experience — Clayfire Curator

Someone Said

by Eric Herron | August 23, 2011

There is only one way to help another to an understanding of [the numinous]. He must be guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reach the point at which ‘the numinous’ in him perforce begins to stir, to start into life and into consciousness. We can co-operate in this process by bringing before his notice all that can be found in other regions of the mind, already known and familiar, to resemble, or again to afford some special contrast to, the particular experience we wish to elucidate. Then we must add: ‘This X of ours is not precisely this experience, but akin to this one and the opposite of that other. Cannot you now realize for yourself what it is?’ In other words, our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind; as everything that comes ‘of the spirit’ must be awakened.

Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy - 2nd ed., (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 7.

Categories: Someone Said

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

SPACE: A Journey from Darkness to Light (part 2)

by Guest Blogger | April 15, 2011

This post was written by Stephen Proctor and is a continuation from last week.

SPACE is designed to be a soul environment – a sacred time for prayer and calibration. Our hope is that you experience the love story of Jesus through this environment and feel the freedom to journal, pray, reflect, or simply rest at the feet of the Father.

SPACE is separated into two different areas. The main area is completely open-ended. Find a place to sit and spend the time as you wish. In this area you will also find an interactive story wall, a prayer wall, and a station for communion.

There is also a guided station area which focuses on Light. As we’ve been journeying through the Book of John as a church, we have seen the theme of Light come up over and over again. The stations presented will take you on a journey from darkness to Light.

If you wish to interact with these stations, please enter the partitioned off area near the left corner of the stage.

We are glad you are here. Be still. Listen. Reflect.

Wonderfully written by one of our emerging worship curators, Katie Strandlund, these are the words that welcome you when you step into “SPACE” at Journey. No matter if you are a long-time partner or someone new, we want you to feel invited (not forced) to actively engage in the story of Jesus in an experiential way.

Our curation process began with two questions: “What is true about God?” and “What do we want to say?” So we curated one environment that had two main areas and included a time of sung worship at the end of the night. Each area was uniquely designed yet connected to one story, the answer to our initial questions.

The non-linear, open-ended space was where you could sit, kneel, lay down, take communion, give an offering, and interact with a few art installations, such as a prayer wall and a story wall.

The linear, or “guided,” space was designed with stations that together told the story of darkness to Light. After interacting with the stations, people were invited to return to the open-ended area for further reflection, prayer and journaling.

At the bottom of this post is a link to a PDF that contains all our curation notes, including a detailed list and descriptions of the stations and art installations.

But I have to take a moment and describe my favorite station of the night, which we called “Light Appeared.” Here you are invited to peer into a dark box with a hole cut out of the side. Written on paper in the back of the box (which you can’t initially see) are big bold letters that spell “In the beginning.” There’s a button to push, and when pushed a flash of bright light fills the box. You are temporarily blinded, but when you close your eyes, you can see an imprint of “In the beginning” floating in your eyes! Sounds crazy, huh? I know. But I knew it worked well when an elderly woman experienced it, raved about it, and ran to grab her young granddaughter to show her the station. What a memorable way to experience a glimpse of Paul’s blindness on the Damascus Road as described in Acts!

After a few hours of SPACE being open, we began a time of singing and hearing stories from John. The stations were still available for people to interact with. In fact, we treated our worship designers and pastor as if they were just another station, an additional layer. Songs were led by David Leonard & Leslie Jordan, our on-staff worship designers (also known as “Sons & Daughters”… great music, FYI!); we also invited our friend Daniel Bashta to come and lead alongside them. The fusion of their sounds was unreal. Then Jamie (our pastor) sat in a “story chair” off to the side and told various stories from John. Songs, stories and instrumental moments of “selah” weaved back and forth, in and out of each other. There were no stops or breaks… it just flowed seamlessly.

I recently found out that what we’ve been curating is what Mark Pierson refers to as “composite” worship, a hybrid of “community” and “transitional.” We’ve even begun to incorporate layers of SPACE in our Sunday gatherings once a month, including the guided stations experience. I guess you could say the “composite” scale is tipped a little differently each time we gather. This is very exciting for someone who’s simply exploring and experimenting with the idea of curating worship!

We’re even starting to experience a shift in our approach to creativity altogether. Normally, we have a few people being creative on behalf of the church body, like painting a picture (so to speak) and hanging it on the wall for all to enjoy. The shift taking place is that now we are handing the congregation a blank canvas, brushes, some paint, and inviting them to partake in the creating as expression of worship. See the difference?

