Following the first event Jenny (St Silas Music Coordinator) was asked what she thought of this thing she had started:

Why start a monthly worship event at all, and why on a Friday night?

St. Silas has been moving on in worship for some time and as a result of this many on the team and in the congregation are keen to explore the whole concept and spend more time just worshipping. Sunday services tend to be quite time pressured and need to be somewhere where people feel safe so it seemed a good idea to try some new things elsewhere where those keen could come and see. It's on a friday night early firstly because it's a good place to be centred before the weekend. also it means that there's still time to go out afterwards! I've had a vision for this sort of event for months. Other churches which have a more charismatic ministry than ours started this ministry on a night other than Sunday before moving it into their regular services.

What were you wanting to do with this first event in January?

I wanted the first event to be primarily a ministry time where people could simply soak in God's presence without any other agenda.

How did you feel when everything was set to go and people had started to arrive?

Scared! You just don't know what's going to happen, who's going to come, what God's going to do etc. It felt pressured and disorganised even though I knew it was all planned out! Once people started to come I was excited because it was much busier than I had hoped.

How do you think it went now - one week after the event, has there been much feedback?

All the feedback has been good except that the church was cold! It was really difficult to tell what was going on from the front but one of the worship team who went and sat on the floor towards the end said that the feeling down there was completely different. David came in late and said that there was a real tangible sense of God's presence. I'm learning that you should never judge how an event went immediately afterwards because you are too close to it and too involved.

So what next, what would you like to see this event develop into?

I think there's lots we can take from this event into the next one. I want these sessions to be times when people really do business with God - where they see more of his face and learn more about how we can worship him. I think we perhaps need to do more worship than in the first event. I also want to be looking at new things - painting, sculpture, movement, writing, use of space. I think we have to be careful to strike a balance between stuff people know, eg, songs, and new things. I think we can develop the prayer ministry into something much more proactive for these times. I'd like to be utilising the giftings in all sorts of areas that I know people have and are willing to use. I guess I want to help create a forum where the holy spirit is really allowed to act. I want to see that feather loosed from it's bindings and set free to blow where it should.

Who do you see this event being aimed at?

Everyone! There was a majority of late teens/early twenties at the first event. In fact, a thirty something was heard to have muttered that they felt old, but I want to stress that this is not a youth event. This is aimed at everyone in the church family who wants to have space to chill out with God and see their worship life developed and transformed. The bible tells us that worship is a conscious act of will - even when we don't feel that it's our cup of tea. That's why I want us to try some different things because it is all worship. I hope this event will give us the freedom to recognise that.