Welcome! Thank you for bringing your gifts into a church of interbeing service.

This document is intended to help you understand what it means to contribute a practice to a service, and support shared understanding between you and the interbeing host(s) with whom you’re creating a service.

Previous participation

It’s important that you have previously attended at least one church of interbeing service, so that you are personally familiar with the format and atmosphere of this event, and how it differs from a performance, class or workshop.

Case-by-case exceptions to this may be possible, especially if you’re coming from a different part of the world and schedules prohibit attending a service before contributing to one. In this case, the host that you’re working with will carefully review the flow of your contribution and brief you on the guidelines to ensure your contribution fits with the format of a service.

Host supervision

Church of interbeing services are open participatory rituals that are designed to provide depth as well as accessibility for participants with a wide range of beliefs and world views.

As a contributor or guest host, you will be working with an experienced church of interbeing host to design a service or practice offering that fits these principles.

The host will support you in shaping your offer to fit the service format. If you are a guest host leading a whole service, the host who is working with you will set the ritual container by opening and closing the service, and will be responsible for maintaining the ceremonial quality of the service during the time that you are facilitating.

Service guidelines

Depending what kind of practice you are bringing into a service, the host will refer you to the relevant portion of our service guidelines, or the hosts handbook.

If you are offering an embodiment piece, see the section on safety and touch. If you are offering a song the language part maybe more relevant. Reading the entire guidelines document is recommended but not required.

If the contributor/guest host holds or offers a significant part of the service then reading the entire Service guidelines for hosts is required.

Ritual flow

When contributing a practice to a service, it is important to keep in mind that the practice is one part of a larger ceremonial arc, and that part should be transitioned into and out of with a minimum of disturbance to the larger flow. This means that:

• Background information about you or the practice should generally be omitted from the service itself (but can be included in the announcements period after the service, or sometimes in the introduction).
• Information about other events, workshops, or products that you offer should never be included in the service itself (but can also be spoken about after it is complete).