Wednesday 27 August 2014

The Greenbelt Experience

Science and Faith argue about certainty and uncertainty

Thank you to everyone who came and supported us at Greenbelt this year. We had a wonderful weekend and the weather held up to allow us to conduct 6 services over 2 days without being rained on!

Just before the festival started, Boughton House informed Greenbelt that the trees in part of the site had just been discovered to be diseased and that it was no longer safe to use that section. This caused quite a bit of pain for the organisers, who did a great job of re-homing everyone. This affected us too, so on Friday we were scouting for a new path to walk our service along.

We started by meeting just outside the Kindred Cafe, where Treygard offered waiting walkers a snifter of peppermint tea and some lovely biscuits (thank you Effie). After an introduction, The Guide took everyone over a small rise to a hidden dell and the first 'station', Brokenness. Then on over a bridge to a pair of trees playing home to Science and Faith (pictured arguing above). Just a little further up the path and Apollyon walked out to greet and bring doom, before the group were led back down to the bridge for some parting words.

At the start of the journey we had given everyone bags (with a SUB logo on, naturally) to carry their burdens in. We had rainbow pebbles of many sizes, to represent burdens, and asked people to choose some to accompany their walk. At each station, we presented a new challenge and an opportunity to pick up new burdens, put down burdens now relieved or help other by carrying burdens for them. The service ending with all the burdens being left behind and the participants travelling lighter into the remainder of their festival experience.

We had 70-80 people share the service with us, which was great. Some puzzled faces, some unsure of whether it was supposed to be funny or serious (a bit of both actually, so that's probably a good response!) and most took something positive away from it.

Thank you to those who requested a copy of the service, to either re-enact back at their homes with friends and fellow church-goers or just to study further. We will add the script to the website shortly.

We hope you have a wonderful year and here's hoping we get to come back to Greenbelt next year to bring you another unique worship service (or something else...). In the meantime, we provide weekly content on this blog and will be holding gatherings in the Manchester area that will be announced on this blog and on twitter @sub_kulture.

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