(e)mergent Voyageurs

For most of you who are familiar with the conversation about the church in the emerging or postmodern world, the name Jonny Baker will be familiar to you. His name is often spoken in the same breathe as “alternative worship”, he has co-authored an excellent and essential book by the same name (“Alternative Worship: Resources from and for the Emerging Church”, Baker Books). While I have appreciated all the resources that have come out of the US, I find Jonny’s unique UK perspective to be refreshing essential. His bio from his site says alot, while reflecting his personality:

(From http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/about.html)

i am…

jonny baker
a londoner
a follower of Jesus Christ
dad with two amazing sons joel and harry
postmodern (whatever that means)
director of an independent record label proost
a member of grace , an alternative worship community or emergingchurch
creative
enjoying sharing photos on flickr
married to jen
work for cms helping reimagine church and mission
involved in various creative projects, the most successful of which has been the labyrinth
a mac user
co-ordinator of worship at greenbelt arts festival
writer with a few articles in books, mags and the web
co-author of alternative worship
a chelsea football supporter
qualified with a BSc in Statistics and MA in applied theology
a blogger
involved in youth ministry lecturing for cym
songwriter
lover of music especially ambient, chilled, dub
fan of the big chill
lover of good food, belgian beer and conversation
like books and films
love art especially contemporary stuff

The following e-interview came out of my own desire to get to know a little better the man behind the blog. It was a real pleasure exploring worship, emerging church and even Canada unique place in the emerging conversation. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I did:

Jamie Arpin-Ricci (JAR): Many people are vaguely familiar or completely unaware of “alternative worship”. How would you explain it to the uninitiated?

Jonny Baker (JB): It is a label given to a movement that developed out of the UK in the late 80s and early 90s when groups sought to develop worship that related to their cultural world which was quite shaped by club culture – so it incorporated electronic music, projection screens, ritual and ambient spaces as well as reimagining the liturgical traditions of the church. I’m not sure how helpful the label is now. Steve Collins web site is an ideal portal for those interested in more – see http://www.alternativeworship.org and http://www.alternativeworship.org/definitions_definition.html for his definition.

JAR: In a culture where musicians are at times gaining a stronger voice than politicians, what do worship leaders most need to be aware of and prepared for?

JB: I think they need to be authentic – offer what they do to God creatively and with integrity and that’s pretty much it. Alternative worship has tried to get away from the cult of personality that seems to surround worship leading. So it would be typical in alternative worship to have a team of people leading different parts of the worship and much less emphasis on the front/performance. This is an attempt to recapture the root of liturgy which actually means ‘the work of the people’.

JAR: Some have suggested that “alternative worship” is an emerging church phenomenon. How would you respond to this?

JB: I think alternative worship preceded the emerging church discussion by several years, at least in the UK. Emerging church felt like other sections of the church catching up to be honest. Alternative worship had been having discussions about postmodernity, contextual mission, reading liberation, black, and feminist theologians and re-theologising as a result, reading biblical scholars, drawing from contemporary culture and art, re-embracing ritual and the traditions of the church and so on. Alternative worship was always a very radical movement – it felt as though emerging church afforded another way of talking about things that might be more accessible to a wider group of people and to the mainstream church who were never going to embrace some aspects of alternative worship.

JAR: Do you believe that worship should be more “missional”? Why and what does actually mean to you?

JB: I think mission is key – it’s why I now work for a mission agency – CMS. Lessons learned in cross cultural mission offer a lot of insights and clues into how we should do stuff in our own culture(s). Those lessons are both about the bad practice and the good practice. And yes worship is good when its missional though you might need to qualify what you mean by that as it’s a bit of a buzz word at the moment – contextual worship (worship that is authentically grown out of the cultural soil of a group of people) is really important. There is a disconnect in many places between the church and culture – it sometimes feels as though people live in one world and then when they go to worship enter another world and then they return to the real world. Worship that is missional should simply be making worship out of that cultural stuff so that people don’t experience that disconnect. I actually think that in some places being ‘missional’ doesn’t seem to include much in the way of worship – the emphasis is on building relationships with people who aren’t christians and hanging out with them and doing evangelism – all of which is brilliant and a helpful shift in emphasis in some places. But I still passionately believe in the importance of worship – worship that touches and moves people and ultimately that is a gift given to God out of who we are. When done well that should fuel mission.

JAR: Worship seems to be a place where theology and art and culture intersect. How can worship leaders be intentional about theological integrity? Artistic and cultural integrity?

