Responses:

This book is one of the best around for anyone interested in setting up an alternative worship service/experience. The companion CD-Rom has loads of useful resources and suggestions to help. I would recommend this book to anyone who knows they are unhappy with "trad" worship but don't know how to go about exploring alternatives to the old forms of worship.

The Prodigal Project is a book about revitalising worship, spirituality and theology.   It's a book about doing things differently, about being creative and about not being inhibited by hundreds of years of tradition.   Just as there's no proof that Jesus gave His seal of approval to the King James text, (!) there's no proof that He said, "Thou shalt always do things the same old way."

This is a book where alternative is the key word.   It won't be everyone's cup of tea because every page requires us to rethink the ways we believe God wants us to worship, and the ways we're 'programmed' by circumstances or tradition or upbringing to do so.   It can only be a freeing-up type of book, even if you don't feel that all the methods and approaches suggested are for you. Before you check the price out and say, 'whoa!' take note of the fact that this book comes with its own CD ROM.

Small stories, big impact
Very quietly and unobstructively, one group of believers is growing on a daily basis. Soon the numbers will be such they can't be ignored. Who are they? They're the Christians who don't go to church anymore.
This is the premise of The Prodigal Project, an innovative CD-ROM from SPCK. As premises go, it is an intriguing one. On one level The Prodigal Project could be seen as a polemic for the alternative worship scene; on another it is a loose collection stories about some people who wanted to chill, chat, work and worship together.
The Prodigal Project is an idea well conceived and perfectly executed - the result is an engrossing and stimulating self-contained world. It is a CD-ROM, which, you've got to admit, reeks of the early nineties - a time when interactivity was a radical claim, rather than a passe boast. Nowadays a webpage would be a more obvious option, but a CD-ROM is the right format for this project.
As meditative trance/ dance music plays users make their own hyperlinked way through sections with names like Hopeful Rumours and Growing Edges. (It isn't entirely unguided though). The form perfectly matches the function: this 'journey into the emerging church' uses a postmodern aesthetic without being wanky or self-conscious.
There are two good reasons that I can identify for breaking with the traditional form. Firstly, if the metanarratives we tell ourselves (such as from the Garden of Eden to the City of God, or revolution to utopia) are less convincing than they once were - which is a good thumbnail definition of po-mo - then the linear approach of books (an introduction, chapters 1 to 10, a conclusion) should also be treated with caution. This CD-ROM proves you can combine an intelligent and forceful argument with a pick'n'mix approach.
Secondly, by doing a CD-ROM rather than a website, the creators have complete control over the product. The internet is full of broken links and broken promises. A CD-ROM can't take you outside its own boundaries, it is a safe space. It's stable.
One of the creative spirits behind the project is the maverick New Zealander Mike Riddell, who wrote alt.spirituality@metro.m3 (a curious combination of a novel and notebook) and the more scholarly Threshold of The Future. The same themes come up in all his work: the church is dying; people matter; dogma doesn't.
The other two writers Cathy Kirkpatrick and Mark Pierson are from different cities and it has clearly been a labour of love to bring the project together. The Prodigal Project is not triumphantly suggesting that alt.worship is the only way forward for the church - the writers are too aware of the complexity of the church for that, and they are too ill at ease with the institutional church to believe it can be easily redeemed. One phrase that stuck in my mind is this: 'Most of us have been burned by the church (I can show you the scars)'.
The stories it tells are mostly from the UK and New Zealand. The kaleidoscope of stories address questions that are familiar to anyone who has had even a passing experience of creating worship: Does worship which emphasises the aesthetic necessarily mean a clique of creators and a mass of consumers? Does the number of people at a service really matter? Or with reference to community: What happens when that initial dynamic of 20 somethings, with time and energy to burn, become 30s somethings, who need babysitters?
They do not offer glib five point plans - there are practical suggestions butthe emphasis is always on the process, the journey.
It's a long time since I've got so excited about a capital C Christian product. The Prodigal Project only costs £12.99 and it includes, for the sake of Luddites and bibliophiles, a book which reproduces most of the text.

This was my first book with a CD on worship. More please publishers; this is definitely the way to go. SPCK are to be commended for being bold enough to do this.

Wow!! This is great, absolutely brilliant. If this is the future of books then it will be great. Pass on my congrats to the team, it is not only brilliant technically but captivating and challenging and a work of art, all at the same time..
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Intial setup - brilliant. intuitive. told me I needed quicktime files and then helped me load it. One of the best installs I've seen. Should be Ok for just about anybody to load up.
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The background music and sounds are great. Also the little graphics that appear. My kids treat the thing as a game trying to find out which ones are interactive.
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By the way I think the content is great in terms of the stuff you are raising. I found the section on Immediacy quite challenging. How does the church compete, or offer something that can compare? Big question. Hopefully it will get a wide reading.
All the best with the project. Thanks for the opportunity to preview it and keep up the good work.

I loved the CD. It has opened lots of thoughts for me and I plan to email quite a few of the people.

laugh? I nearly had a post-modern crisis!