Ministry Corner: Interview with Mark Pierson
Tell us about yourself and the work you do?
I was born and grew up in Levin, part of a non-Christian family. I now live in Auckland in an extended family household with three generations of children and grandchildren. I’m lead pastor and curator with Rhythms of Grace church, currently meeting in the Undercroft of Holy Trinity Cathedral.
What influenced your desire to become a curator of art installation-based worship?
Because of not having grown in up in church culture, I’ve always felt a bit separate from it; objective, critical. That perspective has led me to always wonder and question what we’re doing; to find if there’s better ways of doing it. I don’t have any idea where these interests came from at all. Mine wasn’t an artistic family. There was no art in Levin anyway!
I don’t much like to sing, and I developed the worship curator model[1] partly to describe how worship might be put together with a minimum of such and a greater emphasis on the visual. I discovered there were others like me. I’ve been influenced by the church communities I’ve been part of, and pastoral ministry training at Baptist Theological College. Living there for four years was important – for the study and the questions it taught me to ask; also for the relationships I made there, particularly with Mike Riddell. Those and other relationships have continued to sustain me on the journey of creativity. Mike and I explored a lot of new ways to curate worship through Parallel Universe.
We were working from two ground-zero questions. One was, what on earth is the church here for? And in particular the specific church I am part of. I still think it’s a vital question most churches can’t answer. And secondly, what kind of worship life would be helpful to expose my friends to who weren’t yet Christian? Those questions continue to drive me.
My first real awareness of having those questions goes back to a high school reunion at Horowhenua College in Levin, about 1990. I wrote about it in “The Prodigal Project.”[2] There I met a lot of friends who weren’t Christian, but were on spiritual journeys. I drove home in tears, thinking, if I took any of them to the church I was part of, I don’t think it would be helpful for them in their searching. That was a really significant moment for me, and set me on this pilgrimage.
It was a dissatisfaction and wondering, and then only in retrospect realising that God had called me to be part of the solution. Part of that sense was, artists are important. Not the arts as such, but artists as people.
So artists are important in church life and in the Body of Christ?
It’s broader than that. Artists are important to the wellbeing of humanity. Therefore, as the church is primarily interested in the wellbeing of humanity, artists must then be important to the church.
It’s not about ‘using’ artists. It’s for the church community to be a community that nurtures all forms of creativity. It goes back to its medieval role of being a patron of artists; a sustainer of artists. The church must be able to nurture all people across the board, but I think at this time in history we need a particular focus on sustaining artists. The church has a bit of a track record of being abusive to people. That goes beyond artists, but I want to try to redeem some of that abuse and hurt.
The description of my role with Rhythms of Grace is that “I curate contexts – structured and ambient spaces – built around practices that offer people the potential for liminal moments of individual and communal transformational engagement with the Trinitarian community of God.” I see that as the main purpose of the church – sustaining people who are part of that community in their following of Jesus in their world. I think anything beyond that is peripheral.
Rhythms of Grace is built around people taking responsibility for their own spiritual formation, and us providing a context, in which they might do that. Rather than being a place that provides activities under the name of God. Otherwise, I think the church won’t survive the situation we are in at the moment. People have so much anxiety about Putin and nuclear war, climate change and the pandemic. And that is reasonable anxiety. Its justified. We need to provide an active solution for that, that’s more than words. It’s a way of living. “Trust in Jesus. Jesus is alive”. It’s true, but it doesn’t help a fourteen-year-old girl worried about the destruction of the planet or her body image. If the church can’t provide a community where the fourteen-year-old girl, and every other person, can grow in their relationship with God and flourish, then we’re just getting in the way. It’s about curating a space: a space with “the potential for liminal moments of engagement with the Trinitarian God.”
How are artists part of this vision for you?
Artists are the prophets of today. That makes them uncomfortable for many of us, particularly those of us in church leadership. They might bring some art along, or be involved in an art exhibition in a gallery in the secular world and show something we’re not happy with. So we put them aside. We don’t put the same scrutiny on others. Artists somehow have been put in a place where they’re subject to much more criticism. Artists have been unsupported for so long; poorly acknowledged by the church. We need artists more than ever because they reflect back to us what we are doing and what’s going on in our world. They open us up to hearing from God in ways nothing else does. I think their voice is vital at the moment.
So is there a relationship between artists and the liminal moments that church worship could provide?