JB: I think you are optimistic – worship often doesn’t have a lot of art or culture in it and that’s a big problem! Alternative worship has definitely tried to connect culturally and celebrate the arts. Creating worship with integrity and being intentional? Mmmm – it all sounds a bit heavier than what people probably think about when creating worship. I think worship is best created by a team that bring their gifts to the table. It then really helps if someone at least has some theological nous and/or liturgical nous and/or whatever other nous – together those gifts will help create something richer. But it needn’t be heavy. In fact I find it’s a lot of fun.

A metaphor I have found helpful is Tom Wright and Brian Walsh’s notion of faithful improvisation. The thinking here is that to faithfully improvise you need to have some tools out of which to improvise or your improvisation may be a bit thin – so the richer your grasp of theology or the arts or missiology or liturgy or traditions or whatever the richer the pool out of which you can improvise. It’s not enough in that sense to just be cerative (though that is to be encouraged and celebrated) – some development in other areas is needed as well. Am I making any sense? [JAR: Yes!] Cultural integrity is a weird term – not sure I’ve heard it before – the approach in alt worship has been to create worship that we relate to rather than try and create it for some imagined other. That way it has to have cultural integrity or be authentic. I think inauthenticity is much more likely if you try and do stuff that you think others will like.

JAR: How can worship be culturally contextualized in multicultural communities?

JB: You have to get a multicultural team, give them the space and encouragement to create worship and it will be. The problem we get is that when we think multicultural we think we are doing it for someone else – that just doesn’t work. Change the power structures. Get a multicultural team and it will happen. If you don’t deal with those fundamental issues then why expect it to be multi-cultural?

JAR: I recently heard N.T. Wright caution against constant re-creation of worship. Is alternative worship more than just innovation?

JB: From the outside it’s easy to look at alternative worship and think that – it looks stylistic – lots of contemporary media and so on. But at heart it’s not about that. It’s about contextual worship – i.e. worship that is created by a community out the culture they inhabit. So that’s not just innovation. Having said that innovation is a great word and innovation and worship are two good words to put together. But sadly the broad picture is that worship in the church doesn’t have a lot of innovation and creativity. I bet the diocese of Durham where NT Wright is bishop could do with a whole host of innovation!

JAR: What do you see as the future of alternative worship?

JB: No idea. I think the term probably needs to go. Maybe we should just talk about worship. I think some of the alternative worship groups in the UK have been thinking about mission and what that means and might look like. It may actually involve less emphasis on worship for a season and engaging in other things? In terms of worship in the church as a whole I think I’d like to see the rest of the church embracing the insights and wonderful creativity that has been developed by alternative worship communities. I like Kester Brewin’s notion of punk where he suggests in the Complex Christ that punk changed music when it had got stuck. But it did so by creating a new cultural space. After that there was a surge of new possibilities in music, but there was no way everyone was going to now play punk. In the same way alternative worship has blasted open a cultural space with relatively few people and groups. There is no way lots of people and groups and churches will want to do alternative worship in that way but it will have opened up a whole new set of possibilities for lots of others.

JAR: When exploring the “emerging church” people tend to think of the US and the UK, countries and cultures very different from each other. Having visited Canada, where do you see us fitting in the bigger picture of this journey?

JB: There are more similarities between the UK and Canada than there are the UK and US in church. I think part of the reason for this is that more people have left the church in Canada. So there are similar challenges in terms of mission. The US is still in a situation where the pressure isn’t on in the same way- there’s plenty of people in church and plenty of money around.

There’s a few things I like of what I have seen in Canada. The first is the way you guys manage to network together – it seems very open and relaxed and friendly rather than competitive. I think Resonate is a great space. I got in trouble for saying this a while back but I still think I’m right so I’ll say it again. Internationally I think the emerging church needs locally owned and set up networks. Resonate is a great example. The international policy of any other emerging church network should be to insist on local and contextual networks that have their own identity and name, and then offer encouragement and friendship and so on. Resist the temptation of expanding the brand as it were. The second thing I like about the Canadian set up is there is some great theology that has shaped me personally – I’m thinking of the influence of the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and the likes of Brian Walsh, Henk Hart, David Lyon and others. I am very grateful for that – there’s been a particular way of thinking about the redemption of all of life. Then I think you’re all pretty laid back – that suits me. But you also have some huge challenges in terms of mission (as we do). And you also have Jordon Cooper – one of the most prolific bloggers – one of the first blogs I ever discovered.

JAR: Is there anything else you would like to share?

JB: Yes…

Make space for creativity and imagination.
Create a culture of participation where the whole community can make the worship rather than a few experts.
Take some risks.
Invest in artists.

JAR: Thanks!

Emerging Church

Alternative Worship