This is a longer-than-usual post for anyone interested in how we put together our Holy Week interactive, art-installation based stations events.
solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking has ended. Over the eight days of Holy Week we opened our spaces to the public for seven 3 hour sessions and two 4 hour sessions (29 hours plus some late leavers!); we offered 3 services – Palm Sunday, Tenebrae/Service of Shadows (Charles Erlam), Easter Sunday, and 4 seminars (The Art of the Cross (Paul V. Johnston) and Dark Night of the Soul (Ron Lang) – both repeated).
Over 330 people walked the checkerered path of life, and more than 130 were served tea (by Nathan King, Bev Lang, Sarah Pierson) in our Pop-Up reflective tea space with its native NZ birdsong soundtrack (Charlie Bayliss) and large forest video projections (Stephen Proctor).
A huge number of hours were put in by a wide range of people, including our inspiring Palm Sunday guest curators Peter & Joyce Majendie from Christchurch.
Feedback has been very positive, with many people engaging with God in new ways and at new depths.
Every time we opened there were about 40 power switches to turn on (and off when we closed). Between sessions 15 re-chargeable lamps were re-charged ready for the next session. In the Tea & Be Pop-Up reflective space we drank almost half a kilo of high quality Zealong tea with the usual favourite being Sweet Amber by a good margin, and with Green being more popular than Black.
My measure of success in this kind of project is three-fold – 1. My inner sense that I have carried out what I planned to do in the most sensitive, carefully curated and God-honouring way possible, and 2. That at least a few people commented that they found some spiritual sustenance and deeper connection with the trinitarian community of God through the events, and 3. That at worst, no harm was done to either the Rhythms of Grace Church community brand or the God brand. Ideally both are enhanced and the community strengthened.
So by those measures this was a success. Opening a stations-based art installation for eight days is a rare opportunity and was only possible by the generosity of Anne Mills, Dean, and Holy Trinity Cathedral staff who allowed us to have complete access beyond the space Rhythms of Grace (RoG) usually occupies.
The eight-day period also makes the expense and large amount of work it took, justifiable. (It would be hard to justify two days work by three people on their hands and knees laying out and hand painting 260 black and white squares on plastic carpet-protector for a single 75 minute worship event!)
Each session took a minimum of five people to make it happen and 34 RoGers were directly involved overall, many on more than one ocassion.
I also have a fourth goal to add to the three mentioned. I am passionate about the society-changing potential of a local church community of Jesus-followers. I despair at the negative impact too many churches have on both their own people and their wider community/society. I want to imagine and then practice ways in which a local church community – currently Rhythms of Grace (RoG) in my case – can become a catalyst for modelling and demonstrating the flourishing life God created every human being for.
So my fourth goal in most of what I do is to imagine, dream, practice and test what might meet that goal in the context of our apocalyptic world, with actual spiritual formation, community building, human flourishing, and Christian discipleship.
In the last six months the Tea & Be: a Portable Communion Liturgy guide was part of that, and most recently our Holy Week gigs.
I’m imagining a physical space where art-installation based stations might be set up on a monthly theme and punters allowed 24/7 access for them and their friends to engage whenever suited them with their gig-economy and busy lifestyles. With weekly services and other gatherings offered in the same space, and other programmed events on the theme including times when the Tea & Be Table would be available in an immersive audio and video setting such as we had in Holy Week (entry corridor and Tea & Be space). A contemporary urban monastery for rhythms of prayer, practicing the arts, and nurturing spiritual formation.
Immersive spaces don’t need to emmulate the high tech of The Sphere in Las Vegas, in fact I wouldn’t consider that as a model: its far too passive for the liminal responses our sacred spaces need to elicit. (And I’d settle for NZD250 000 rather than the USD2.3 billion that build required!)
If I was looking for a model it might be more like the Mori-teamLab digital art galleries in Tokyo. Places where participation is high, expected, and the spaces are designed to engage. Very high tech supporting a relatively low tech, tactile experience. (Of course, to me, the zenith is the EN tearoom that combines simple tea drinking with high tech tracking mapped-projections onto each cup! But even this appears to take too much agency away from the participating punter. I’ll understand more once I have experienced it, hopefully later this year.)
Solarpunk and hopepunk are touchstones for these imagined sacred spaces rather than the more individualistic cyberpunk and backward looking steampunk genres I still love. (I’m not denying the valuable community connections that gather around those ideas, just building on their less dystopian offshoots.) I’m committed to “interactive”, according to Brian Eno’s definition of “unfinished”. (Where stations require punter participation and engagement to “complete” them.)
I am a worship curator:
I curate contexts
– bespoke, ephemeral, structured and ambient spaces –
built around practices,
that offer people the potential
for liminal moments of
individual and communal
transformational engagement
with the trinitarian community of God
that will sustain deeper human flourishing.
So… a huge measure of thanks to everyone who made my dreaming a reality. Now, what to do with it all!
A few Holy Week Comments:
+So good to slow down. Stop. Soak in the sounds of nature and reflect on the significance of the Cross. Thank you for creating this blessed experience!
+I have never been to a church like this. My friends will explain more.
+ Thank you for the stunning stations on Saturday. We were all moved. The Lord was close as I walked the hallway!
+ Thank you so much for all the work you did to provide that feast for the senses and the spirit that was laid out for us over Easter week. It was very memorable, for me possibly the first time I’ve been so present to the events of Holy week as they unfolded for Jesus. It’s a life changer really. Definitely deepened my faith experience.
+This is the first time I have been in a church. Am I allowed to talk?
