Our attitude to worship at FIRST SUNDAY is distinctive. It's also evolving all the time as our understanding changes and grows. This is a brief attempt to describe our approach so that you know what to expect, and why we take the approach we do.
_it's not me and god
The emphasis is on communal worship; worshipping God together. The word 'communal' is carefully chosen. We think that some forms of contemporary Christian worship can be a bit insular. There are lots of Christian communities across the UK today offering Christian worship in a cutting edge contemporary style that speaks the language of today, not yesterday. Even in a place like Oxford where some people speak Latin, this is important. Lots of these places are also inclusive (accepting of LGBTQ people). What these spaces often offer best is a holy space where you can worship God together with other individuals. TV and projection screens are often used. Video and chillout music is used. Sometimes, in places, a little bit of togetherness might break through.
Some people from FIRST SUNDAY have been involved in the alt.worship scene for a long time, so we're not against it or claiming to be 'post' alt.worship (in fact we mean to try some of it out in 2007 during our FIRST SPACE sessions). It's just that when you're reading a poem set to ambient music on a projection screen and worshipping God through the experience, the experience is all too easily 'me and God'.
_we together and god
What we want to do is focus on forms of worship that are both contemporary and also about us. A phrase we like is "We together and God". Christianity's not a lifestyle choice. It's not about me and God. It's not a fix to all my problems in life; I won't always get happier or have an easier life because God and me are really close right now. It's not a drug. It's not assertiveness therapy. It's not NLP. It's not Zen. There is no ying and yang. If I'm filled with the Holy Spirit, it's not an alternative to going clubbing but without the ecstasy. God can be better revealed in our broken world if we're fixated on the Christ in our neighbour more than we are on seeing Christ reign in our subconscious thoughts.
We won't be claiming to have the answer. We aren't trying to say that others are getting it wrong. We'll just be finding songs to sing together in simple ways, and praying together. There's just a few things out there we could do that are 'not our thing'.
_what and when
We'll be making sure we include a time of worship at every event we can this year. Normal sessions (like when we have a guest speaker) will close with a communal worship time. At the same time on these evenings we will open FirstCafé so you don't have to join in the worship if you don't want to (you don't have to do anything you don't want to do). This is where we'll be focussing on "we together and God".
The other thing we'll be doing is giving over whole evenings to worship - about two or three times a year. These are the sessions called FIRST SPACE. These will still be collective and communal, but they're also going to be a bit 'alt.worshippy' so they'll be both reflective/personal and shared/communal. We'll be learning how to get the balance right as we go.
