Chapter one

Why Gods Chosen or God’s Frozen People?

 

For nearly 40 years of my life I was heavily involved in the Church; sometimes as a Baptist, sometimes an Evangelical, sometimes as a Pentecostal, but mostly in the Church of England. Then three years ago my mother was seriously ill and I took time off from preaching, running house groups and all the other things that keep a good reader in the Church of England busy. My wife, a churchwarden at the time, and I took time out, and looked at what we had stepped back from. The past four years have been spent observing, reading, thinking, and now culminate in this book. Many may disagree with my observations and conclusions; I know I probably would have done whilst busy being a “good Christian”, but I hope that open minded Christians may read this and start to think; and even more, to act.

In England today almost any church going person is likely to notice one thing, they are becoming more and more of a minority. The reasons quoted are many. Some say Islam is the main threat to Christianity, others say women priests and possibly women bishops are the cause; some blame homo sexuality just tolerated in the congregations, but not in the priesthood; some blame Sunday trading, selfish societies, love of money, television, or a thousand and one other causes. I believe seriously that the main threat to the church and the faith it is supposed to protect, is the church itself, and many of its members!

ThIs may seem a little insulting to say the least, but the reason I say this is that, I believe, the style of organisation within a church today is making it appear irrelevant to the world. Today’s society does not share in the somewhat masochistic belief that sitting in an ice cold building, on a hard wooden, uncomfortable pew on a January morning is a sensible way to spend a few hours on a Sunday morning.. I know though, that if someone suggests that during winter church services are held in a nice comfortable, warm village hall across the road, the suggestion is usually ignored. At one church recently the congregation sat and froze for nearly four years after a major heating breakdown. Once every other month we went to the Methodist church building for a combined service, and the monthly family service used the church hall. “Proper services” were, however, held in the main church while money was raised to replace the heating system. The congregation dwindled, but it was never the fault of the few who held control of the church and even justified the decision by supplying hot water bottles..

This book is not just about the church heating and creature comforts (although the introduction of a few toilets would help), but also the actual function of the church, the people, and their faith. Or perhaps I should say the function of the church, the people, their prejudices, intransigencies, and lack of interest in what faith is, and more importantly, what their faith should be in. In many cases I must include the clergy, for it is their responsibility to teach the people, encourage the people, organise and develop pastoral care, to lead the worship, and of course the prime responsibility is for the “cure of the souls“ of their parish, not just the young church goers, the choirs, or other select groups of church goers. The parish is a geographical area, and as such responsibility is towards all who live in that area. All to often this responsibility today is reduced to endless meetings of “how to get people into church” rather than how to offer care.

Some already will have noticed that I have so far interchanged the words Church and Christian but this I hope will stop now, for my readings, thoughts and prayers over the past few years have brought me to a powerful conclusion that the two should not be confused and interchanged. Christianity, as I will explore later, is based upon the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth, as told in the four gospels of the New Testament. The church is based upon the many ideas of Paul as he went about setting up a new church, with rules and regulations that would be acceptable to Rome. The two do not always coincide. The church has developed creeds that have little to do with the gospel, and introduced many things to ensure their own existence and the continuation of their own prejudices. These have resulted in many wars and civil unrests. One has only to think of Catholic and Protestant fighting in Northern Ireland to see how far the church has moved from the Christian instruction, “love one another.”

Whilst exploring the area above, this book will explore the role of the bible in the modern day church, but which Bible am I referring to? Is it the “proper one”, authorised by King James some 400 years ago, and written in archaic English, or a modern translation, or the Jerusalem bible, or even a much older collection of religious books, going back to the fourth century, or even the second century when of course we were all Catholics, or were we? What of the new discoveries of books that were left out of the bible, and have now been discovered; the dead sea scrolls and the Gnostic gospels, what have they to say and should we take their teachings seriously? Also we need to answer the question, “ Have we ever been encouraged to study our bibles freely”, or only under instruction to make sure we see only what the church wants, even though often it may appear glaringly wrong.

The gospels are the only references to Jesus, but rarely do we study the gospels; and then the question, are we ever encouraged to follow what Jesus tells us is the perfect way of life? Study of the gospels in an open and constructive way should lead to a complete change in lifestyle, but here we often need help. Jesus often talks of the way we should treat our fellow friends and neighbours, but then we get ‘churched’. By this I mean we often seem to take a simple instruction of care and love and then start to thrash out practical details in a committee. The individual response is swallowed up by the group response. By the time it comes to action an individual command to go out and do, becomes a group invite for selected people to come in. The church appears to spend its entire life trying to get people in, but the Gospel, when read openly, suggests the people should be going out to help their community, in the community, for the community. A good example is care for the lonely at Christmas. I know of churches have had the idea of a parish Christmas dinner in the church hall for those alone on Christmas Day. But by the time the committee has finished discussing this the decision is to do this on Boxing Day as we all have family commitments on Christmas Day itself.

