Worship at Radford College

The Reverend Dr Katherine Rainger, Senior Chaplain | Radford College, ACT It was 9:00am, Wednesday morning, Week 10 of Term 1. The Secondary School Easter services were due to commence at 9:30am. I was setting up the gym where basketball practice had just finished. Due to COVID restrictions, building works and a forecast of rain the decision had been made the day before to move the service from outside on the lawns into the gym. One 30-minute service for 1300 students and staff was now two consecutive 20-minute services for 650 students and staff.

Three senior drama students who were playing Thomas, Mary Magdalene and Peter were busily warming up with extensive vocal and body exercises. Part of me wanted to ask them to get to the script and their actual lines but I left them to it. This very gifted and obliging trio independently blocked their performance in the new setting and ran through their lines, scripts in hand. When the services began Thomas, Mary and Peter ‘wowed’ the congregations. They inhabited the entire space. With movement and voice, they retold the Easter events from each first-person perspective in a way that was compelling and captivating. A choir and musicians shared music and song. Students shared poetry and dance. It was an evocative and poignant 20 minutes of multi-sensory liturgy. I had a sense of God’s presence and prayed a prayer of gratitude. This story is a familiar scenario to many of you, albeit with your own contextual nuances. When we talk about worship in our schools what is it that comes to mind for you? I share my experience above because it encompasses a few elements that I find repeated regularly at Radford College. We work with large congregations. Our congregations are multi-faceted and multi-aged. Many haven’t chosen to be there. We need to be flexible in terms of the spaces we use. There isn’t always a lot of time to practice. We have wonderful students and staff who share their talents in drama, dance, visual art, and music in profound and beautiful ways. At Radford College there are visible signs of worship taking place daily in chapel services, Godly Play, morning prayer for staff, interdisciplinary learning with prayer spaces, and whole College gatherings. At the same time, in terms of living into the call for worship as a defining

mark of identity and purpose, as The Reverend Dr Daniel Heischman advocates, there is an itch that needs to be scratched. Definitions of worship tend to involve an intentional orientation and openness towards God in a way that seeks to honour God. Is that what is happening when students come to chapel or staff hear a prayer at briefing? I am not the first to ask this question and won’t be the last. Andrew Stewart when he was Chaplain at Caulfield Grammar School responded to these questions in a previous ASA publication. Andrew talked about worship as “a person responding to God” and the challenges and opportunities that are posed.1 This second definition of worship begins to scratch the itch for me. As chaplains we prepare time and space to facilitate an encounter with God, a sense of the sacred and the opportunity to respond. At the same time the encounter and response are not up to us to assess or judge. We exercise trust in the love of God and respect the agency of students and colleagues. At Radford we have adapted the Anglican Schools Australia poster, ‘What does it mean to be an Anglican School.’ We chose the word ‘gathering’ rather than ‘worship’ to communicate this part of our common life. We did this because we wanted to acknowledge the experience of all who take part. While students do speak about connecting with God in chapel, the sense of belonging and connection with each other is something many students attest to when describing chapel services. The artwork in the poster by Wiradjuri artist Duncan Smith, hangs in our chapel a place where students gather regularly. The painting symbolises the ‘scar tree’ of the cross of Christ, human beings, animals, the earth, and the Radford community with the handprints of Radford staff and students included in the painting. The eagle is a symbol in Indigenous and Christian spirituality. The nature and form of our gatherings at Radford, both the regular gatherings and the gatherings that mark special occasions and rites, are part of our purpose and identity. We do not shy away from naming the reality of God in our midst, discerning where God is at work amongst us and beyond us as we learn about, engage and serve the world around us. Is the use of the word gathering a watering down of worship? Perhaps. But I also know that Christianity is not only a set of beliefs and practices. Christianity is the formation of a new community where barriers are broken down and unity in diversity flourishes. We take every opportunity for our gatherings to shape and enhance the life of our community as well as facilitating the chance for encounter and response. The church calendar including the Season of Creation and the school calendar with events such as National Reconciliation Week and Book Week provide much scope with which to engage. I was chuffed that in the one rehearsal we’d had prior to the Secondary Easter services the senior drama students had commented that the material was good to work with and they had some great lines. Often so much of what we do is receiving what is on offer, whether that be Scripture or the Storytellers who will embody it, and allowing them to do the work of communicating Good News. Stephen Cottrell writes, “God is in Jesus, and therefore our humanity is joined to God and God is joined to us. Our flesh and blood humanity, and everything that it means to be human, is known by God. Jesus has become a meeting point, a place of union between humanity and God, between what we call heaven and what we know to be earth. And in that story of dying and rising, even life and death are brought together.”2 This ‘meeting point’ of God in Jesus is a space of invitation and transformation where there is room for everyone and a vision of abundant life for all. Through believing, thinking, welcoming, serving and in particular, gathering the invitation to participate in this “meeting point” is joyfully extended.

1Stephen Cottrell, Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World: Hodder & Stoughton, 2021. 2Stephen Cottrell, Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World: Hodder & Stoughton, 2021, p.63.