At Greenbelt, we're never content with keeping things the same. Neither do we change things just for the sake of it. For a while now we've been wondering about our Sunday morning Communion Service. It's at the heart of the Festival weekend — and at the centre of who we are and what we believe. But are we getting it right and doing it justice, given the changing make-up of our community and our journeying sense of what gathering in this way might mean for us? At the same time, what we've noticed is that at some other (all-age, family-friendly) festivals, most of their make-it type activity and workshop-ing is focused towards a communal procession or some such. We've had processions and marches in the past (usually in conjunction with specific campaigning moments onsite), but we got to thinking about whether we could consider bringing together this notion with our focal point, the Communion service, by moving it to later on Sunday to give more time for all those who want to to make and prepare things that would then feed into the service. These are the potential advantages, as we see it:

• A different time of day would lend a different vibe and dynamic and so freshen things up in that sense
• A different time of day gives more Festival weekend time for various groups and activities to be given over to making stuff that feeds into the service
• A different time of day situates the service more at the heart of what we're committed to as our all-age Sunday (where programming site-wide is different, anyway)
• A different time of day makes more of a punctuation point for the Festival - rather than being the Sunday morning highlight it could feel more like the beginning of the end of a three-day weekend, with Monday having a different feel and tone perhaps
• It might make it easier to attract the local churches to share in our service, as they could still meet in the morning and then join us for the afternoon

So, this year, we'll be holding our Festival Communion service at 3pm on Sunday afternoon. It's an experiment and it's one we need you to be with us on. It will feel strange. But strange is good. Things made a little bit less familiar often help us enter into an even greater sense of participation and mystery as we share, remember and celebrate together.