The Roommates

They played this video about evangelism in church this morning -- very funny.

Individual Communion -- An Oxymoron?

"Celebration Cup"When I was a child, communion was served as little wafers and a sip of wine from a communal goblet. As I grew older, my family and I started to attend a church that instead used real bread and tiny, individual, stainless steel cups that were washed and reused each week. I have been to other churches that use tiny glass or clear plastic cups. These too tended to be washed and reused until they broke (although I suspect that some churches, with no environmental conscience, shamefully throw away the plastic ones after each communion service).

Today, however, I went to a church that practised the ultimate in throw-away communion. At communion time, they passed round baskets of little, individualized, vacuum sealed packs, each containing a single wafer and a small amount of communion wine (grape juice). The top of each pack is printed with "This is my body, which is broken for you. Take, eat. Do this in remembrance of me." One peels off the first layer and eats the wafer, then peels off the rest of the lid and drinks the grape juice. The plastic containers are then discarded.

For a moment I wasn't sure whether I was at church or in a cheap coffee shop.

With regard to the environmental concerns, I came across the idea for a liquid filled, wafer covered, edible communion cup. One eats the wafer, drinks the grape juice, then eats the cup too.

Here we go again ...

You've probably heard it said that if you find a perfect church, then you shouldn't join it. As soon as you do, it stops being perfect. In In Search of a Church, I had explained how we had decided which church to attend:

When we'd looked at quite a few churches and our radius was extending a bit farther than we'd like, we decided to take stock. We looked at all the churches we'd visited and discussed what we liked and what we didn't like about each one. We eventually settled on a medium-sized (by US standards) church with a contemporary worship style. We chose this church mainly because it was not too far from where we live and because it has a lot of children of Emily and Lauren's ages. We'll have to see how it goes from here.

Unfortunately, though, a few weeks of attending that church made us realise that we were not a good fit. This is no reflection on the level of perfection of the church (and I hope that it is not a reflection of our being overly fussy). The way it operates works well for those who have made it their home, but we came to realise that it is not for us.

The church has two services, each just over an hour long. We had initially decided that we could cope with just over an hour. We could go to the later service, so could still have a bit of a lie in on Sunday morning. The church had a lot of children of Emily and Lauren's ages and the girls seemed to enjoy going to the Sunday School.

Our first discovery that I considered problematic was that the Sunday School, it turned out, runs for the entire length of the service. This means that the children don't get to be with us during the service at all. We had already discounted other churches on these grounds because we consider the inclusion of children in a service as very important. I don't mind them not being present for the sermon (after all, I tend to wish that I'm not present for most sermons ), but I like them to be present during the rest of the service; especially during communion.

Upon enquiring about this, we were told that the way the church works is that everyone goes to both services (starting at 9am). One half of the church go to the first service. Of the other half, most are signed up for adult bible studies, children's Sunday School, and the remainder are signed up to do "serving" -- taking Sunday School, ushering etcetera. At the later service time, they all swap, so that the bible-studiers and servers attend the service.

Our choices were:

1. Do our own thing regardless of how the church is set up (ie. just go to one service, let the children join us in the service, then let the children go to Sunday School during the sermon). This was obviously a far from ideal solution.


2. Get stuck in fully and embrace the way that the church is set up. The problem was that this demanded a lot more from us than we are willing to give.


3. Find another church -- one that better suits our needs.

Furthermore, a regular attender was kind enough to explain to us how the church's "small groups" work.

Small groups are a means by which large churches keep a personal touch. Many churches here have them. As everyone can't know each other, fellowship with other Christians on a personal level in large churches is achieved by splitting the church into smaller groups that meet regularly. In essence, I dare say that this is fair enough (even if it does require an evening per fortnight of our time, it is a good way of meeting and getting to know people). When we first attended the church we were told that many people brought their children to their small group meetings. I'm all for the inclusion of children in church activities and it would save us having to get a babysitter or alternate who goes (which would default to being me going every time).

However, the more the man explained, the more we realised that Small Groups were not for us. It turned out that about once a fortnight the families go to these small groups only to be split into separate "bible studies" -- one for the men, one for the women and one for the children. Under this model, I'd only be getting to know the women in the church and even then only in a "bible studying" scenario. In addition, this sort of setup could, if a church is not careful, serve to propagate conservative Christian sexual stereotypes -- just the sort of thing that we try to steer clear of.

Although we decided to move on, it was not a wasted experience. It helped us to consider more closely what is important to us and what compromises we are or are not willing to make:

• We don't want inordinately long services and we especially don't want long sermons. I don't believe that God distributes His love or anything else in proportion to the length of my attention span (if he does, then there's little hope for me).


• We don't want to go to a church where we will be inadvertently sucked into having to attend endless church-based activities. We want to the freedom to be able to decide how involved we want to be, without any pressure.


