by Jonny Baker
In small mission communities or cells part of the adventure is finding ways to pray and fuel one another’s faith. But many of the ways of worshipping in a larger congregation simply don’t translate. Hopefully through Anglican Cell UK we can share ideas and resources for prayer, worship and spirituality that do work well in smaller groups.

Conversation, sharing bread and wine round the meal table, listening to a music track, informal prayer, taking part in a simple creative activity or ritual, using liturgies, drawing on the practices of contemplative prayer, watching a video on a tv, and pinching ideas from alternative worship groups are some of the things I’ve found work well. Unless you have a particularly musical group, singing always seems to dive bomb in a small group!

Proost is a small creative company that I set up about ten years ago with two friends. It began as a record label but this summer we gave it a total revamp branching out into publishing short movies and books as well as music. And we have shifted so that the content is all downloadable from a new web site.

There’s lots that could work really well in a small group. The movies are short films of 3-4 minutes. Follow Jesus’ journey into the wilderness with Si Smith’s 40 or Jesus’ journey to the cross with Jon Birch’s manga style Twelve Stations animation. The quality of the artistry is superb and several have an appeal that runs across all ages. The latest addition (we add new content each month) is 25 comic pages telling the Christmas story with accompanying digital advent calendar and cardboard cut out models for each day of advent. These are great fun.

The Pocket Liturgies series capture the liturgies of communities such as Grace in London or Sanctuary in Bath and lots of the prayers and reflections will translate well. Mark Berry in Telford has written one of the books Navigatio, all of which has come out of their small group gatherings round the meal table on a Thursday night.

There is a media player integrated into the proost web site so that you can listen to samples of all music tracks and watch clips from all the movies. The content is now fully downloadable. You can access it and buy it when you see something you like but the simplest way is to subscribe. It’s incredible value at £60 a year which gives you access to all the back catalogue as well as new downloadable content which will be added each month.

When you subscribe, enter the coupon code PRSUBACUK and you will receive a 10% discount!
Visit proost at www.proost.co.uk