From a basement studio in Bath, JONNY BAKER and his associate Jon Birch have turned out some of the most radical albums in the whole field of worship. Mike Rimmer reports.

The idea of a labyrinth is an old one and found in the stonework of cathedral floors. The most famous one is in Chartres Cathedral. However there is still some discussion as to what they were used for. It's only in recent years that there's been a renewed interest in labyrinths and they have become a place of pilgrimage. It is thought that candidates for baptism and confirmation would walk the labyrinth. Jonny expands, "In medieval times candidates for baptism and confirmation would all get done on Easter Sunday. That was the big day for getting confirmed and Lent was really a time for preparation and discipleship. On the eve of their baptism and confirmation, they would walk the labyrinth as a means of the final bit of preparation, a kind of prayer journey. Another view is that monks would use it as a way of prayer. They would crawl on their knees round the labyrinth for an hour in true monk style!"

One of the things that Labyrinth allows people to do is to stop for a significant period of time and meditate and pray - something that we're not always very good at doing. The process of going through the labyrinth, following the instructions, shutting out the rest of the world and engaging in physical activities that help us focus spiritually can only be a good thing. "I think you're absolutely right!" Jonny shares. "If you told people to pray for an hour, a lot of people's minds would wander and they wouldn't know what to do. Whereas what the Labyrinth does, is give people an hour or longer even, of focussed prayer, space to be with God and your mind doesn't wander. It's focussed but within that, there's a lot of space. So I think that's very powerful for people. Where we first set it up in London, obviously pace of life and busyness of life, the luxury of that hour of slowing down is brilliant. My hunch is that if you took people's heart rate before and after doing it, there'd be a significant change! But we've never tried that."

When Jonny and his team established the Labyrinth in London, they set up a guest book for participants to sign and give feedback. Jonny reports, "There are always lots of comments like 'I feel really peaceful', 'The sense of quietening down', 'Brilliant to be with God' or whatever. But one of the places where we ran it that was the most exciting was in Feltham Young Offenders Institute for young lads who are on remand or are awaiting trial. Only a certain number of them could do it at the time but some of their comments at the end were just astonishing. You felt that these guys had really found it a place to ask for forgiveness, it was very confessional and there were all sorts of things going on for them. One of the other comments I can remember that was again surprising was that somebody wrote, 'For 10 years I've been a Christian but today I've met Jesus for the first time'. I don't want to make too great claims for it but there is a sense for some people, the experience is so powerful that you'd almost say it's like a conversion experience."

As well as touring the UK, the Labyrinth has become a hit in the USA where Proost worked in partnership with Group Publishing to develop and publish packs that allowed church groups to set up their own labyrinths. This has been very popular. So people get videos and CDs and a Leader's Guide that helps people with the set up. Jonny explains, "In the tin in the States, you get six CDs and they've sold something like 5,000 tins, which is 30,000 CDs! So compared to our usual 500 or 1,000 sales." He smiles as he ponders for a second. It's an unusual hit! People have run it in Croatia, Spain, Australia, Korea and it's even been translated into Welsh and run at the Eisteddfod Festival last summer so it's gone global! It's even on the internet at www.labyrinth.org.uk. That's another fantastic component of it!

The work of Baker, Birch and Proost Records continues with their latest releases. 'Alternative Worship: Spirit Of the New' and 'Old Hymns In Dub' which Jonny originally wanted to name more quirkily, 'Hymns Ancient And Post Modern'. 'Old Hymns.' was born out of the popularity of previous hymns recorded on earlier albums and the demand for more of those. Jonny recalls, "The challenge was to try and do arrangements for hymns in a musical style that would reflect the flavour of Proost. I think it's the most difficult album we've done from that point of view because obviously the way hymns are, they change chords virtually every note. So our approach has been to strip most of the chords out. There's some hints of melody left in there but I mean it's called 'Old Hymns In Dub' because it really is largely drums, bass and some other vibey bits chucked in the mix. What we wanted to do was to get two things. Firstly, a worship resource that was a kind of a karaoke hymns, if you want to put it crassly! And secondly, it would be the kind of thing you could put on at a dinner party in the background and it would be cool. I think it does manage to achieve both those things!"

The 'Spirit Of the New' continues the work that the duo have done with what is loosely termed alternative worship. In addition he has cowritten a book with his wife Jenny and Doug Gay which collects together pieces from alternative worship groups from around the UK celebrating a decade of the movement. The book also includes a CD ROM put together by Jenny Brown of images, video clips and MP3 files of music. The book itself is set out in the seasons of the Church year and Jonny explains, "There's a mix of creeds, prayers, rituals, meditations and so on. The CD's arranged in the same way. For example there's a Christmas and Advent section and the MP3s relate to that section. Quite a few of the pieces actually are instrumental so it's a mix of stuff. We've been very nice to people I think because we've also put folders on there separately so people get all the individual pieces, the still images and the video loops and so on. So for example if you put together a PowerPoint presentation or whatever, you've got loads of things you can just copy and paste into that. That's the way I use quite a lot of the pieces. It's a very usable resource."

Alternative worship is a small term that covers an awful lot of ground stylistically and the book is an ideal resource to be inspired by what different groups are achieving. Baker comments, "I sometimes think alternative worship is nothing more or less than an attempt to reach particular groups of people. Maybe even one step back from that, it's an attempt for people who are struggling to relate to the culture of church themselves to develop worship that they relate to, in the hope that their friends and peers will then relate to it. I think one of the challenges for the Church is living in a consumer culture. I think there are some ways in which we have to resist that but then also, we have to kind of play the game in other ways. One of the ways that people construct identity in their lives in a consumer culture is through taste, so what you're in to, the stuff that you like says a lot about who you are."

He continues, "Now it's not just young people who do this. You go to the church down the road and look in the car park, the cars, where people live, the houses they buy, the clothes they wear and whatever.adults are playing exactly the same game. Now I think for certain people, music is strongly tied up with identity and one of the problems with that is, I mean say taking Matt Redman and Delirious?. I live in London - doing youth work with urban black youth workers there and with their kids, they'd call it boy-band music or something like that! It's just sad as far as they're concerned. Now that's not to make a comment about the quality of that music but it's about identity. For those kids, who they are is tied up with hip-hop and rap and maybe garage or whatever, not with white guitar players. I think what we're doing is a very different style to Delirious? and Matt Redman in lots of ways and I think that's got to be healthy and good news for the Church that we're not all doing the same."

For somebody not familiar with alternative worship, the book acts as an introduction to a lot of issues. "We've actually written a very extensive introduction to the book that gives people a feel to where alternative worship is coming from," Jonny explains. "We've also interspersed the pieces in the book with some theoretical reflections on things like 'using popular culture', 'ritual', 'images', 'music', 'liturgy'. I mean there's about nine pieces through the book. So it very much gives people a feel for the theological underpinning of what's going on as well as the practice of alternative worship."

It's been over a decade since Jonny Baker and Jon Birch threw their creativity into the area of alternative worship. One thing is for certain, it's never been a boring journey and who knows what future developments may unfold from their collective vision. Even now they are probably in the basement tinkering, inventing their own unique brand of spiritual medicine for those who feel there is life in worship beyond those electric guitar power chords.