What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Turning Up

    There are a number of reasons why church statistics make for depressing reading these days. One reason that I’m not sure we give nearly enough attention to is how often people come to church.

    I find myself regularly in conversation with people who seem to believe that they come to St Mary’s far more often than I see them there.

    When I was young, you used to hear people talk more about the benefits of weekly churchgoing. I’m not sure you do hear that much these days. Is it that rather than being a way of life, Christianity is seen more often than it used to be as something you fit in to your way of life?

    I think that you get more out of going to church by going weekly. The cycle of the seasons makes sense. You get nourished regularly. (If you don’t get nourished, go to a different church or work out ways of topping up your God experience online or elsewhere). You also get more of the chance of the joy of friendship which isn’t just a sideline. Friendship is one of the ways that God touches us.

    Turning up is also an offering. It is the offering of time that is so precious these days. Of couirse, not everyone ever turned up every week. But more did once.

    A big part of the decline in actual bums-on-pews numbers could be resolved by rekindling the idea of weekly churchgoing. Once upon a time churches told people to do things for to do otherwise was a wickedness and a sin. In its day, that worked in its way. It doesn’t now. And I thank God the world has changed in a way that makes that sensibility untenable.

    I’d rather tell people about the benefits of turning up. But then generally speaking, I’d rather be a priest who preaches joys not woes.

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4 responses to “Here is the sermon…”

  1. Beth Avatar
    Beth

    I remember that workshop being done as part of an LGBT group meeting. I was slightly skeptical about it in the beginning, but ended up getting a lot out of it and thinking about God in ways that I hadn’t consciously before.

    Reply
  2. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    FWIW, in order to dot some `t’s and cross some `i’s, my sensibly heretical book The Five Gospels colours all the speech black apart from the saying about women grinding corn (which merits a grey, at best). Ie, none of the text goes back to any historical Jesus, with the apocalyptic context added by the gospel authors; the `thief in the night’ is an Christian saying of the early churches (witness other epistles, written before Matthew, where the image appears) and therefore probably planted, in that order, in Matthew.

    I guess taking what you most charitably will out of the passage is entirely reasonable, then. 🙂

    Reply
  3. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    (I had to read that, and a bit from Romans at church up here, too… was “interesting” turning a blind eye to it. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Tracey Avatar
    Tracey

    Thanks for that Kelvin. When I read that Gospel at the 8:30 service, i remembered the severe fundamentalist church I was brought up in as a child, and it made me uncomfortable. Reading your comments, I remember my first few visits to an Episcopal worship service and remembering how joyful and non-scary it was, and being amazed by the fact that I didn’t have to be afraid of God. Thanks for the reminder.

    Reply

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