 Visions Pocket Liturgies is a collection of prayers, meditations and liturgies from alternative worship community Visions in York put together by Sue Wallace. Words are just one aspect of their worship. If you visited in York you would also discover images, smells, video loops, music, creative prayer installations and some coffee and cake at the back. Today you’ll have to put on your own coffee and bake your own cake. But we hope that you can take something from here and remix, recycle and use it in your own journey of faith to touch the Source of all our life, love and laughter. We have tried to persuade Visions to add to the Pocket Liturgies collection for a few years so we are delighted that the book is finally here. As with the other books in the series this is truly liturgy as the work of the people as it has emerged out of the life of a community.
 Jonny Baker has a new book out - Curating Worship. Curation is a term usually used in the art world for the role of imagining and overseeing an exhibition or art experience. However the word has been adopted by people in alternative worship for several years. It gives a very different way of approaching and thinking about how to lead worship to the usual models of up front president or band leader. It is in two parts. The first considers what is involved in curation. The second is a series of interviews with people who have curated amazing worship experiences teasing out some of the thinking and creative processes involved. It's published by spck and as such we only have it available as a physical product and not as a download.
 Landskapes is the latest album from Grace, an alternative worship community in London. We uploaded the downloads a couple of months back but Grace have just brought out a physical CD. It's the first one of those we have done on proost for a while! It's beautifully packaged up in a foldout cardboard sleeve with a 12 page photo booklet, definitely something you don't get with a download. The CD is only £7.99. The album captures the electronic sounds of Grace and journeys through ambient to electronica to DnB, dubstep and back to ambient. It flows well from track to track with Dubb's spoken word on two tracks creating a great contrast to the mainly instrumental feel. It follows in a line of classic alternative worship albums that have come out of the Grace community over the years - Grace, Labyrinth Meditations, Eucharist, and Spirit of the New. But it is a turn in a new direction with mainly instrumental tracks, spoken samples and one song - a DnB remix of Agents of Future. Rather than the usual Baker/Birch creation it's Grace DJ and producer Matt Stevenson's debut. In many ways it's is truer to the DJ'd soundscape you are likely to encounter at Grace in the worship or in the café. We think you're going to love it...
 Our Child is a series of personal conversations betweeen David Muir and God. They are written when David is gong through a difficult period in his life. Unusually they address God and hear from God in Their plurality. We often talk about God as Trinity and Community but here David articulates it in language.
We have added Come Home, the second interactive experience this year, that was originally published in kit format in the US with Group Publishing but the rights have now returned to proost so we have made them available as downloads.
Come Home is an interactive worship experience that helps participants recognize and experience God’s presence in the ordinary and extraordinary events of their daily lives. It isn’t a linear service; it’s more of a journey that participants take at their own pace. It's based around setting up four rooms or spaces each expressing a different theme.
 We're having a great response to Pádraig Ó Tuama's debut album Hymns To Swear By blends poetry, spoken word and song in an achingly beautiful way. Many of the poems and songs have been spoken and sung in the context of Ikon in Belfast. They mix prayer and longing and raging in mystical fashion. The album is stripped back with just voice or voice and guitar which somehow makes it all the more potent. It includes an acoustic version of Yearn from Ikon's Dubh. This is how Pádraig describes it in his sleeve notes...
"Many of these words and singings grew out of invitations to write from Ikon and other Conspiracies. Thanks. They also grew out of darkness - godonlyknows who’s to thank or blame for that. They grew out of goodness and kindness of people too - were I to name names, I’d be naming names for many years. These are Hymns to swear by."
You can listen to samples from all the tracks on these albums in the media player (the top right hand window - select audio).
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Proost xxx
P.S. Freebies is still running - click on the image below if you'd like a taster of proost for free including a free track from both of these albums.
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