Very definitely. At Rhythms of Grace we do a lot with cups of tea. We’ve developed a thing called Tea & Be, which is about being rather than doing. We’ve served several thousand people over the last few years. We recently developed a Tea & Be Communion service. At Easter someone wrote a poem and left it in the space. Part of it said they’d taken their hand towel – part of the service involves washing your hands as a symbol of being prepared for what God has for you – away with them as a reminder of what God had spoken to them about that night. That’s a work of art in my very broad definition, coming out of a liminal moment of engagement with God.
Through this church year we’ve commissioned a perfumier, Juanita Madden, to create a fragrance for each of the high points of the Christian year – for Ash Wednesday, Easter Sunday, and Pentecost now. She’s an artist who rarely gets to do anything in a worship context.
What would be your heart for worship in other churches? What would you hope for them?
I’m passionate about the local church and its critical role in the shaping of our culture and society in this uncertain future. I think it will be the small churches that do that. I’m passionate about small and medium sized churches. My heart for the church in New Zealand is that we would ask the question first of all, why do we worship on a Sunday? James K. A. Smith says that in the Christian church our hearts and desires should be shaped after the Kingdom of God. The main way we do that is through our worship. My heart would be that the churches in New Zealand would ask the question, what are we wanting to achieve in our worship? What outcome do we want? Then, how can we move toward doing that? We rarely ask that question, and if we do, we answer it in general ways, such as to bring glory to God. What does that mean?
I think what brings glory to God is increasing numbers of people flourishing, reflecting the image of God that they were created to be, and living that out in the anxiety-ridden culture and society we have. Then I think we would change the society – not with words but with who we are. That’s my passion – for the church of New Zealand to ask that question, and then to answer it with the style, shape, content, and substance of their worship. That’s the main place we will see people change and flourish.
Each church community will have a different style, but has as its goal the aim of sustaining the particular people who are part of that church community in their following of Christ in the world. That’s my heart.
What’s one resource people could go to?
People could go to my own writings. I still do! “The Art of Curating Worship.” Also, you need to understand who you are as a person in leadership, so you can bring change that is gentle, pastoral, and compassionate to people. It’s not about wading in with your new vision, but moving a community along together. It takes years. For this I’d always recommend Ruth Haley Barton’s writings on discernment and spiritual growth in leadership.
Where is the sense of satisfaction in this for you?
The satisfaction is seeing people grow in the depth and breadth of their relationship with God. That’s what keeps me going. It’s the little comments – like the person who wrote about taking their hand towel away as a reminder of what God had spoken to them about. That’s what sustains me, knowing that God is speaking and changing people; and my own pilgrimage of growing and deepening my relationship with God – learning to be before I do.
What’s a particular challenge for you?
The challenge is that I’m getting older now, and I’d like to find younger people who share this vision. As a local church pastor, the challenge for me is the same that faces every church in New Zealand – what does church look like in this post-pandemic, Ukraine war, climate-crisis world? I’m frightened by hearing so many church leaders say they can’t wait to get back to normal. It’s never going to be “normal” again. It requires us listening to our artists. What is the church community going to look like that has something to offer to the people outside our churches who are absolutely struggling? That’s the challenge for me.
What sustains you in this?
My understanding of humanity and of my relationship with God. Flourishing under God is absolutely critical for me, and for my community. Part of that is the difference between being and doing. I say that God doesn’t care about what we do – that’s my over-emphasis – God cares about who we are becoming and our being. That’s what sustains me – working at that deeper love relationship with God through Jesus Christ, to flourish as a human being created in the image of God. Knowing that God created me like that and I’m on this pilgrimage to becoming who God wants me to be. Out of that comes my doing. The gorgeous Rhythms of Grace community sustains me in doing that and by graciously allowing me to be myself.
What’s your future hope for the church in its worship?
My daily hope is that the church in New Zealand will influence the church globally to be a community that sustains people in their flourishing as human beings. That’s a present hope that stretches into the future.
Thank you Mark for sharing your vision for this. It’s been inspiring. We wish you well on your creative journey.
Mark can be contacted at mark@markpierson.org.nz.
[1] Mark Pierson, The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of the Worship Leader, (Minneapolis, MN: Sparkhouse Press), 2010.
[2]Cathy Kirkpatrick, Mike Riddell and Mark Pierson, The Prodigal Project - Journey into the Emerging Church (London, United Kingdom: SPCK), 2000.