Mystery Worshipper hits St Silas

Ship of Fools is a satirical Christian website which I don’t read nearly often enough.  It’s very good – both funny and thought-provoking – and one of its highlights is the “mystery worshipper” section, where churches are reviewed by unidentified visitors.

My old church in Glasgow, St Silas, was recently visited by the mystery worshipper, as David, the Rector of St Silas, has blogged.  You can read the review here.

It’s a subject of course close to my heart – I have form on the issue, having visiting St Silas twice (1|2) during my Glasgow church search, before going on to call it home during my time in the city.

The mystery worshipper’s review is thorough, and has much to praise the church for.  However I can’t help thinking that most of the negatives are simply down to the fact that the reviewer appears not to be very “low church” as the Anglicans would call it, and I reckon a reviewer more comfortable with an informal, laid back community such as St Silas would have had a much better experience there.

Such things are subjective, however.  One person’s ideal church would be another person’s hell on earth.

A blog about blogs

Regular readers and anyone who goes to St Silas will be aware that there’s quite a handful of bloggers in church, and you can find links to most of them on GadgetVicar. It’s been an interesting new dimension to church life that I have never experienced before. I’ve been meaning to write down my thoughts on church and blogging for a while, and then almost decided not to, but a few things have finally encouraged me to get round to posting. And apologies in advance, this is a bit of a long one.

Firstly, there’s been a few new bloggers in church lately. Secondly, Graham wrote a very thought-provoking blog about the St Silas blogging scene, and links to some of those “newbies”. And thirdly the power of the bloggers has been evident in church recently through David referring in church to particular posts or issues the bloggers have been touching on. For example, I think I recall correctly that last Sunday evening’s sermon on “creating community” was even brought forward a week to respond to a debate that emerged among some bloggers on that subject.

And the final and biggest reason for posting my thoughts on blogging in church is that Beat Attitude has kicked off the debate by “guest blogging” here on GadgetVicar. So I can’t not enter the debate now it’s been started!

So clearly us bloggers have influence within St Silas. Many people read them, our Rector reads them (and writes one himself), and when folk comment on each others’ blogs, it generates a permanent, easy-to-follow record of the debates and discussions.

However, with that influence comes tremendous responsibilities. Just like newspaper columnists have obligations to think carefully about what they write because they know society is watching and reading, so bloggers in a church have a similar onus. Posting in the heat of the moment, writing something offensive (or something that could be widely interpreted as offensive), or mentioning people (especially non-bloggers) by name, can all often lead to confusion and hurt.

I also feel that we, the bloggers, have a responsibility to be aware that we are not the only “voices” in church. For example (and I dredge this up reluctantly), take “Welcomegate”: there was debate and change in the church in the area of welcome because of what I wrote when I first visited. As I’ve mentioned before, I was very humbled and thankful to have caused such self-reflection with the church, but I’m very aware that I wasn’t the first person to say that St Silas wasn’t welcoming.

So why didn’t previous critics cause such change? Who sought out, listened to, debated and acted upon their views? And what about non-bloggers in the church who have views on the “community” debate I referred to above? Or on any other issues? What and where are their views? How confident are non-bloggers in giving their views on life in St Silas to friends or leaders in the church? Who listens to the shy, quiet types who have great insights into how St Silas works, but nobody else understands because we’ve never sat in their (literal and figurative) seat?

A wee part of me wonders if there’s an “influence deficit” where the bloggers have more influence than others. I know that the leadership team does do things like listen, visit homegroups, take time talking to folk on Sundays, and spend heroic amounts of time and energy during the week responding to members’ needs. And it’s very likely that with my head stuck in the clouds of the St Silas blogosphere I simply haven’t noticed that lots of people are listening to non-bloggers. But I do know that one or two folk (both bloggers and non-bloggers) have made it known how hard they feel it is sometimes for “ordinary” members of the church to make their views heard – though admittedly that’s probably the case in medium and big churches everywhere.

If there is such a deficit (and it’s very likely that I am wrong), there’s two things we could do.

First, turn everyone into bloggers. After all, blogging is a great tool – it’s simple, free, has a wide audience, and has allowed people in the church to follow and debate the views of folk they might not otherwise have met. Indeed, I’ve read with great interest the views of a few St Silas bloggers I have yet to meet and probably wouldn’t recognise in person. And I’d commend blogging as a way of expressing your views – if you can think and talk, you can blog. In this internet age, I even think we in St Silas could do more to harness technology to communicate – perhaps setting up an internet forum, using text messaging, and so on.

But going exclusively down that road is clearly not going to work, and neither should it. Blogging is just a means of communication, and doesn’t make the messages contained in them any better, holier or more credible than other ways of conveying a thought. Indeed, if a blog is badly written, inappropriate or boring (not that any St Silasites would do that!), it’s often worse than saying nothing at all. So we must ensure that blogging is not the only or even best way to exchange views and shape the ideas and practices of the church. For sure it’s one way, and arguably a useful and important way, and could arguably even count as a spiritual gift, if used wisely. But it’s not the only way and not the only gift.

