For the notices, instead of having all the ‘important’ people reel off a bunch of information in a scripted manner, as they do at my church, someone just got up the front and asked if anyone had any notices, and a few people did. Including things like “come for lunch at my place after if you want”.

They have ‘bar stool’ - a segment where people can come and talk about things that are going on for them, or whatever, then at the end somebody prays about whatever was raised. I guess one might worry that this kind of thing would get usurped by the people who like to talk about themselves a lot, but it seems to work for Ilam, and people have a good sense about which things are worth taking up everyone’s time over (hm, that maybe sounds a bit callous, but hopefully you know what I mean).

After the sermon, the pastor said “Ok, that’s what I think; what do you guys think?” then gave the congregation the chance to respond with any further thoughts, queries or scruples about what he’d said, and some interesting issues were raised. Again, it didn’t turn into a free-for-all; everyone seemed to be sensitive to the fact that this wasn’t the occasion for getting on their own bandwagon, and I guess they have small groups for discussing things more in-depth. But I thought it was a really good way of showing some respect for the congregation and making it a communal discussion rather than just a performance.

Obviously these things would be more difficult in a larger church. There would have been maybe 80-100 people in the room.