Abstract
This paper analyses and compares a Church City Mission everyday mass with a high mass in the Church of Norway. It proposes that building a sense of community available to the individual participant is the why of the service, while the how can be seen as a matter of employing relevant performative tools concerning space, time and relational rhetoric. Its perspective is phenomenological, and the method consists of participatory observation and group interviews. Its findings include a surprising agreement amongst the informants that experiencing community (fellesskap) is an important motivation for going to mass. It also discusses how the Christian service is a complex performative structure, where multiple tools are employed to facilitate the different relationships that make up the service. The analysis focuses on pinpointing when and how relationbuilding moments in a mass occur, and what role the responsible performers have in building the we of the mass.