The second thing we could do is encourage an atmosphere in the church community that’s even more conducive to listening. It’s a difficult balance to get right, but while those who blog have (rightly or wrongly) a key role in creating and shaping debate in the church, we bloggers must also be careful not to entirely dominate and pre-determine that debate. Meanwhile those who read blogs must keep them in perspective – they’re just the views of one person and not the whole church. Finally, non-bloggers must find the confidence to use whatever means of communication they are comfortable with to express their feelings on the church.

I reckon homegroups are the key to this last point. They are the opportunities through the week in which the church gathers in small groups and safe spaces to talk, share, encourage and reflect. If there is an “influence deficit”, and again there may well not be, it’s down to the discernment and sensitivity of homegroup leaders and members to allow every member their say on what they like or dislike about church, what they want changed, where their faith is strong or weak, and what they see as the challenges for individuals and the whole body.

There have been many calls from our leadership to strengthen the homegroup structure, and I think that’s great. Hopefully in time, issues raised in homegroups can be (like the blog debates but hopefully even more so) the talk of the pews, the inspirations for sermons, and the catalysts for action.

Toilet evangelism

I’d like to share an interesting observation from church yesterday.

No, it wasn’t the morning sermon on welcome, which David kicked off by telling the story of when my church search came to St Silas. I wasn’t actually there as I was in Edinburgh over Saturday night seeing friends. It’s probably good that I wasn’t there to be embarassed, and it would be nice one day to move on from that episode and be known in St Silas for something else other than my blog review – perhaps my magnetic personality and dashing good looks. Incidentally, it was a very good sermon and you can listen to it here, as I did.

Neither is my observation about last night’s Deeper service. Which by the way was absolutely excellent – beautifully put together and very challenging.

Instead, it was the fact that in the men’s toilets in St Silas (I was caught short in the middle of the evening service) there is a poster quoting Colossians 1:11 on the wall:

“May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy”

I wonder who chose this verse and why it was deemed especially appropriate for the men’s toilets. Strength, endurance, patience, and finally joy? Was it put there with constipated people in mind? I’m just glad they they didn’t decide to use Leviticus 15:1-15…

Jumping off cliffs

I was away this past weekend at the Abernethy Trust outdoor centre in Nethy Bridge, helping out at a youth trip away with my old church in Inverness.

The weekend was an exhausting but fun-packed time of various outdoor activities such as rock climbing, archery, canoeing, zipslides, assault courses, silly games, and not much sleep. I was really glad that Chris, Hilton’s youth worker, invited me along to help out because I really enjoyed the trip and the chance to catch up with folk.

However, some activities involved two of my great fears – water and heights. I opted out of the canoeing without a moment’s hesitation, but tried to confront my vertigo by taking on the rock climbing and abseiling. It made me realise how infrequently I push myself in this way, because with both of them I tried and quit twice, despite the reassurances from the staff members working with us. Later on we did crate climbing – building a tower of crates as high as you can, climbing up it while held by safety ropes. I redeemed myself by putting in a valiant performance.

I think the difference there was that fellow group leaders (who I knew well and who I knew fully appreciated my fear) were holding my safety ropes, rather than centre staff who didn’t know me at all. That I trusted my friends more than the centre staff made me realise that earning and giving trust is more about knowing people well and building friendships, rather than just having the skills, qualifications and experience for the task in hand.

Less dramatically but perhaps just as daunting, Chris had invited me to do the “God slot” on the Saturday night. I spoke a little about trying figure out what God’s plan was for our lives, and touched on various bits of the Bible including Job to illustrate that sometimes stuff happens to us which is less about our interests and more about God’s greater plans.

I also explained a bit about what had happened in my life since moving to Glasgow, such as my church search. I described how my blog review of St Silas that commented on the lack of welcome led to lots of email feedback, some interesting experiences on my second visit, and most recently me being asked to help out on the welcome team (now is that irony or poetic justice? I’m not sure).

I kicked off the session by playing one of my favourite music videos, Glosoli by Sigur Ros. The surreal but beautifully shot video (which I’ve blogged about before) portrays a boy walking through bleak Icelandic scenery, drawing other children to him who follow without question or hesitation (and you know kids, that’s just like Jesus…). It ends with the boy leading the group up a steep hill where they run off a cliff – no safety ropes, tut tut – and fly into the air and far out to sea.

But there’s one bit right at the end when a wee boy who has been struggling to keep up falls far behind the rest of the group, and when he reaches the edge of the cliff, he just jumps and falls. And then the video ends. We had a bit of a debate at the end of the evening about what we thought that meant and what happened to him, and whether that meant he was being abandoned or was just going off in a different direction or something.

