update
Written by james   
Saturday, 07 November 2009

an evening of dancing, singing, worshipping Jesus, prayer, meditation and sharing all within a flow of dance music - trance & house

Hi - we stopped in 2007 for various reasons, but it's 2009 and some Christian DJ's have started meeting in Bristol to pray and consider starting up something new.
Facebook group - Revelation DJ led worship - should keep you informed

VJ James Bragg leading worship and visuals
with Tony "The Psalmist" Silcock DJing

our passion has been electronic music, dancing to beat music and coming into the presence of God through worship. we decided we wanted to combine these three things and enjoy dancing in God's presence.

we have put together a set of well known christian congregational songs with a backing of electronic dance music. it is led by a  DJ via twin decks with live singers. during these evenings we have mixed this with christian dance music but also secular chart dance music as there is great creativity in a lot of it and much is surprisingly sympathetic to worship.  this is not particularly a youth event, more of an experiment in worship - all ages welcome.

We restarted this event 2003 in november and have been meeting monthly since then. It has been very exciting with a great atmosphere as a small number of us have met for an hour and a half, and worshipped Jesus, singing and dancing before our Lord. It has been freeing - people have come who are not used to dancing and relaxed and joined in. People who love dancing have released themselves fully into it. We have had wild dancing of praise, sung words of love to Jesus, meditations on Jesus' beauty mixed with chill-out tracks, prayer and prophetic sharing.
 
Over the last year we have done some larger joint events with Hope Chapel another church in Bristol. This has combined various DJ's together, shared the work and pooled the creativity. We have developed the visuals further from simple powerpoint slides to VJing with live videos and images manipulated to the beats.
 
August 2006 we led a worship set at Greenbelt on stage 2. This went very well with the people really getting what we were about. Crossrhythms review as below.

REVELATION - Stage 2 - 11.20am
Having not consulted my programme I wondered into the Stage 2 room having not the faintest idea who or what Revelation were but half expecting some ear-splitting rock. But then revelation struck. (Okay, no more obvious quips.) There hunched over the turntables were James Bragg, a doctor of medicine who down in darkest Bristol has been pioneering club music worship for many a long year, and Tony 'The Psalmist' Silcock, whose album production work and work with gone-but-not-forgotten Psalmistry has contributed much to the UK scene. With a charming female singer supplying the vocals the Revelation team ably transformed a couple of well known worship choruses into house music whoop ups which thankfully displayed none (or little) of the cheesiness that blighted many of those Nitro Praise albums of yesteryear. The DJ and VJ mixed the vibrant, slightly psychedelic graphics onto a screen at the back of the stage. The set progressed into some Andy Hunter and other chart friendly dance anthems, all with a clear theme of intimacy with the Lord. I have never appreciated DJ-led worship as much as I did during the Revelation set. They were worshipping God themselves and it made a great difference. Their set left me refreshed. I really valued the way they didn't feel the need to yell at me constantly, but the only spoken words they used were Scripture. Amen to that.
Dave Griffiths

Also at a recent Revelation evening my wife Fran came along and this is notes written from her experience of worshipping God within this meeting through the music dance and visuals.

Go with the flow - the flow of the Holy Spirit
Make this moment last - live for the moment, not striving to reach some other point
Swirling with the picture, coffee
 Zig-zag lines - like cycling along, struggling a bit, head down, looking at the zig-zags on the road. Use every moment - pray, watch, think, whatever
Flop into the beat. Hear the beat of my heart this strongly all the time
If you said jump, I'd jump for joy
Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart
You are the Lord of the dance
Shake out all the tension
Where's your head at? Is that the problem?
I have always felt like I do go with the flow too much, no choice, no responsibility, But that is the flow of the world
I also feel that I am always fighting, my body, my moods, not going with the flow of myself, my body. Everything is a struggle, a duty, an expectation, a test
Maybe I am like a salmon swimming up the river, with all the rest, but against the river?
But God knows what I need to do, to care for my family. I can rest in that, not worry I will be swept off somewhere irresponsible.
I turn to you. Through the pain and despair. Through all these dilemmas, I assume the way through is to learn to live with God properly.
Breathe on me, put your life, your, Spirit, in me
The insistent beat is now like someone performing heart massage, thump, thump, thump ....... Bring me back to life, new life, new living.
Now rest. I have often imagined myself in a crumpled heap at Jesus' feet, like I have no bones holding me up, that he wants to be my skeleton and I don't have to hold myself together, upright. But I cannot sit down, I persist in standing. Why? I am not embarrassed, I haven't been embarrassed through all the dancing. I just can't accept that I don't have to stand up, that I can slump on the floor, rest, sleep. Eventually I can.

We would be pleased to hear of other such projects happening around England or the rest of the world, but are not aware of their existence. We have music to share if you are out there
Last Updated ( Saturday, 07 November 2009 )