• We want a church where the children are included into the service, especially during the singing and communion. We would like any Sunday School classes to be held during the sermon, not at a separate time. Some churches offer children a blessing during communion. Although this is better than nothing, I believe in allowing children to partake in communion as soon as they are old enough to eat a bit of bread (or wafer) and sip from a cup. I am willing to compromise in this because I am aware that there are few, if any, churches that hold this view. However, I think that it is a minimum requirement that the children are at least present during communion.

We are not looking for a "perfect church", just one where that is a good fit for us. So, all things considered, as far as the search for a church is concerned, here we go again...

The Separation of Church and State

I went to church recently, where I was conversing with a woman.

ME: One of the striking differences between England & this part of the US is that in the UK, very few people go to church, whereas here, most people go to church.

HER: Yes, but this is not true throughout the States, we are after all in the Bible Belt. It may also be because Britain doesn't have the separation between church and state that we have here. Didn't it start with some king who wanted to divorce his wife?
ME:

I can understand that the situation is not the same throughout the US, but I was not (and still am not) sure why a separation between church and state would result in more people going to church; or conversely, why having a monarch who is the head of the official state church would lead to fewer people going to church.

Perhaps church and state
are not as separate as
people would like to think.

The US has a written constitution, wherein the First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". The separation of church and state is based on this, together with a letter by Thomas Jefferson and subsequent legal precedent.

The UK, on the other hand, has an unwritten constitution. The UK constitution is not based on a particular document, but on precedent and tradition. Not only that, but the reigning monarch is the official head of the state church -- the Church of England.

The funny thing is that although the US has a constitutional separation between church and state and the UK does not, US politics is steeped in religion in a way that the UK's is not. It is rare for a UK politician to play the "I'm a Christian, vote for me," card. Even strongly religious politicians will tend to keep their personal religious beliefs private. Even at ground level, politics and religion are not closely tied. Within a given church one is likely to find individuals with political beliefs that span the spectrum of left to right.

In the US, however, it seems that the professed beliefs of a politician can be a strong influence on the voting public, with the right being dominated by conservative Christians. I cannot comment on the political persuasions of individuals in the churches we attended because it is not something that one can tell at a glance.

A couple of weeks ago I heard Simon Mayo interview an American called Jim Wallis on FiveLive. He was in the UK to promote his latest book, God's Politics: Why the American Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. The interview is no longer available for download, but here's a Guardian interview instead. Mr Wallis's religious views seem to be conservative, but he seems to de-emphasise issues like sexual morality and abortion in favour of a political agenda that promotes social justice. I haven't read this book or anything else that Mr Wallis has written, so I can't yet comment further on his views, but perhaps as more left-wing Christians come out of the woodwork the political balance can be redressed.

By the way, State gives Church a really good thrashing in Googlefight.

In Search of a Church

I think that the majority of this blog's readers are theologians (because they've clicked through from Mark's blog) Others may have religious affiliations of one sort or another; and I think that most are probably Christian. The Christian umbrella extends far -- from the very conservative to the more liberal.

On arriving in the US, we found ourselves unfamiliar with the layout of the Christian landscape (although Mark knows a lot more than I do). We decided that we would try out different churches to see what we think before deciding where to attend on a regular basis. We decided which church to attend each week by proximity to where we live, working outwards. We looked at their websites first; just to make sure that they weren't TV evangelists or any other sort of weird.

Some churches had written liturgies and traditional worship/hymns, while others had less formal, unwritten liturgies and contemporary worship styles. Personally, I like both styles.

The more formal churches have structure, the sermons (and services) tend to be shorter and many of the old hymns have much more about them than modern hymns/choruses. On the down side, I have a short attention span and get bored very easily, although the ability to follow the service in the prayerbook keeps me going. The churches that described their worship styles as "contemporary" tended to have choruses. Any hymns tended to be up-tempo.

In England, over the years, I have been to different types of churches. Some were traditional (with written liturgies), others had contemporary worship styles and others still practiced charismaticism. Here, although styles of worship varied between churches, there was no hint of charismaticism in any of them. I found this quite interesting because, in my experience, contemporary worship styles quite often (although not always) went hand in hand with charismaticism.

When we visited each church, we had to ask ourselves what we want from a church?

I think that the most important thing is that there is enough to keep the children engaged. We don't want them to get disillusioned with church. In many churches, children become disillusioned at around teenage. Often, this disillusionment with the church extends to a more general rejection of Christian beliefs. I think that this is caused by certain perceptions (whether true or not):

• that people within the church are judgemental
• that people with in the church are hypocritical
• that the church doesn't have adequate answers to questions being asked. When asking questions, they may be left with apologetic responses that don't satisfy.
• that they don't have any friends within the church
• that church services are boring

The most important thing is that we don't want Emily and Lauren to become disillusioned.

When we'd looked at quite a few churches and our radius was extending a bit farther than we'd like, we decided to take stock. We looked at all the churches we'd visited and discussed what we liked and what we didn't like about each one. We eventually settled on a medium-sized (by US standards) church with a contemporary worship style. We chose this church mainly because it was not too far from where we live and because it has a lot of children of Emily and Lauren's ages. We'll have to see how it goes from here.

(Source)