Belfast Soliton Sessions

Got up bright and early yesterday morning (05.30ish) to pick up Matt and Cormac and drive up to Belfast for the Soliton Sessions.  (Click here for a few pictures.)  To kick off our time, Johnny Baker led the 30+ people gathered at the East Belfast Mission in some worship.  Johnny’s “alternative worship” style is a refreshingly contemplative time of meditation through multi-media and other creative elements.  I find that this kind of thing guides me into worship much more effectively these days than the traditional church singing (whether it’s hymns or “choruses” – a dichotomy that I’ve always found strange).  The only singing that we did was a repetition of 4 lines with a simple melody that I’d never heard before, but was easy to pick up on.  Because it was fresh and new, I found the repetition very helpful for meditation.  Each time we repeated the lines, the meaning and implications of what we were singing seemed to get more and more vivid.

Gareth Higgins served as the emcee for the day and also led a panel discussion on church in the Northern Ireland context with a few leaders from ECONI that was very insightful.  Andrew Jones was also there, leading a few discussion groups. 

I was really encouraged by a discussion lead by Ian Mobsby, from the Moot community in London.  (Read about Ian’s adventures in travel to Northern Ireland HERE.)  Later I had an opportunity to connect with Ian over coffee and he seemed very keen on serving as a resource for any new expressions of church that may be developing in Dublin. 

During one of the coffee breaks, Johnny gave me a little update on what’s ahead for Proost.  I’m really looking forward to some of the new resources that should be coming out of that project.  I told Johnny that what I appreciate most about Proost and the whole “alternative worship” movement is the way it inspires others to be creative and produce worship expressions from their own context.  In that way, it fits squarely in the “prosumption” mode of new media.  (Read the quote at the end of this post for more on that idea.) 

I wasn’t too sure of what to think about the large American contingent from Dublin.  I think there were 7 or 8 from Dublin, all of whom were American ex-pats except 1.  My good friend Ferg Brown was intending on going up with us originally, but had to work.

The party continues in Port Rush, (not far from Belfast) for those who registered for the residential part of the sessions.  I would have loved to have stuck around for that, but had some scheduling conflicts.  Felt like the conversation was just getting started by the time we left yesterday afternoon, but Matt and Cormac and I had a great time of dialogue and discussion the whole way home.

Comments

[emma]

Hey Brandon, was great to meet you in Belfast on Thursday, wish you guys could have been around a bit longer. Look forward to following your story here, will also have some thoughts from Soliton up on my blog in the next few days!

[brandon]

Hey there, Emma! Thanks for stopping by. After the Thursday sessions, I think you saw us running around in traffic trying to get pictures of some of the murals around the East Belfast Mission. Check the Flickr page. You might even be in some of the pictures. =)

I noticed you've volunteered to help Andrew Jones with a Drupal site. We used Joomla for our main site, with mixed results, so I'm curious about your experience with Drupal.

I look forward to reading some of your thoughts about Soliton. And may God continue to use you as a redemptive change-agent at uni in Glasgow!