At the end of the day, the best description of SPACE was given by one of the children in our congregation. He told his dad, “It’s like tactile faith!” I just love that. So now “tactile” is a word we’re adopting in our Cartography language!

My hope with this story is to inspire, equip, and resource those of us in the creative worship tribe. And as we dream and explore these forgotten areas of our faith, let’s strive to keep the Creator, not our creativity, the center of our worship. Thanks for letting me share!

Listed below are some tools and resources if you wish to explore further.

Resources
PDF of Journey’s curation notes for SPACE
Playlist of Ambient Music
Sons & Daughters’ music
Daniel Bashta’s music
Visual media (not what we used for SPACE but a good place for you to start curating.)

If you are in the Middle TN area, we invite you to join us on Good Friday for our next SPACE experience!

Words © Stephen Proctor
Photos © Sarah Jensen

Stephen Proctor is a VJ, media producer, and curator of visual worship who has participated in events and worship experiences around the world. He’s based in Nashville and serves on the creative team at his local church, Journey. Stephen shares resources, stories and his passion for visually creative worship on his blog, worshipVJ.com, as well as in his new eBook, A Guidebook for Visual Worship.

Categories: Curation

SPACE: A Journey from Darkness to Light (part 1)

by Guest Blogger | April 8, 2011

This post was written by Stephen Proctor.

This past year, Jesus has stretched my understanding of “visual worship” more than I would have ever imagined. You see, I’m a “VJ” by trade… so projectors, loops, presentation software, and all-things-digital are the name of the game.

Then last July, I spent two solid weeks in New Zealand with my friend and mentor, Mark Pierson. As you can imagine, I was opened up to the world of “worship curation” like never before. What I realized on this journey is that all I had known as a VJ and visual worship leader applied to so many different contexts of worship. This conversation even transcended musical styles and cultures!

As I read The Art of Curating Worship, it felt as if Mark had been reading my mind for years. He was able to wrap words around the dreams so many I knew were having, including myself. It was like discovering a heart-language for worship that I knew in my heart existed but had never heard before. And the idea that curating worship is all about taking the spotlight off of the talented few on stage and placed back on the whole congregation… well, that just rocked my world!

The closest thing I had experienced to what Mark described in his book was the annual “Good Friday Experience” that my church back home held each year. Blessed with a vibey old warehouse layered with concrete floors and wooden beams, my church created a space for prayer and reflection, filled with multiple stations and visual ways to engage in the story of the Cross. It was always my favorite worship experience of the year (including all the “cool” conferences I worked at). Little did I know that we had been practicing the art of curation and “transitional” worship all along.

After New Zealand, I felt a renewed calling to serve my local church (Journey) in a new capacity. I had been involved, just from a distance. Since I travel a lot and lead visual worship for a living, Sundays had become a bit of a refuge… a place to “turn off” and worship without knowing everything behind the scenes.

Well, I’ll spare you the details, but our church went through a very tough season where we had to send our worship pastor away and rethink our approach to designing corporate worship. It was a hard and messy experience filled with questions, some of which are still unanswered today. But like so many times, beauty arose from the ashes. My pastor Jamie George asked me to serve on a new team that would explore what creative worship could look like for Journey. The group was named “Cartography,” since we viewed ourselves as map-designers, exploring an unknown and forgotten world of worship, guiding our church to inhabit a new land. Our vision is “to nurture a soul environment in the Gathering by interpreting God’s whispers through art and story.”

As a team, we read through Mark’s book. The Cartographers, especially our worship designers, were deeply affected by it. It was as if this book was written specifically for Journey. Not only did it describe how we think about worship, but it challenged us in new ways and served as a compass as we explored different avenues of expression.

One of my dreams was to curate a transitional worship space, much like the one Mark and I curated in Auckland. And to revisit our “Good Friday Experience” on a more consistent basis. We were also in a study of prayer that month, so it was timely to have an added layer of intentional times of prayer and calibration for our community. With much trust and selfless leadership from Jamie, we were set free to experiment.

So that autumn, we started an event called “SPACE,” curated weekly on Tuesdays from noon to 1 p.m. We created multiple prayer stations that represented the various ministries in our church. We also had a communion station, areas with pillows for kneeling, chairs scattered throughout, and candles dripping everywhere. Ambient music played over the sound system and imagery was VJ’d on the screens. We even used “atonement vessel” that an artist in our congregation created for Good Friday a few years ago. This was a concrete basin mangled with rusty nails and barbed wire. People could write their sins on a red piece of paper and place it in the water and watch the red ink dissolve and float to the bottom… it was really cool, but it’s been leaking terribly lately. So it’s retired now.

