural urge to move to the music into a collaborative and communal visual performance.

This submission by Paul Gratton.

Categories: Projects

I’ll Flyer Away

by Eric Herron | April 21, 2011

I am proud of the ideas we came up with for Easter holiday services back in the early nineties. As a “creative team” we truly owned our title. And, it was our sincere desire to come up with new – dare I say sensational – concepts for Easter Sunday worship.

For instance, one year we created a full-length dramatic presentation featuring Wayne and Garth (Party on!). Another year, we based the entire service on the Fox TV show called Herman’s Head. Full-length, original scripts. Theater lighting. Elaborate sets and staging. No matter what the theme, we always included six to eight “special musics” performed live by very gifted musicians.

My own unique contributions to our holiday worship brainstorming sessions include such brilliant program titles as: Get Off Your Keister, It’s Time for Easter and Stop Laughing… Easter’s Not Bunny.

(Right now seems like a good time to pause and watch one of my favorite YouTube holiday videos: Incidentally, this is a great example of how the right soundtrack – “Aviva Pastoral” by Nathan Larson – can make or break a video. Contrast to this version.)

In many ways, our creative brainstorming was driven by our goal to reach the “lost.” We knew that mid-Spring every year all the Chreasters* came out of hiding and decided they had better go to church. This reality always seemed one of those blessed examples of divine grace, that God would place in the hearts of so many heathen the notion to attend a local church instead of sleeping in.

It was a no-brainer that if we were going to put so much effort into our Easter programs, we ought to make sure people knew about them. I mean, a lot of local churches were starting to climb on the willow-creek-model-band-wagon and we were all trying our best to create an artistic and effective ‘show’ in order to see lots of true conversions on Resurrection Sunday.

In short, there was a lot of competition.

So, our church did what any other strip-mall chinese food restaurant or small claims insurance lawyer would do: we made flyers.

And, we put them everywhere. On car windshields in parking lots. On cork boards in the local coffee shops. We even did some door-hanging. Of course, occasionally people were home when we came to ‘hang’ in which case we would verbally make an invitation. But generally, the flyers did the job for us.

Now, fast-forward about 15 years. Last week, I came home to find several colorful little pamphlets hanging in plastic weather-proof baggies on the main door to our apartment complex. I assumed at first that it was the newest campaign from Dominoes. (You do know they just changed their recipe, right? Oh yes they did!). In fact, it was a flyer inviting me to a Good Friday worship service at some local church.

I sort of cringed. No wait, I DID cringe. It took some internal reflection to tease out what exactly spawned my visceral reaction. Here’s what I found deep down inside…

It’s simple: I just don’t like being invited to an event by a piece of paper. I REALLY don’t like to be invited to a church service by a piece of paper. Is there a more impersonal way to invite someone to a gathering that, in theory, is supposed to be of the utmost importance? Being invited to church by a flyer is like being invited to your own wedding by a magazine ad. (Actually, that might be kinda cool if you could pull it off).

Come to think of it, this invitation didn’t feel like an invitation because it actually wasn’t an invitation. Though it used words like, “We invite you…” on it, and it included similarly personal and friendly language inside, I am convinced that what was really going on is that I was a consumer being targeted by a seller. Instead of Chinese food or dirt-cheap lawyering, I was being sold religion.

When we call it what it is, we quickly see how wrong it is. Still, somehow we have learned to justify our religious marketing by naming it part of our ‘strategic evangelization plan’. What has caused us to resort to such tactics?

We need to stop and remember that we are the Church. We are the People of God, his manifest presence in the world. We are empowered by the Spirit to be witnesses of the good news through both word and deed. The Trinity has entrusted us as ambassadors of God’s reconciliation mission (2 Cor. 5:17-20). Jesus is making all things new – women, men, children, and all of Creation. The old has gone. The new has come!

Does all this sound like an appropriate topic for a door-hanger flyer?

Undoubtedly, some may think I’m making too big a deal out of this. “So what?” you may say. “It’s just another culturally relevant way to let people know that the Church is there for them.” Some may even reason that a flyer is better than a relationship since it gives people space and an opportunity to avoid a potentially uncomfortable situation and conversation. After all, human contact is often messy.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that the Gospel is not a product for sale. Nor is church simply a building in the neighborhood to which someone can be invited. The Church is people. It’s living, laughing, loving, people. It is humans serving one another in the manner and example of Jesus. Once this reality is fully grasped, the absurdity of mixing worship with marketing flyers becomes painfully obvious.

Maybe it’s too late for you to ‘take back’ all those Easter flyers you put out this year. That’s okay. God is widely known for repeatedly redeeming our poorly chosen actions and methods. So, take heart.

Meanwhile, remember that every day is a “holy-day”. Will you choose each moment to become a real live ambassador of reconciliation and good news (a.k.a. a vital part of the Church in the world)?

Or, will you remain an evangelical marketing executive with a flare for graphic design?

This post originally appeared on Creative Worship Tour, April 1, 2010.

*Chreasters = people who only attend church on Christmas and Easter.

Categories: Leadership