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It wasn’t a particularly pleasant night, when I ventured to ‘the Rave Church’, as it had been termed. It is based at St. Cuthbert’s, and the service I was about to attend had been billed as a ‘Chill Out Communion’. I received this with a mixed reaction, but hey, you have to give these things a whirl, don’t you?
Walking into the church porch, one is fairly smacked round the face with a humungous incense odour. Continuing around the corner, you reach the church itself — a dimly lit area, with chairs arranged in a circular fashion. There are televisions strategically placed, so that you don’t have to twist your neck around to view their pictures. Upon the wall is projected a modern ‘crucifix’, with Christ on the cross, not held by nails, but by small golden cubes. I found this strange and disconcerting, but maybe sometimes that’s not a bad thing.
The service began with a short medley of songs, all accompanied by a ‘trance’ sort of music (as was most of the rest of the service!). The songs were simple to learn, to say the least. There is no ordered way of praise, you are free to let yourself be taken by the Spirit. To a large extent, the relaxing images flickering on the screens around you help to open you to God, by blotting out the world around, so life’s concerns are put firmly aside.
Everything is displayed on a projector — none of those old hymn and service books here! This most certainly helps proceedings to flow. “The next hymn is number 374 …” — none of that here, thanks!
The people are most friendly and welcoming, the service is Spirit-led, rather than just Spirit-inspired, or even Spirit-ignored. I found it a relaxing way to let God flood into me. Strange and peculiar, yes, but maybe, just maybe, people get too stuck in their ways to accept change?
What first strikes you when you walk into the place is the darkness, the smell of incense and the ambient, rhythmic music which just goes on and on, and on, and on … which was fine; all these things can be useful tools for worship. We stood in a circle and sang some short choruses, each accompanied by the same rhythmic backing track.
In true MTV tradition we were surrounded by a variety of images, each about as subtle as a lead brick.
There were various images being flashed up on a number of television screens, these varied in their content, but the first one which came to my attention was some footage of an atomic explosion which was followed by various images which depicted mass destruction, all suitably apocalyptic. Apparently the idea of this was to focus our minds on the ‘sickness of the world’. However, it merely succeeded in trivialising other people’s suffering by showing it through a series of repetitive loops enhanced by some abstract computer graphics in glorious technicolor. Thus the original pain and suffering depicted in these images lost their impact and took on all the depth and significance of Channel 4’s ‘The Word’. In effect it became visual wallpaper.
However, I had no problems with the service itself, the worship was fresh and lively, whilst the communion was well presented and explained.
It’s just a pity we had to sacrifice reality for virtual reality. But I did quite like the dolphins!
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Last modified: 25th November 2005