Sunday Night Live!

The story so far…

Sunday Night Live! is the Sunday Night Service held at Warilla Baptist Church, a fellowship of Shellharbour City Baptist Church in Shellharbour City, located just south of Wollongong, some 80 kilometres south of Sydney. Shellharbour City Baptist Church is a multi-fellowship church with three church fellowships meeting in three different areas of the city but combining together at least once a term for a combined celebration service. SNL strives to be the fourth fellowship.

The story of Sunday Night Live! has it's Genesis with the Greg Laurie led Harvest Crusade that was held in Wollongong 25th - 28th May 2000 at the Wollongong Entertainment Centre. Hoping to be able to catch any new converts and to pick up on the excitement generated by the Harvest Crusade, Michelle Meares with her husband Wayne, Youth Group coordinators with the SCBC Youth Group at Warilla, approached Lloyd Ollerenshaw, senior Pastor at SCBC with the idea of restarting a Sunday night service for new converts and young people. Sunday night services had not been held at Warilla for some years after support for a café style service waned.

With Lloyd's blessing a meeting was held for those interested and from that meeting a small committee was established to plan the service. Sandra Kay, Judy Dyble, Gail and Rob Thomson joined Wayne and Michelle, with pastoral oversight from Lloyd and Brian Pember, assistant pastor at SCBC. From the start it was decided to try and do something different, church for people who hadn't been to church or for people who only thought of church as what happened on Sunday mornings. Research on the Internet uncovered the Gathering at Casas Adobes Baptist Church in Tuscon, Arizona who were producing a non-bulletin handout which they dubbed the tossaway. Rob decided to produce our own version, which was to be called the tossit, utilising some of the work of Dann Niegocki, who wrote the small.txt articles for the tossaway. The first issue of the tossit picked up the theme of the Harvest crusade and featured combine harvesters on the cover. Since then the tossits have continued to evolve, with a statement of who we are and what we do, a basic programme - always subject to change! - and the odd cartoon or verse from the Bible. On the back is the small.txt which tends to be a little tidbit of insight about spiritual things, not in the way we normally think of when we think of what the "church" is -- it is a sincere look at what we believe and why we do. The tossits have become progressively media rich, which basically just means they have lots of pictures culled from the Internet!

The band has ended up with a name - salt'n'light. This elegantly combines the SNL initials of Sunday Night Live! with the Biblical instruction for us to be salt and light to the world. The basic programme sees us start with a few songs with salt'n'light, then what we've termed the appetizer which can be either prayer - usually done in small groups; communion; an interview with a 'celebrity' (one of the older members of the church); or a sharing time. Then there may be another song or two (or maybe not) and then the Main Course which can be anything from a multimedia liturgy to a sermon, or a yarn, or some interactive exploration of who we are. There may be a song to close depending on what has gone before. We also allow for an offering. We finish with the Third Course which is either coffee and tea and soft drinks with chocolates and other stuff bought from a 'canteen' at the rear of the church or a shared pizza. We hope to develop a café style after church meal to encourage people to hang around and chat. We recently had Passover at SNL, sitting on the floor with two folded trestle tables to carry all the food. We used lots of candles to light the space and for the meal part had roast lamb in pita bread with gravy!

After having officially started Sunday Night Live! (not the greatest name we admit but it does the job for now!) back on June 4, 2000 we have run every Sunday Night since then apart from occasions such as Christmas, New Year, and combined services with the other churches in Shellharbour City Baptist Church. The basic aim of SNL was to be a service where we could experiment with what constitutes 'church' and to try and discover a style of doing church that would appeal to the youth group and people who were looking at church for the first time or who hadn't been to church for ages. To do that we've researched the alt.worship scene in the UK and looked at what people like the gathering at Casas were doing. Unlike in the UK there is no real club culture we can draw on for inspiration. This tends to rule out the dance music led rave style type of alt.worship. We have tried the ambient style of music and that has worked in a liturgical service. Liturgy is something Baptist churches in NSW don't normally do so it was interesting to see it work at SNL. Our numbers tend to be around 20 although we have got to 42 on one occasion. Having our own band (playing fairly 'up' songs) has allowed some of the Youth Group to develop their talents either playing or singing and leading worship. We are conscious of not trying to overload the small group who lead SNL and try to involve as many of the members of SNL as we can in doing stuff. However, we also acknowledge that not everyone is cut out to be "out front", so the committee does tend to do a fair bit. Knowing that other groups around the world are trying this stuff and succeeding is of great encouragement to us. We have found out that not many are trying to do what we do on a week by week basis, and while that may mean we can't do the big production numbers we can slip a reasonable sized production in every now and then. We have recently put on a Labyrinth service and an outdoor Fire service, both to great success and encouragement.

It's exciting to see how SNL has been evolving since it began. It is gaining it's own identity and groove and the people who do come really seem to enjoy worshipping there. In one way we'd like some of the more established people who come to SCBC to come along and experience what SNL is like, but at the same time we acknowledge that what we are doing isn't for everyone. We have recently purchased "The Prodigal Project" a book and CDROM by Mike Riddell, Mike Pierson and Cathy Kirkpatrick. The Prodigal Project argues passionately that we need to revitalise our worship, our spirituality and our theology if the church is to remain faithful in the third millennium. The ideas and resources contained in the Project explode into spectacular life when viewed on the accompanying CDROM, which contains music, video, animations and extras. This is much more than a book; it is a beginning. We hope to be able to use some of the ideas from the book and CDROM to help make SNL the sort of church that makes sense to those living in the 21st Century.

We'd appreciate your prayers for Sunday Night Live! as it continues to evolve and seeks to do church differently. The following appears as a kind of statement of belief in the tossit each week. It's who we are, it's what we do and at the end of the day no-one stands alone - we are here for each other, to try and be the "best me" each of us can be, whatever it takes!

WHAT WE ARE:
a gathering together of people who love God and want to celebrate Life with Him
WHAT WE DO:
- search - teach - worship - pray - serve - give -
THE BOTTOM LINE:
no-one stands alone - Whatever it Takes!