Church as resource: you can walk away.

small ritual: the culture of work and after: I'm finding Steve Collins's thoughts of late very stimulating and 'amen-able'. He's said some really helpful stuff about work culture and the other day posted a bit more including these coments.
"a lot of my stuff is about ideas of church as resource, as refuge, as a space that will not co-opt you into another form of work for having stepped through its doors."
Relating this to the concern over work etc I think is important. When I was leading worship at Bradford University/College Anglican chaplaincy, I realised that getting lot's of people to sign up for helping out on a regular basis was not really going to work. So the model switched from the 'traditional' altWorship one of the art collective to the participatory event where the leaders' job was to provide a framework for others to 'play' within. Like old fashioned church in that the leaders have most control over the framework but not like it in that the participants really did participate and it could change quite radically as a result. I actually think that this model has a lot going for it in a time/energy-pressured sub-culture.

Then there's a devastating throw away line:
"I think letting people walk away is the new evangelism"
Absolutley -it's the Jesus way: Christ told parables without explaining what they meant -just left them ticking away in people's minds like mind-bombs; he 'failed' to follow up healings properly; just let the healed go away healed; he even seemed to go in for a bit of crowd culling at one or two points...