What is in Kelvin's Head?

Top tips from a Greenbelt Virgin

31/08/2015

I was a Greenbelt virgin until this weekened. I’ve not no good reason why I’ve never been to the festival of arts and spirituality which takes place at the ennd of August each year. However, this year I made it and I had a ball.

Here are my reflections.

1 – The Weather

Yes, Greenbelt is terribly affected by the weather. Saturday was a fine day and ended with a glorious red sunset. However, the shepherds were telling porkies. Sunday certainly wasn’t a delight. The rain started a bit drizzly and turned into a downpour just as i was starting to give my talk. (I did apologise to the crowd – ask a gay person to do anything and you get hurricanes and floods after all). However, the rain didn’t dampen spirits. If anything it just made the atmosphere in the tent in which I was speaking all the more electric.

When I first tweeted that I was a #greenbeltvirgin and asked for tips, most people welcomed me with messages that included the word #wellies. Now I know why.

2 – The Seating
It would have been handy to have brought wellies but it would have been even better to have brought a fold up camping chair. Old stagers knew this. Young stagers and #greenbeltvirgins sat on the grass or later stood in the mud. Having a chair with you is a great idea.

3 – The Organisation
I was really impressed with how it all ran. Even when it did rain, it wasn’t a disaster. Things were run fabulously efficiently. I got to my venue to speak and there was someone to look after me, someone to introduce me, a couple of BSL interpretors and someone making all the audio equipment run well. I can’t always manage this in a cathedral, never mind a field. Full marks to those who have learned how to do this.

4 The Crowd
I found the crowd of people I was speaking to the most receptive audience I think I’ve ever spoken to. They were committed and intereted and up for being challenged to think. People didn’t now quite was coming from me and I suspect that’s what they like. I have to admit to being nervous before the event, but I found people generous, interested and interesting throughout. I did remark during my talk that I was surprised that Greenbelt was not more ethnically diverse and it seems to me that there might be a good conversation to be had about what diversity actually means. (I’m familiar with people thinking something is diverse because they are a bit odd themselves but feel welcome and so presume that diversity has been achieved – there’s more to be said than that).

5 The Surprises
There’s a lot of surprises at Greenbelt. After we cleared out from an OuterSpace (ie overtly gay friendly) Eucharist on Saturday evening which was full of joy, the space was taken over by the Goth Eucharist. Now, that’s not particularly for me, but I loved being in a place where it could happen. Same with the gay drinks reception, which was a hoot. Whole bunch of gay people thinking “I never ever thought I’d be at a gay singles event at a Christian thing and look at all these people – there’s lots of us!” A red straw in your drink meant that you were available. Some had multiple red straws.

6 Churchmanship of Greenbelt
I’ve heard a few people say, when asked whether they are high or low or evangelical or liberal that they are none of those things but are really a Greenbelt Christian. I get that now. This was an event where the ethos would have been very familiar to many who come to my congregation, who just don’t fit into the old fashioned ways of characterising churches and Christians. For a lot of people I sensed that Greenbelt is where they are their most authentic selves and it gives them a boost each year which means that they can cope with the church in all its strangeness the rest of the year. For this itself, Greenbelt is doing a great work.

So, will I be back.

You bet.

Oh and PS – you can do Greenbelt without camping. I can recommend a good B and B.

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

Reply
Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

Reply
John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

Reply
Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

Reply
MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

Reply
Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

Reply
Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

Reply