We had an amazing (if shattering!) two weeks first at London School of Theology’s worship summer school, and then New Wine North and East.  We met some fantastic people, saw God move and were excited to see innovative worship spreading across the country.  Here are a few highlights, and places to get your hands on the resources...

WorshipConnect
We led the opening time at LST, including the Blessed be intro liturgy which went down really well.  Our friends at BIG Ministries led a fantastic lab on ‘Multigenerational Worship’, which included the very simple but effective idea of singing
“Praise the Father (repeat), praise the Son, (rpt),
praise the Holy Spirit (rpt), God is one, three in one”,
to the tune of Frères Jacques.  Great way of getting all ages to worship the Trinity!

Other highlights for us were the opportunity to lead a lab on ‘Emerging Worship’, featuring Steve Leach DJing and Richard Lyall VJing, loads of prayer stations on the theme of the ‘word of God’, (which you can download here), and an opening liturgy by Sharon (available here.)  It was very stretching for most people, but exciting to see a very different form of worship inspire people to develop the ideas in their own context.

New Wine
We led worship at the Thirst (15-18’s) venue in Newark, easing them in with some well known songs and then pushing boundaries with other forms of worship.  We introduced Matt Osgood’s ‘When our songs’ into a time of intercession, which helped focus our worship outside our cosy festival bubble.  To get the young people involved in helping to lead and steer the worship we used the Psalms Praise idea and also the song ‘He’s my saviour’, where people suggested their own verse ideas over the radio mic.

There was some great creative worship expressed in the art tent, and the team also made use of the Cardboard Testimonies idea to help anyone who wanted to declare the things God had done in their lives.  It was thrilling to see the young people create their own worship to God, and we are really grateful to all the team from YFC who encouraged us to push the boundaries.

Musically, the band was really up for creative arrangements, and we had fun redeeming secular riffs and intros behind well known worship songs (Rage against the machine’s ‘Wake up’ for Brenton Brown’s ‘Holy Holy’, ‘Play that funky music white boy’ for ‘Jesus be the centre’, and Girls Aloud’s ‘Love machine’ for ‘I will worship’!).  These helped put different thematic emphases on the songs and kept them fresh.  We also made use of a Nigerian ‘Alleluia’, which stopped our worship being too Western-centric.

Overall, it was really exciting to see so many young people engage will different sides of worship, and we left feeling like the worship we'd been part of would continue in local churches, schools, jobs and homes.  Were you there?  We'd love you to comment below about how you found the worship - encouragement and critique both gratefully received!

 

Sam co-leads engageworship.org with his wife Sara. He completed the LST degree in Theology, Music and Worship, and co-leads RESOUNDworship.org. He also works part time as Worship Minister at St James, Hemingford Grey, and has led musical and creative worship at events like Spring Harvest, New Wine North and the Baptist Assembly alternative stream.

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Matthew Nott

08 Aug 2009 09:05

 

I was on the team at New Wine with Sam and Sara and the band and loved every minute of it. So many times worship at conferences and big events can feel like an emotionally hyped assault, building the energy and musical involvement, meaning that the worship it self becomes the focus rather than the God we are worshipping. In Thirst at New Wine we were led in worship, and given opportunities to join in and lead the efforts of our worship, so well that it felt very involved and not like a them and us between the band and the group of worshipers. The opportunities for the young people to direct the worship during interactive songs and creative worship rather than just 'sung worship' was great and allowed all to feel like their worship was important and included. I'm loving the ideas that the band used so much that i'm promoting them to our worship team at church and want to find ways of using them in our youthwork as well. Thanks for all your efforts and sacrificies. Matt and Laura

Sam Hargreaves

08 Aug 2009 09:42

 

Thanks Matt! It was lovely being on team with you.

Rebecca

10 Aug 2009 17:19

 

Worship Connect was excellent - I learnt a lot from all your contributions and used part of the "Blessed be your name" intro together with some words from Isaiah 43 yesterday - no feedback as yet but I think it worked! Good to meet you and Sara too - glad to hear New Wine went well!