End of round 1

Sunday's foray into the world of Baptistry brings to an end the first round of church visits and it's time for a quick recap and some initial conclusions.

Those churches which survived the cut are (with links to the reviews): Destiny, Sandyford Henderson, St Silas, C7, Partick Trinity, Re:Hope, and Queen's Park Baptists.

Those which are gone and hopefully soon forgotten are The Tron, Findlay Memorial, Wellington C of S and St Peter's Partick RC.

So, after those eleven churches (it felt like so many more!), here's a few early thoughts on what makes a good church. Though please note these are only my own personal reflections, and there's plenty more besides these thoughts that make a good church!

1. The welcome.

It doesn't matter whether you're a member of a church, a motorcycle display team, or a wife-swapping club: if you don't treat new people with a degree of friendliness and respect (and, yes, just acknowledge their presence in the first place), then they're not going to come back.

Quite a few people have commented to me that it is very difficult to know who's new and who's been there for hundreds of years and so it can be a bit embarassing knowing what to say to people you think might be new. But I've come to the view that you shouldn't have to specifically target new people with your welcoming intentions.

Given that a church is meant to be a community of Christians who come together to share fellowship, you should be greeted at the door whoever you are; and you should talk to the people around you before and after the service as a matter of course, whoever they are. If you're a Christian reading this, when was the last time you turned to the person next to you after a service and said "hi, I'm X, I recognise you but don't know you… what did you think of the service?"

If there's that inherent culture of mutual support and encouragement, you won't need to pay visitors any special attention – they'll get caught up in the welcoming atmosphere almost by accident.

My final word on welcomes is to link again to St Silas Rector Dave McCarthy's blog about why Christians should be welcoming in their church. He puts it much better than I could. There's at least one good reason why he's a priest and I'm not!

2. Seats.

My second – and thankfully shorter – piece of vitriol is about seats. Uncomfortable seats are verging on the insulting. If I am expected to sit in a strange, new place for an hour or two, the least I can expect is relative comfort. Wooden pews are anachronistic, impractical because they lose you the versatility of probably your biggest room, and they're no doubt a fire hazard too. Top marks go to any church with the creativity and ambition to rip them out. Yes, probably an expensive step, but worth it.

3. Technology.

Finally, and perhaps my biggest conclusion, I believe that technology when used well is the absolute bedrock of a church (after the whole Jesus stuff, naturally).

I am not sure I would go to any church that didn't have a website, at least without personal recommendation, because I'd want to get a feel for the place first. I'm not much of a web snob so don't feel it has to be well-designed or snazzy (though such things are getting easier and easier to do as the web develops).

It does, however, have to be a realistic and informative "shop window" for a church, telling what sort of things go on, the style of worship, and of course simple things like contact details, directions and service times. Extra-funky things like message boards, podcasts of sermons or introductory videos look great on some sites, and help a visitor get a feel for the church's character and ethos. In this increasingly web-based age, a church's website is probably its biggest advert and deserves much thought and work.

Inside the church, powerpoint screens really help. I've never been part of a church that uses one, but now would find it weird being without it. I've seen so many good examples of using the screens to put up intimations, sermon notes, bible readings and even announcements like "would X's mum please go to the creche"! Think of how much money a church could save on bibles and hymnbooks by bunging stuff on the screen! Enough to replace the pews, perhaps…

 

 

So.

There you go. Some of my thoughts at the end of round 1. Tomorrow I'll tell you something about what form round 2 is going to take.

Again I must emphasise that all the above is only my opinion, and others will rightly have different thoughts.

Of course it is really through prayer and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that churches really work. It's just that's all a bit difficult to pack into a blog.

And I'm much better at ranting about wooden pews.

Queen’s Park Baptist Church reviewed

Baptists. What exactly are they for?

This was the question I pondered while my flatmate and I took the train over to Queen's Park for this morning's service. I've not been to many Baptist churches, and so don't really know what defines them as a denomination, other than having health hazards for fonts.

QPBC is a beautiful, grand, old building right next to the Queen's Park, a big public park near Hampden, the national football stadium, and is in a lovely part of town. At least, it looked lovely in the bright sunshine today. On the doorsteps we were greeted with handshakes and warm "welcome"s, and the intimation-sheet-hander-outer was very chatty too, asking us lots of questions and telling us a little about the church on discovering we were new.

Inside, I was struck by the atmosphere of hustle and bustle, people wandering around talking to each other, music playing in the background, and it was all very relaxed. The interior of the building was outstanding too – the austere grandeur of the architecture had been maintained but mixed with rich and bright colours in the paintwork, banners and lighting which gave it a clean, warm, modern feeling.

We sat down on the very comfy seats, and were soon being welcomed and chatted to by a bloke called Thomas who came and sat next to us. The large congregation of perhaps a couple of hundred seemed to be of all ages – with a particularly good showing from young families and elderly people. I suspected that due to the university holidays they had a few students less than normal.

