Claiming holy ground

One hundred people or so gathered in one place to worship in Liverpool. So what? Is this news? It was not what they did that is different but how they did it.



This gathering was called a 'flash mob,' a group of people who plan a "spontaneous" or improvised event where people don't expect middle of a shopping mall in Liverpool, England. Think of "improv everywhere" who did this version of a flash mob:



Bishop David Thomson, Bishop of Huntingdon (England) describes a "flash mob" for the rest of us on his blog "On Holy Ground:"

A flash mob, for oldies like me, is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, organized by texts or the like, and perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. Last Saturday the group dream - re-imagining worship brought together a group of mainly young people for an act of worship in Liverpool One Shopping Centre.

As described on the website "Dream: re-imagining church" here is what happened.

We began scattered among the shoppers. At the signal, we all stopped and took off our shoes ... an ancient sign that this is "holy ground". God lives in shopping malls as well as churches!
We then made out way to the park at the centre of the mall where we sat together to form a cross ... and prayed silently for a few minutes. We remembered Easter and the cross. We prayed for the current economic situation ... for those who have lost jobs ... and for God's blessing on our city ... we prayed for hope.

Ruth Gledhill writes:

This is thought to be the first time 'flash mob' has been used to generate a 'random' act of Christian worship. It took place last Saturday at Liverpool One Shopping Centre....

...Stuart Haynes from the Liverpool diocese told me more: 'It was the brain child of one of our Pioneer Ministers, Richard White, who has taken the idea from the flash mob events and tried to use it in a worship concept. The idea was planned via a Facebook site called Guerilla Worship. Richard led the discussion with a whole range of people bringing ideas together for what to do. They settled on an event at 4pm on the 4th April in the Liverpool One Shopping centre in the heart of the city. About a hundred participants came together - milled around in the centre – and then at a prearranged signal, the umbrella in the video took their shoes off and gathered in the parkland. The symbolism was to reclaim the area as Holy Ground – hence the removal of shoes. They prayed for the city, for the current crisis and released a balloon to symbolize the prayers going to God. The group wanted to create a talking point in the city and to catch the attention of passers by as well as creating the video which we now hope to go viral on the internet. It is experimental but was a success and the group plan more events in the future. The minister behind all this – Richard White – is an ordained Anglican minister working to create network church. The dream network aims to reach out into new communities and the online world.'

Over at Preludium, Mark Harris says:

I thought it was great. What's with taking off the shoes? What did people think? Etc.

And then he plays around with his own imagining of how flash evangelism might look.

The idea of gathering Christians in one place is not new. The idea of Evangelism is not new. Even the idea of praying in public is not so new. The innovative thing here is that is that public "spontaneous" act of worship in an unexpected place is an act that is designed to intrude or at least break up the rush and reactivity of daily life and call attention to the Gospel in a way that poses more questions and suggests, but does not force, answers.

It shows us how community, worship and evangelism can happen outside of the settings we have come to expect.