All things Campfire…
We decided that with our new album Campfire we didn’t want to just create an album but also a movement to call people into something new and costly in their walk with God and with one another. So we created the “Campfire Resource Pack”. Its free and available to download from our main website page. We highly recommend it and invite you to join us in charting new paths for the Glory of God. Here are some extracts from it… (we hope you are inspired and challenged!)
The heart of our Campfire album was to paint an alternative picture of what church can be. We LOVE the church.(If you don’t love the church, you have no business leading Her in worship). We love the streams of the modern church that pursue excellence and bring an offering that seeks to reflect the grandeur of the God we worship. We serve often in this setting, because it is a valid and honourable way to approach Jesus.
But the beauty of church is that it champions unity while adamantly rejecting uniformity. While the “megachurch” models itself on the picture of God in His might, glory and holiness, the campfire model tries to reflect God in His incarnate form: something human, touchable, and humbly beautiful.
All this is to say that we don’t seek to re-imagine church community and worship because others are wrong, but rather because there is a variety of ways to be right. There are many angles from which to view the glory of our God.
We imagine church as a sharing of our stories, struggles, hearts and lives – as vulnerable as an open flame…
We imagine worship as intimate as the fireside, as warm as family and honest as a late night heart-to-heart…
We imagine mission as the ignition of God’s people as we huddle closely around the Consuming Fire…
There is a reason, beyond our Irish heritage, why we gravitate towards folk music in our collective. The folk movement has always run parallel to high-brow art (historically often found in the high-brow church!). It is music for the uninitiated – accessible to people from all walks of life, regardless of musical-ear. The only qualification for participation in this movement is a willingness to be real; willingness to sing songs of everyday trials and victories, in everyday language, with everyone who cares to join in. Is the folk music story, in its focus on community, honesty and inclusivity, a better story than the one contemporary worship sometimes tells? Can we change our story?
Don’t get me wrong, I love giant stacks of speakers as much as the next hairy folk-rocker, but they do have an unfortunate side-effect(beyond tinnitus!). They drown out the church – and the church singing in unison and unity is more powerful than any amplifier. This is the sound that sacked Jericho, ushered the Glory of God into the temple and has been making the darkness recoil and retreat ever since! There is power in our songs and proclamations that cannot be measured in decibels, but that might just shake Hell enough to register on the Richter scale down there! I don’t want to miss the encouragement of being surrounded by the heart-music of the warriors and priests of the Kingdom!
Campfire music, by contrast, is all about intimate, singalong vocals.
There is no point developing a cozy sense of family and community in Jesus’ name if we are to ignore His Great Commission to invite the lost into the Kingdom!
There is no point in inviting the lost into a so-called Christian community of back-biting, malice, ego and selfish agendas!
Let us love with a white-hot intensity, both within our gatherings, and when reaching out of them.
