Now THAT was worship!

A few weeks ago, I attended the closing "service" of a Kairos Prison Ministries program run at a nearby prison. Present at the service were about 20 prisoners who had just completed the 3 day Kairos course, a handful of prisoners from past courses who are now leaders in a burgeoning Christian community at the prison, 30 to 40 Kairos volunteers and around 200 visiting supporters. The service consisted, mainly, of each prisoner telling the story of their Kairos experience, its impact on their faith (at whatever level that may have been) and their hopes for the future. The stories were profoundly moving and inspiring, as these men talked openly, from the heart, about the inner transformation they had experienced as they came to terms with the reality of a living, present God who loved them deeply and unconditionally.

At the end of the service, everybody stood and sung the hymn Amazing Grace. I’m quite sure that, for each of us, those all too familiar lyrics were sung as our own personal story that night. We had been ministered to by those 20 or so courageous men who told their stories with generosity and amazing grace.

After the service had concluded, a young woman visitor behind me exclaimed, “Now that was worship!” (Her unspoken comparison was, I assume, with what often passes for worship in an average church on any given Sunday.) I have to confess, I agreed with her. Now, this young woman, whom I know well, is not a disgruntled non-attending believer, nor some lefty-liberal rebel, but a regular attending, significantly involved and enthusiastic member of the same congregation to which I belong. What, then, was behind her comment?

Perhaps it was this. The worship that night was perfused with qualities that can be lost in the polish and refinement of a common Sunday morning church gathering. It was worship "from the heart", raw in its authenticity, funny and sad, inspiring and confronting, not cluttered with religious jargon or churchy affectation, but filled with real, honest and earthy narrative. This worship experience allowed each participant to be vulnerable and at the same time offered a safe, accepting space to be. Each story was given as a gracious gift and received in the same spirit. The presence of the living God was celebrated as a given, without any hint of requesting that God “come down and be with us.”

Are there any stories out there in blog land of faith communities who, in other settings, are rediscovering an authentic, earthy, narrative approach to worship - one that is not shackled to the latest pragmatic formulae nor the exclusive domain of chronically-churched? I’d love to read some!

Hello - the "first post"

Well here I am! I've finally arrived in the 21st Century and commenced a blog. Now all I have to do is to have the discipline to keep it going. (Mmm. That will be interesting.) Journalling has never been my thing, so this is an all new adventure and challenge for me.

Firstly why the pen-name "Icarus' Folly"? Well, there's a number of reasons why I chose this name. Icarus, as many will know, is a character in Greek Mythology. As part of an ancient equivalent to Prison Break, Icarus' dad made him up a pair of wings, consisting of feathers and wax. Before they took off from the prison, his father warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, as the wax would melt. Icarus' was completely overwhelmed by the experience of flight and, in his excitement, flew too close to the sun. Well, you can guess what happened - yep, his wings melted. Icarus flapped like mad to keep aloft, but because he had no feathers left on his arms, all the flapping in the world could not prevent his fatal descent.

I relate to Icarus' story a lot:

• He was fascinated by and loved the experience and freedom of flight. Me too!
• He didn't listen to wisdom (i.e. his father) but chose to learn the hard way. Same here!
• His experience of flapping his arms furiously and going nowhere is, figuratively speaking, not an unfamiliar one.

So, from the thoughts of a frustrated flyer, comes my blog "Musings from Altitude Zero". Altitude Zero, is of course, the ground. (Although I know that real pilots would point out it is actually sea level.) But, for the purposes of poetic licence, it is for me the place of the reality of most of my life. It's a good place because it is connected with the earth and with those I love who make life wonderful. It is also a place of frustration for one, like me, who enjoys so much the experience of leaving the ground, and so finds himself often looking longingly towards places of higher altitude.

A little about me. I am a Christian Minister, who currently works in a position of denominational leadership with a mainstream protestant denomination (we call ourselves a "movement") in Australia. This is an interesting place, vocationally, for me to be, because there is much about the institutional culture of the western Church (and the expression of it I serve as a leader) which fills me with discontent, particularly when I allow myself to be confronted with the teaching and example of Jesus as he is described in the Gospel stories. So, as you can imagine, much of my life is a strange dichotomy of frustration and hope, continually punctuated by the joy of connecting with "salt of the earth" people who really understand the value of living their lives, like Jesus, with a passion for the well-being of "the other" and particularly those not as fortunate as they are.

Much of the musings I hope to offer in this blog, will be around the whole question of what it means for followers of Jesus, individually and corporately, to live our lives as an authentic response to Jesus' example and teaching. I won't be offering any easy answers, as I don't have any. I hope that this will be a way I can reflect, learn, listen and stimulate some really healthy (and robust) dialogue. Otherwise, what's the point of spending all this time prattling on in a blog, hey?