Product Description

This book and CD-Rom package offers worship resources which aim to help spark and renew imagination and creativity in the church's worship and engage with contemporary culture and the arts. It contains liturgies, meditations, prayers, creative ideas, visuals, music and rituals for major festivals and feast days in the church year - Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Harvest and Advent.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103910 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Jonny Baker was until recently Director of Youth for Christ in London and now works as National Youth Co-ordinator in the UK for Church Mission Society. He is part of the leadership of Grace, a congregation in London that uses alternative worship styles, and has led worship in churches and festivals across the UK. In addition, he is director of Proost records, an independent record label, on which he has been involved in recording several alternative worship albums, notably Grace, Eucharist and Labyrinth. Doug Gay is a founder member of Glasgow's pioneering Late, Late Service, has served on the Church of Scotland's Panel on Worship and lectured on alternative worship and post-modern homiletics at Trinity College, Bristol. He is an ordained minister in the United Reformed Church and currently lives in Galloway.

Customer Reviews

Viable alternative
Alternative worship has been around the block a few times by now - thrust into our imaginations by the pioneering Nine O'Clock Service in Sheffield, wrestled with by angst-ridden post-Christians, written off by church leaders who should have known better...

But times are changing. Hell, even the Evangelical Alliance is urging churches to make the Noughties a 'decade of experimentation' (as opposed to the disastrous decade of evangelism). Normal, everyday Christians are looking for something different from their worship - something (whisper it!) perhaps more authentically human.

And at the same time, 'alt.worship' feels a little more sure of itself - the protagonists, thankfully, seem less inclined to think they've failed if they become successful. (Although the day alt.worship goes fully mainstream will probably be the time for most of these pioneers to scurry off to find the new borders of our culture...)

So let's enjoy these times of greater openness and curiosity. The likes of Jonny Baker and Doug Gay have been a lifeline to many over the years who have wanted to believe and belong but who couldn't bring themselves to behave in the ways of the dwindling church.

This book brings together a collection of 'alternative' worship ideas from a wide range of groups who are trying things out, experimenting with images and words, playing with liturgy... but who are deadly serious about making their worship more culturally relevant, more authentic to those who want to go deeper than the shallow Christian subculture can offer.

The authors helpfully introduce the collection by placing alt.worship in its historical and cultural context. And there are plenty of practical examples for you to try - and to learn from. After all, as Baker and Gay point out, this is no blue-print, but a collection that should inspire individuals, small groups and churches to dream new dreams of creativity for themselves - within their own, local settings.

The CD Rom is packed full of inspiring images, video footage and words. 'Alternative Worship' will be a great start for anyone wanting to try new things; and it will be a great encouragement to those who have been modelling faithfully an alternative for what seems like forever.

Buy it, and then dream on...

Very Helpful
This book is really helpful in the preparation of worship services. Giving some great different reading, prayers etc.

The CD is useful - but rather hard to find your way around.

Utter bunkum!
This book shows all that is wrong with attempts to modernise worship in the modern era. This is devoid of any use to people wishing to bring Glorification of Christ Jesus in church today. Bringing "wordly" methods into worship is foolhardy at best. Avoid at all cost and leave to those false teachers hell-bent on introducing secular music. Middle-class "new evangelicals" wasting their time here-use these worship methods at your peril if you don't want to empty the pews even further.