The service kicked off with praise, led by a very talented band, with the words projected on to the big screen. The songs were singable, meaningful and lively, and the congregation sang heartily, really demonstrating something of the joy the songs are meant to exude.

The forty minute sermon, delivered by the minister, was excellent. It was about the gifts of the spirit and how to identify the ones you have, based mostly on 1 Corinthians 12. Using the screen for both the Bible reading and the clear and useful sermon notes, it was a powerful, useful and occasionally amusing message and one of those rare ones where you actually take something from it that you can apply in your life. "If those sick people that you are praying for start to get worse," I remember the minister saying, "chances are that you don't have the gift of healing!"

After the service, our new acquaintance Thomas took us through to the hall where the obligatory tea and coffee was served, introducing us to others on the way and telling us more about his experiences of the church in the three years he had been there. On our way out, there were more handshakes and greetings.

QPBC really had something going for it, and judging by the map of prayergroups on the hall wall, it has members all across the city and beyond. It was friendly, lively and unintimidating, but without being fluffy or lightweight; and was full of inspiring worship and practical teaching, but without being traditional or stuffy. There was a real feeling of joy, fellowship, zeal and prayerfulness about the place and it definitely makes it into round 2.

Although it reminded me in many ways of the Church of Scotland – the ornate old building, the substantial sermon, the earnest worship – it was like someone had cranked up the happiness gauge. Like a happy version of the Church of Scotland.

Perhaps that's what Baptists are for…

…to be the Church of Scotland on acid.

Transfer complete

Just to say that all the blog archives are now in WordPress – rather than the old blog, you can link directly to any blogs in here, all the way back to last February when this started!

A new era

I’m currently experimenting with WordPress, which is a fancy blog management thingy. It basically means that rather than editing my own blog, I do it through another website, which allows for RSS (like “subscribing” to a website), reader comments, and of course my ability to write from anywhere in the world effectively.

After much boring HTML editing, I now have it “embedded” in my website. I don’t have all my older stuff up, though – you’ll find the old blog here until I move it all over, which will be in the next few days.

Not quite sure whether it will work, but we’ll see! This is all a bit new and radical to me…

Thursday 6 April 2006

There's been a couple of interesting developments on the church search front.

I received an email today from a member of Partick Trinity, taking a soupçon of umbrage at the review I wrote about it on March 26. I was given this helpful advice:

"I'm sorry that you did not find the pews comfortable; they were designed for sitting up and paying attention not for sleeping. I have been sitting in these pews for quite a few years now and while I agree they are not the most comfortable pews in the world I don't think they are as bad as you make out…. Possibly your posture is wrong… try sitting up straight."

Which is nice.

The second thing is that there has been one late, and definitely final, entry into round 1, and then I will start to draw some initial conclusions. A friend of mine in Canada, Ebby, who studied in Glasgow, was desperately trying to remember the baptist church in Queen's Park she really enjoyed going to (yes, it made that much of an impression on her). She just recently emailed me to say she'd remembered its name: Queen's Park Baptist Church. I fear Ebby has been working too hard lately.

So that's my destination on Sunday, which will involve another trip over to the southside. Rumour has it they eat their children over there.

Wednesday 5 April 2006

I got a nice email today from a guy called Ian Andsell, who runs the Scottish Christian website. He found this site after visiting the blog of Brian Ingraham, pastor at Re:Hope, who seems to have stumbled across my re:view of Re:Hope and blogged about it himself.

Ian says he has added my site to Scottish Christian's list of Scottish Christian bloggers, which is cool. I'm particularly glad it's a list of "Scottish Christian bloggers" – implying it's just a list of blogs by Christians who may or may not write about Christian things. If it was a list of "Scottish Christian blogs", then I'm not sure this one would really count because it's just a blog written by me rather than one specifically about my faith.

If this was to be a Christian blog, though, I suppose there'd have to be an awful lot less swearing and a whole lot more quiche.

Tuesday 4 April 2006

I was back up north seeing family and friends this weekend. On Sunday night I went to Hilton, my old church in Inverness, and it was great to see everyone there again. Among them was Angus, who I mentioned in a blog a while back, who has recently completed a traineeship with Moray Firth Radio. Angus was part of a team who entered a competition within the station for new programme ideas, and his share of the hour's broadcast was a hilarious documentary about the meaning of the world "mullet". He went to a barber's to get a mullet cut, met up with one of Inverness's finest fish chefs, then did an interview with yours truly.

Although the programme was never broadcast, Angus's team won the competition despite including ramblings from me about global mullet-hunting. Angus was very proud of his thirteen minute part of the show, and rightly so because it is excellent. He's let me put it up here for people to listen to, so here you go! It's 11.9MB, for those who understand these sorts of things – I think that means it might take a while to download. I've also put it on the mullet page. Enjoy.

I guess you're expecting a review of the service at Hilton now, aren't you?