Church for a changing culture: an introduction to alternative worship

6: A short history

The earliest and most influential example of what would become known as Alternative Worship was the Nine O'clock Service [NOS] in Sheffield, England, running from 1986 to 1995.

It pioneered new forms of worship based on club culture with what seemed at the time to be enormous success. NOS functioned as a model for how to put together a genuinely contemporary form of church, combining cutting-edge theology, new liturgy, spectacular media and state-of-the-art electronic music. The stunning results were an inspiration and source of hope to many that the Church could engage fully with contemporary culture again. Other groups sprang up not just in the UK but also in New Zealand and Australia, some inspired by NOS and some quite separately as other groups of Christians reached similar conclusions about Church and culture.

When NOS collapsed in 1995 amid shocking revelations of sexual and psychological abuse, the entire movement seemed in peril; but it became clear that the internal problems of NOS were unique and not at all characteristic of Alternative Worship as a whole.

Nevertheless many groups had to weather a time of suspicion and sometimes outright hostility. Without its famous flagship many expected the movement to die out as a passing phase. But the conditions of Church and society that it addressed were continuing to intensify. Those involved felt that their own spiritual survival, perhaps even the survival of Christianity itself as a force in society, might depend on them continuing their journey. By the end of the 1990s the movement was picking up confidence and numbers again. Its insights and methods are beginning to influence the mainstream of the Church, although objectively it remains small and marginal at present.