This is a guest blog from Sanderson Jones FRSA who along with Pippa Evans set up the Sunday Assembly. Sanderson blogs here about their plans for the next few months.
The Big Idea: Helping people live better, help often and wonder more through the Sunday Assembly
The Sunday Assembly is a godless congregation that celebrates life. Our mission: to help everyone find and fulfil their full potential. Our vision: a godless congregation in every town, city and village that wants one.
We are here for everyone who wants to:
- Live Better. We aim to provide inspiring, thought-provoking and practical ideas that help people to live the lives they want to lead and be the people they want to be
- Help Often. Assemblies are communities of action building lives of purpose, encouraging us all to help anyone who needs it to support each other
- Wonder More. Hearing talks, singing as one, listening to readings and even playing games helps us to connect with each other and the awesome world we live in.
Since 250 people turned up at our first Assembly in January 2013, in a run-down deconsecrated church in North London, we’ve discovered that there is a massive desire across the country to celebrate life. By June we had over 600 people in our congregation and thousands of people have reacted to our motto of live better, help often, wonder more. We will have 30 Assemblies started by the end of this year and around 1600 people across the world have asked for their own Assembly.
We’ve discovered that there is a massive desire across the country to celebrate life
Supported by RSA Catalyst, the Sunday Assembly is now going on a global tour called 40 Dates and 40 Nights: The Roadshow. The plan: to launch 40 Assemblies in 40 nights across the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. We’re going to 29 cities including Oxford, Milton Keynes, Manchester, Dublin, New York, Chicago, Washington, Nashville, Adelaide and Sydney. The roadshow will be a launch-pad for local Assemblies, allow us to meet the local teams, and demonstrate what goes down at an Assembly: basically all the best parts of church (but with no religion).
Ultimately, we want to reach the 300 million people across the world who have no religion, but to do that we need to get digital.
40 Dates & 40 Nights: The Roadshow is coinciding with a crowdfunding campaign to raise the start-up funds needed to get a global movement and organisation off the ground. We are raising the capital to create a custom-designed, digital platform that will allow the millions of people who believe in good to connect with other like-minded people, and build wonderful life-giving congregations.
It is quite impressive that we’ll start 30 Assemblies in our first year, but if we were to have a site like this we can help start thousands.
We want RSA Fellows to get involved as volunteers and speakers, and to connect us with community projects
We would love to speak to RSA Fellows about the Sunday Assembly. This is for three main reasons:
- To find people who would like to help organise a local Assembly
- To source inspiring speakers for the Sunday Assemblies themselves
- To find wonderful community action projects with which we could connect volunteers from our congregation. Each Assembly is going to be very focused on helping out in the community, so we'd love to hear from local community social enterprises and charities that are in need of volunteers or who could think of good partnerships.
Please watch our video below to find out more about our crowdfunding campaign. If the Sunday Assembly sounds interesting to you, I’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch.
Sanderson Jones
Visit the Sunday Assembly website or contact Sanderson on Twitter @sandersonjones or @SundayAssembly.
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** Aim high: 7 billion people, not a measly 300 million – invite everyone!**
Hi Sanderson and Pippa,
As a fellow atheist, as it were – interested in community, wonder, spirituality etc – I love what you’re doing.
However I really wanted to encourage you let everyone know that you’re open to all like-minded people: atheists or ‘believers’ (of various stripes).
I think you need to set an example of being as non-exclusionary as possible – everyone is invited!
It would be great, for instance, if you were open-minded enough to make links to the progressive ‘alternative service’ services and assemblies around the UK – invite those people along. The open-minded ones amongst them might well come (if they think you mean it): http://www.alternativeworship....
(My experience of one of those services, Vaux (in Vauxhall!) - http://www.smallfire.org/vauxp... - was of a rich, multi-sensory aesthetic experience – where I didn’t really stick out for being an atheist in their midst.)
They might be particularly attracted by ’40 dates & 40 nights’, given the Biblical symbolism!
The ‘alternative service’ folks apparently sometimes do things like setting up labyrinths. My (entirely unexpected!) experience when someone at a summer gathering I was at brought out a foldable labyrinth from his car boot (!) was rather astonishing – and nothing religious or theistic was involved.
At first, wandering his labyrinth, expecting nothing, I felt a wee bit silly and that this was a bit New Age/flaky for me… However by the time I’d slowly progressed into the centre and come out again my mind was somehow transformed (transported?) into some place where ancient archetypes, perhaps figures from Greek myth, were somehow alive and resonant in and around the people I was with. It was an amazing sense of deep - eternal? - connectedness to people,community, perhaps even the whole cosmos, who knows…
It really was a rather astonishing experience. No idea where it came from!
They mention some labyrinth resources here: http://www.alternativeworship....
Maybe you could even invite an alternative service group in to set up an (atheist!) labyrinth for everyone to experience?
This would really break down barriers – and unite communities. Word would get around that you’re friendly…
Anyway, that’s my point: I’d love it if you made an explicit effort to unite and invite everyone and break down the usual barriers that people seem to carry around in their heads etc – not set up yet another (mildly exclusionary) ghetto, even if a popular one…
I feel you’ve got a duty to be a whole lot more open than (some of the) theists! ;-)
Aim high: 7 billion people, not a measly 300 million..!
Matthew Mezey (writing in a personal capacity!)
(RSA Online Community Manager)
PS I just heard that the Brighton Sunday Assemly has been set up by a Christian - so hopefully all the barriers are coming down!
As a Christian I believe we were born to be in relationship with God and that we have a spiritual longing that will never be fulfilled through human relationships and activities. For those contemplating Sunday Assemblies can I ask if you have tried God?
I'm utterly astounded that the RSA is giving space to Sunday Assembly given the direction it is taking, asking for HALF A MILLION POUNDS to develop a global platform. Communities around the world do not need this. It is insulting. It is horrible cult of personality stuff.