For those of you visiting here from The Cove the links to the activities you are looking for are at the end of this post.

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of spending some time with The Cove, which is one of the clusters from St Mary Bredin in Canterbury. I was invited to lead some creative worship by one of the cluster leaders who just happens to be the Principal of SEITE.

We tried a few things that I had used before, such as the journey, and things I have wanted to try such as the Bittersweet Ritual from Jonny Baker’s Alternative Worship and Psalm Consequences which I picked up from somewhere but can’t remember where.

The Bittersweet Ritual was a response to reflecting on our life journey. As we considered that life is made up of bitter and sweet experiences I invited people to either dip bread sticks in honey and eat as a symbolic action of thanking God for the good things in life, or eat a slice of lemon to acknowledge before God that actually life is pretty tough at the moment. This was quite a powerful experience as people did this with the Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony playing as a background track.

The most powerful part of the morning was when we ‘played’ Psalm Consequences. I think it is pretty self explanatory what this is, if you know the consequences game, and at the clusters request I have posted the instructions here. In quite a jovial atmosphere people added their lines to the psalms. When we read them the creativity and sheer beauty of what we were hearing was amazing. It moved some of us to tears and amazement as we focused in on the evidence that God was creating with us. The Psalms were stunning and moving and my only regret is that I did not take photos of them before I left.

I enjoyed lunch with the group afterwards which was a good chance to get to chat with some people and learn more about them. This is a great group of creative people who it was a real pleasure to spend some time with – thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Links to stuff I used
The running order – you will see the stuff I never used
The PowerPoint
The Psalm Consequences instructions
The Journey

Useful sites I use
Jonny Baker worship tricks – an excellent resource for tried ideas
Proost – you should definitely subscribe to this
The Work of the People – great for video loops and stuff
Blessed – a sacramental alt worship group in Gosport
Hold this space – some amazing wonderful inspiring liturgy