Church for a changing culture: an introduction to alternative worship

4: Spare time church

It's important to recognise that most Alternative Worship is produced by people in their own spare time, for love and without payment.

Few of those involved actually work for churches, and if they do the chances are that this is not what they are employed to do. Alternative Worship remains, in most places, an 'unofficial' activity. It represents a 'bottom-up' response to cultural change, rather than a 'top-down' initiative.

This has repercussions in terms of the time and resources available and the forms of ministry and activity that can be sustained. It's one of the reasons why Alternative Worship groups, in many places, do not declare themselves to be churches, since to do so would bring a level of expectation and responsibility that cannot at present be supported.

It's more usual for groups to operate under the wing of a conventional church, albeit with their own separate events. Various benefits result. Resources can be shared which could not otherwise be afforded - for both parties, since the host church gains access to the group's creativity and equipment. This also maintains relationships with other local Christians and with the wider denominational and established structures. Most groups do not wish to secede entirely from these structures, since to do so could bring isolation, loss of recognition and loss of their role in the development of the wider church. Maintaining relationships also provides reassurance in terms of oversight, however nominal that might be in a day-to-day sense.

But even if an Alternative Worship group does not call itself a church, it is church for those involved, not just an activity or pastime.

Conventional churches can be tempted to trivialise Alternative Worship - to regard it as a bunch of misfits playing at church while the rest of us get on with 'real' church. This is a serious mistake - not only is it insulting to the people concerned, it is also shortsighted since those people are likely to have theological and cultural expertise of kinds that the Church sorely needs. To belittle their creativity and insights risks driving them out - perhaps even from the faith itself.