Student team develops all-age college worship and prayer gathering

At the start of the 2017-18 college year, our Student Exec commissioned ordinand Joe Knight to work with a team of students to create a new gathering called ‘The Light Experiment’ for a worship and prayer experience in which everyone in the larger Trinity community could participate. ‘We wanted to come together in a creative space where we could love God together,’ Joe explains.

The three outdoor evening gatherings in November 2017,  February 2018, and April 2018 incorporated aspects of drama, the arts, visuals, multi sensory experiences, and different forms of light while telling the stories of Creation, God calling his people out from Egypt, and the resurrected Jesus restoring and commissioning Peter. ‘There was a flow to the story told over the whole year,’ Joe says. ‘We only did three but it felt significant—we were telling God’s story through light.’

‘The Light Experiment has quite a strong social dynamic to it, as a kind of “holy social” event,’ says team member Ben Coulter. ‘It is about being in community in a prayerful environment stimulated through entering into biblical story in drama and art, with different forms of light and colour. It sort of sits somewhere between a familiar worship service in the chapel or in church and a community social event.’

The Light Experiment team has received strongly positive feedback from those who’ve participated, saying how this has been a space for everyone, whether adults or children, single or married, to feel welcomed and able to meet with God as they are. The gatherings will continue to evolve in the next academic year: ‘It will still be an experiment.’ says Ben.