Well hopefully everyone enjoyed our input to the Global Day of Prayer thingy. (we did the visual stuff in the nave of the Minster during the songs as well as the drumming thing...which was mega scary as I'd asked for 70 max and ended up with...er....well a few more than that
. So apologies to the drumless ones)
Actually sometimes I think Visions is a bit like an iceberg, in that people look at the numbers of people coming on a Sunday and think "20-30 that's not a lot, mustn't be any good" wheras actually the service is just a bit of what we do. I even once had someone say something along the lines of that they thought that God couldn't possibly be blessing us as i He was we'd have more people in the the service (sigh!)
Personally I'm thrilled by the comparatively high percentage of people who have come to Visions in the past and have ended up being vicars, or training to be vicars. That's nice. Much nicer than having them sitting on our beanbags forever more. It is true that in comparison to more traditional forms of church Visions is more labour intensive on the artistic production, but that is never wasted. I *do* spend a lot of work on producing video and music resources, and creative prayer stuff, but that's not just for any one Sunday. We have shared it with the world in lots of ways, through the Scripture Union books, the music tracks available to listen to on the web, and the videos that we have sold in the past (and as soon as I get a spare moment we'll produce another one! We certainly have the footage to do so!) The wonderful thing about the art-stuff and prayer-ideas from my point of view, is that they are born, not in some clinical lab, but as part of our corporate worship and the life of the church. And the springboard for them all is generally the bible stuff that we have looked at while we've been service planning. Yet then it all gets shared. So it has deep roots.
I like the idea, not of building our own little empires, (just Visions, or just St Michaels, or just the church of England even) but of working with God to build His BIG one which is way bigger than that. So its nice to hear of the times when we've put bums on other people's pews, (great for the Parish Share eh???) or helped another church sort out their visual stuff, or look at their worship from a different angle, or advised someone on creative prayer, or had a chance to project our images, not just in church, but in the high-street, as happened in the Lux project. And then....just occasionally, I hear of someone who only ever came to a service *once* and yet it was a life-changing experience for them. They went home to where they were a bit different, and led a different life as a result. And that definitely, definitely makes it all worthwhile.
I suppose personally, I see Visions in its entirety (not just the service) as 4 things really.
1- a lab- we try things and share the stuff that works. The stuff that doesn't work gets binned, but hey, we learnt something through it! And at least we haven't exploded anything yet, well unless you count the 8mm filmloop that melted at my wedding rehearsal.
2 - a catalyst - people come and visit and get fired up to start something somewhere else.
3 - a library - producing resources to help others. (and lending stuff sometimes too).
4- a worship service. If worship of God wasn't at the heart of what we did then what we did would have no life in it.
But actually the real reason I keep doing what I'm doing is that I get a rather deep sense that this is what God is calling me to do. And, after all, at the end of the day, doing what you feel God is telling you to do, no matter what it looks like, is a rather important thing
And where would we be if Moses and Abraham and St Paul and all those other people hadn't listened to God, and kept on doing what they were doing even if some other people thought they were crazy for it.
Gosh this is sounding like a sermon....oops!
That's what vicar-training does to ya. But anyway hopefully that explains what happens to the effort and preparation.
Sue.
PS I'm also happy to do stuff in St Ms too. It just requires a bit of planning to avoid having to be in 2 places at once! (they dont' teach you that at vicar school, which is a shame, especially on those people who have 6 churches to look after)