The idea of this book is not to church bash, but if the bash fits fair enough. Nor is it intended to be negative. For so many of the ideas people have to put forward as a response to their beliefs are laudable and put forward in good faith, like the Christmas Lunch above. It is only as it passes through the committee stages that the idea gets altered, and each time for the best possible reasons, until you end up with the strange meal for those who are alone on Christmas Day, on Boxing Day, leaving people still alone on Christmas Day, the whole purpose of the idea.

Other stalwart ideas concern the worship itself. If I had a pound for every hour sat in committee planning worship, I could probably solve the world economic problems on my own. I think that many reading this book will have a working knowledge of the structure of the main Eucharistic service that takes place in the Anglican Church; Hymn, prayers reading, hymn, sermon, hymn, prayers, hymn, communion, hymn, home. Of course it may be a said communion service, in which case miss out the hymns; or it may be a daily office or Sunday Office, Matins or Evensong, in which case miss out the communion. Family service, miss out communion, use modern hymns, Early morning service, communion optional, use ancient forms of English, In fact the hymn sandwich as it is often referred to is the basis for all normal services. We change the date of the language used, the style of hymns used, and the instruments, but essentially the same service. No interaction, no involvement, no space to talk, especially children. Even in a family service the children are expected to sit quietly whilst some person prattles on, whether they are in full church robes, or the rugby shirt and jeans “informal uniform”. If as much time was spent on the actual ideas of worship, as is usually spent on whether its Mission Praise or the English Hymnal, we might find a way forward. Oh and never mention silence as part of worship, people don’t like silence for more than two minutes, private prayer must be avoided, better a bad hymn than silence.

If I feel the church spends too much time on how to ‘do’ worship, I fear that it spends far too little on what day to do worship. The church seems to stick to Sunday as a fly to paper. Yes Sunday worship is great for those who can ‘go to church’ but what of those who cannot? Is it the fault of the shop worker if the rules have changed, or the child who wants to play football for a local team and practice is on Sunday morning? These people did not chose to be somewhere else on Sunday, but what happens during the rest of the week in a church building. At best there is usually a said service for about six people during the week, for many nothing. Of course it’s the fault of the shops for opening on Sundays that take our congregations away, people should go to church on Sunday not shopping, the view of many of those in our congregations, but of course many of these are of an age when they can shop any day of the week. In our local retail parks, people throng, music plays, people smile, laugh, talk to each other, chat over coffee, go to the loo when needed. Compare this to what many of our Sunday services in our churches offer. Is it surprising people prefer to shop.

Lastly intransigence itself is a major cause of disaffection; the knowledge that we are right and, therefore, by default, you must be wrong if you disagree, as exhibited by many “church going Christians”. Many of these have been brought up in the local church and dislike change. The old joke about the number of Anglicans needed to change a light bulb springs to mind when doing things like listening to the local radio and hearing people phoning in to air views about anything religious. Especially this is true if the subject involves a females in church roles, ,the sexuality of priests, a new approach to something, or the abandonment of an old idea. The people phone in an so often quote the Ten Commandments and how they always keep them, or they simply say the bible says, and go on to quote a verse out of context as a justification. The end result is the general feeling that those who are sounding out their bible based “truths” are unfeeling, judgemental, and often just plain silly. If what they are arguing is the truth, then their truth appears irrelevant to today’s world. If only they realised that theirs becomes the public view of Christians and Churchgoers.

I believe from my observations that the church has to look once again at what Christianity is all about; to look much more closely and openly at how they can spread the true faith, or even perhaps find that many more Christians exist outside the church than within it. The Bible refers to the Jews as God’s chosen people, and many believe that Christianity arose naturally from Judaism, hence Christians by default again are God’s chosen people. But time moves on, life moves on, society moves on, how to apply relevant Christianity to today’s society must move on, not petrify in out of date beliefs. Those who want to maintain the status quo at all costs are god’s Frozen people. A great friend used to say he was a traditionalist, but would never say which tradition, Victorian, Tudor, 4^th Century or first century. Another great friend said that tradition was not wearing your Grandfather’s hat, but having a baby, not what you hang onto from the past, but what you give the future. I hope the following chapters will encourage thinking, talking, sharing and a new active life for Christians, so that the truth of Jesus message, the Good News of the gospel passes on to the next generations.

By the way it takes the full church PCC ten meetings to decide to change the light bulb, the caretaker with a tower assessed as safe by the health and safety committee, hired after a full debate by the finance committee, to change a light bulb; but of course the congregation preferred the original!!