I haven’t posted a worship idea in a while.  I guess that is mostly due to the context I find myself in for the next 6 months.  Worshipping with a monastic community is a wonderful experience and it is greatly informing my understanding of emergence – but it doesn’t often appear to be alt. worship.

This post came out of a conversation at ASBOJesus about the efficacy of preaching a sermon as part of an act of worship.  One of the main concerns was that there was not enough opportunity in a “traditional sermon” for interaction.  This idea for Jazz Preaching came from a friend of mine who used the analogy of how Jazz Musicians interact with each other following a theme but improvising around it.  Her idea was that a small group of people from the church meet in a local coffee shop on Monday morning.  They would go through the readings for the next week and sit and talk about it over a Danish pastry. They would do much the same thing on Thursday morning.  This would then follow on to a pint on Saturday evening with the same kind of theological discourse.  On Sunday morning in church they would then sit around a table and the conversation continues.  People would be able to improvise on the theme because they have been living with the issues raised from the passage for a week.  It would also allow a diversity of opinion and more voices to speak to the conversation.  If anyone has things to say from the congregation they can (Trisha stylee with a roving microphone).