It was a step in the right direction, but there were a few challenges to overcome. First off, our church venue is located in the suburban city of Franklin, which is 30 minutes south of Nashville (where many in our church live). Many could not make the drive for only an hour. Which brings me to our next problem: it was only an hour long. So unless 12-1 p.m. was your lunch break, you weren’t able to attend this unique experience. It unintentionally excluded a vast majority of our community, so we started rethinking our approach to make it more accessible and inclusive.

I went to Jamie and the Cartographers and proposed a new version of “SPACE”… a monthly, day-long experience that went into the night, ending with a time of sung worship. After a little dialogue, everyone agreed. So this year, we’ve hoisted our sails and continued our voyage. And thankfully, God has started raising up more worship curators in our congregation!

Next week, I’ll continue this story with “part 2″ by giving you a detailed description of our most recent “SPACE” event.

Categories: Curation

Grandmother of Methodism, Original Worship Curator

by Guest Blogger | April 1, 2011

This post was written by Aaron Klinefelter.

With Opening Day upon us my thoughts turn to baseball cards. I wish there were trading cards of the saints. Early Church Fathers, like Antony the Great, with helpful stats about their contribution to the monastic movement. Memorable quotes from mystics like Julian of Norwich, “And all shall be well…” The problem, of course, would be choosing. There are so many that the printing cost alone would be astronomical. And really, aren’t we all saints in the making? We all got drafted.

Regardless, if one were to attempt such a prodigious project, a saint that simply must be included is Susanna Wesley. Her tagline would be something like “Grandmother of Methodism. Original Worship Curator.” If you’re from a Wesleyan tradition you already know about her. Susanna Wesley was the mother of John and Charles Wesley. John, of course, would go on to found Methodism and Charles would compose hundreds of hymns. Whereas the reformed tradition has held sway over the academy, Methodism and its offspring have found their sea legs amongst the hoi polloi of the world. It is no exaggeration to say that it has been the most extensive movement in Western Christianity, eventually birthing Pentecostalism, the fastest growing movement in Christian history.

At the heart of Methodism is a sort of spiritual populism uniquely suited to the zeitgeist of twenty-first century culture. That Wesleyan impetus, nascent in Susanna and made more explicit in John and Charles, is equal parts social-activism and personal holiness. But both find their ground of being in an experience of the divine. Certainly, in its founding Methodism was bound in the cultural context of the Enlightenment project codified in the burgeoning new republic in America. But the arch of the story leads inextricably to an Experience Economy manifest both in the Charismatic and Pentecostal tradition and in the emerging faith experiments of the early twenty-first century.

It is this commonly uncommon experience of the divine that is open to all, the spiritual populism that made Methodism grow from a ragtag group of college students to the largest ecclesial body in America. That upstart, anybody-can-play, open-source ethos was exemplified by Susanna Wesley.

When Susanna’s husband was away on church business, the interim pastor was a flop. She started a Sunday afternoon fellowship and teaching time for her family that eventually drew 200 some neighbors and friends. She was pastoring without a license, of course, much to the chagrin of her husband and church officials alike. But she did it anyway and it had a deep impression on young John Wesley. No surprise that the Methodists and their offspring were among the first to affirm women in ministry. Likewise, this spurred the move of early Methodists to equip lay preachers and circuit riders. All of this, in my mind at least, is foundational to the act and art of worship curation.

Just yesterday a college student involved in our ministry asked what experiential worship was. She’s an Anthropology and Art major so I knew she would understand the aesthetic and multi-sensory aspects of experiential worship. What I came to realize, as I described this different way to worship to her, was that the egalitarianism and open-source nature, what I call spiritual populism, was a primary feature. Curating worship is, by definition, not about the curator. This is not mere semantics. The wide swath of the Christian tradition, though by no means all of it, has oriented it’s worship to a priesthood, a clergy class, or the academy. The boundary breaking moves of Susanna Wesley, her sons, and the ecclesial stream that flows on from them is perfectly at home in the move to worship curation.

Everybody gets to play. When we curate worship we do so to foster community, not mere consumers. We invite participation, not only observation or intellectual assent. Our work in experiential worship is the latest sounding of a democratized ecclesia and a spiritual populism that is right at home in the Wesleyan tradition – from Susanna to today.

Aaron Klinefelter is a campus minister, gardener, and barista. He’s also the father of three very loud, very creative, very wonderful kids and husband to Sarah. Check out his campus ministry work here, read his blog, and follow him on Twitter.