Interview with Jonny Baker

Reposted from Jamie's Blog The following e-interview came out of my own desire to get to know a little better the man behind the blog. It was a real pleasure exploring worship, emerging church and even Canada unique place in the emerging conversation. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I did: Jamie Arpin-Ricci (JAR): Many people are vaguely familiar or completely unaware of "alternative worship". How would you explain it to the uninitiated? Jonny Baker (JB): It is a label given to a movement that developed out of the UK in the late 80s and early 90s when groups sought to develop worship that related to their cultural world which was quite shaped by club culture – so it incorporated electronic music, projection screens, ritual and ambient spaces as well as reimagining the liturgical traditions of the church. I’m not sure how helpful the label is now. Steve Collins web site is an ideal portal for those interested in more – see http://www.alternativeworship.org and http://www.alternativeworship.org/definitions_definition.html for his definition. JAR: In a culture where musicians are at times gaining a stronger voice than politicians, what do worship leaders most need to be aware of and prepared for? JB: I think they need to be authentic – offer what they do to God creatively and with integrity and that’s pretty much it. Alternative worship has tried to get away from the cult of personality that seems to surround worship leading. So it would be typical in alternative worship to have a team of people leading different parts of the worship and much less emphasis on the front/performance. This is an attempt to recapture the root of liturgy which actually means ‘the work of the people’. JAR: Some have suggested that "alternative worship" is an emerging church phenomenon. How would you respond to this? JB: I think alternative worship preceded the emerging church discussion by several years, at least in the UK. Emerging church felt like other sections of the church catching up to be honest. Alternative worship had been having discussions about postmodernity, contextual mission, reading liberation, black, and feminist theologians and re-theologising as a result, reading biblical scholars, drawing from contemporary culture and art, re-embracing ritual and the traditions of the church and so on. Alternative worship was always a very radical movement – it felt as though emerging church afforded another way of talking about things that might be more accessible to a wider group of people and to the mainstream church who were never going to embrace some aspects of alternative worship. JAR: Do you believe that worship should be more "missional"? Why and what does actually mean to you? JB: I think mission is key – it’s why I now work for a mission agency – CMS. Lessons learned in cross cultural mission offer a lot of insights and clues into how we should do stuff in our own culture(s). Those lessons are both about the bad practice and the good practice. And yes worship is good when its missional though you might need to qualify what you mean by that as it’s a bit of a buzz word at the moment – contextual worship (worship that is authentically grown out of the cultural soil of a group of people) is really important. There is a disconnect in many places between the church and culture – it sometimes feels as though people live in one world and then when they go to worship enter another world and then they return to the real world. Worship that is missional should simply be making worship out of that cultural stuff so that people don’t experience that disconnect. I actually think that in some places being ‘missional’ doesn’t seem to include much in the way of worship – the emphasis is on building relationships with people who aren’t christians and hanging out with them and doing evangelism – all of which is brilliant and a helpful shift in emphasis in some places. But I still passionately believe in the importance of worship - worship that touches and moves people and ultimately that is a gift given to God out of who we are. When done well that should fuel mission. JAR: Worship seems to be a place where theology and art and culture intersect. How can worship leaders be intentional about theological integrity? Artistic and cultural integrity? JB: I think you are optimistic – worship often doesn’t have a lot of art or culture in it and that’s a big problem! Alternative worship has definitely tried to connect culturally and celebrate the arts. Creating worship with integrity and being intentional? Mmmm – it all sounds a bit heavier than what people probably think about when creating worship. I think worship is best created by a team that bring their gifts to the table. It then really helps if someone at least has some theological nous and/or liturgical nous and/or whatever other nous – together those gifts will help create something richer. But it needn’t be heavy. In fact I find it’s a lot of fun. A metaphor I have found helpful is Tom Wright and Brian Walsh’s notion of faithful improvisation. The thinking here is that to faithfully improvise you need to have some tools out of which to improvise or your improvisation may be a bit thin – so the richer your grasp of theology or the arts or missiology or liturgy or traditions or whatever the richer the pool out of which you can improvise. It’s not enough in that sense to just be cerative (though that is to be encouraged and celebrated) - some development in other areas is needed as well. Am I making any sense? [JAR: Yes!] Cultural integrity is a weird term – not sure I’ve heard it before – the approach in alt worship has been to create worship that we relate to rather than try and create it for some imagined other. That way it has to have cultural integrity or be authentic. I think inauthenticity is much more likely if you try and do stuff that you think others will like. Click Here For The Full Interview.