Blue Ocean Faith cont.

Thinking about Oxygen as a reinvention of church; I am not sure it is. It's still church, in the same confines of traditional Sunday morning church. If you boil it down, we're just unplugging some elements and plugging in some new ones.

The traditional model of church is based around two main elements, worship (singing) and the sermon. Interspersed around these are notices, promotions, offerings and prayer. I think it's more or less the same no matter which church you go to. These elements may appear in a different order, but they're all the same.

Oxygen has gotten rid of most of these; no singing as worship, no notices or promotions, the offering is not mentioned aside from in the welcome PowerPoint and there are no other 'sales pitches'.

We purposefully moved from Sunday to Friday and out of the main church building into the back hall to get away from any common perceptions that people (non-Christians) may have of church that may prevent them from coming. And we've shortened it, only because I think people want church to be shorter.

But does that constitute a reinvention? Is that Blue Ocean (see post below)?

I am finding this a really good question and a good way to qualify what we're doing. I would love to say we've reinvented church, but is that really possible?