Worship Trick 1 - A cloud of witnesses

It's the Uniting Church in Australia's 28th birthday this week. one of the reasons for getting into blogging was jonny's worship tricks so here's my first.

We're having a combined service on Sunday... so to add a bit of excitement to a "normal" church we're trying the following Mind you at midnight last night I was sure of the artistic merits but frustrated by the technical aspects - thank goodness for Kaz and Glenn.

We have a pulley system with a outlet in the roof about 2/3rd up the aisle (for raising and lowering the christmas star and cross at easter) . I attached 16m of bird netting (from hardware shops) from the rope to the top of the organ speakers (top back in a sort of verandah arragement).

As part of worship everyone will have slips of coloured paper on which to write names of people who have been witnesses to them, during worship - the passing of the peace sort of bit - we'll lower the birdnet "cloud" and invite people to weave their witnesses into it. Then we'll read Hebrews 12:1-4 and pull the cloud back up again - and stretch it across the sides to sort of cover the congregation.

so - surrounded by a cloud of witnesses

Also most of the groups associated with the congregation have made ohts and they're stuck on the windows to make temporary stained glass...and as part of the sending out i'm going to get people to turn the ohts around to face out instead of in

watch this space to see if it worked :-)