What do you think happens to him?

Which church?

Although my church search is very much finished, I still get the occasional email about it – usually from folk interested in Glasgow’s churches, or who say they’ll pass my web address on to anyone they know of who is looking for a church in the city.

I had a very nice email in that vein the other day from Melville Paton, who was referred to my blog by a mutual friend. He writes:

I attend a little C of S church in Onich, where I am an elder and organist. I helped revamp our PA system so that we can make a half decent recording of Services and earlier this year, installed data projection equipment with projector, screen, monitors, etc. Sadly, our membership is elderly, and I can find no-one to train to use the software, so have to do a conjuring act to work the laptop whilst playing the organ. It’s OK most Sundays, although occasionally it goes wrong – like the Sunday they all sang through the first verse twice without realising it, because I failed to change to the second verse!

We’re not too bad at welcoming, but I am trying hard to get rid of the pews! We have just lost our Minister to Port Glasgow, so we are a bit in the doldrums.

The main reason for this memo is to thank you for your appraisal of the various Churches in your search. Having lived in the Glasgow area for many years, I am familiar with a number of the churches you visited. At least St. Silas acted quickly on the ‘welcome’. I had a lad on my yacht this week on one of the Cruises that I run for Scripture Union – he helps with the data projection at St. Silas and told me with glee how they had flashed your name up on the screen.

This would be Graham, I suspect!  This blog entry tells the full story.

It seems to me that we almost need a Which Magazine type of study to get Churches to waken up and get out of their ruts and old fashioned ways of doing things. Your blog does just that. I hope that the various Churches read your reports.

Melville raises two very interesting questions, and I’d love to hear readers’ views.

Firstly, many churches would love to reach out to younger age groups, but the fact that there are not many young folk is in itself often an obstacle to doing this. What’s the way out of this dilemma?

And secondly, the Which? Magazine idea – couldn’t agree more! Any volunteers out there?

“Oh, you’re that Simon?”

Over the past few weeks, I've really enjoyed becoming more of a part of St Silas. I've been to more services, met loads more people, made good friends, joined a homegroup, and found out lots more about the church as a whole – where it comes from, what it's doing now for its members and the wider local community, and where it's trying to go in the future.

Some of the Episcopalian trappings such as liturgy or queueing up for sacraments are a bit alien to me, but there's a lot less of that stuff than most SEC gigs, and I wanted to be challenged by new experiences anyway, which is definitely happening.

The title of this blog is something many St Silesians have asked when I've introduced myself to them and they've realised they're talking to the guy who wrote the review. Despite my rather controversial introduction to the church, nobody has yet tried to beat me up, which is something I am grateful for and which I think most of us would tend to look for in a new church.

I'm feeling more and more that St Silas is where I'm meant to be, where I will able to contribute something and where I'll learn loads about myself and Jesus. And I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone there – whether I've met them or not – for making it the inclusive and challenging place that I have enjoyed so much and which praises the name of the Big Cheese so powerfully.

Last night I went to my first "Deeper" service. I'm very keen to move on from the "church review" phase of my blog, and don't want to be continually commenting on the detail of what goes on at St Silas, because I think everyone there deserves the right to get on with life without them or their work in the church risking being "made public" or seen as being judged in any way. However, going by what folk said to me tonight, a "review" of Deeper is somewhat anticipated given my track record. So here you go. One last time…

Deeper is a monthly evening event which had been explained to me as a more intimate and informal approach to church. This made me slightly apprehensive – part of me worried that it would involve everyone taking turns to announce their top five character flaws that they want the others to pray for, or a "hug as many people you've never met as you can" session.

But thankfully it was nothing like that – all it involved was cushions instead of seats, a chatfest over coffee halfway through, and a much more laid back sermon (which I didn't realise was the sermon until it was nearly over). Overall the service was inspiring and uplifting – the preaching and music really touched me, the general ambience was relaxing and non-threatening, and I had many wonderful conversations with both existing friends and new acquaintances.

So "Deeper" is definitely a valuable part of what St Silas does, and those who make it happen clearly put a power of work into it every month.

I just wonder whether a more accurate name for it would be "Fluffier".

Murder

One really interesting feature of WordPress, which hosts my blog, is that it shows you what words or phrases people use if they arrive at your page through a search engine.

For example, many people arrive at my site because they googled (or maybe yahooed or whatever, but you get my point) for things like my name, the mullet search or names of churches in Glasgow. There’s often the occasional off-beat search phrase such as “aberdeen university is rubbish” (which I’ve never said!) or “cameron stout” (who I remember mentioning only once).

However, I’m somewhat concerned about one of the searches that led people to my blog today.

I don’t remember murdering anybody, let alone telling you all on my website or blog. I can only assume this is a veiled threat: I didn’t think my church reviews had caused that much offence.

I’ll perhaps walk a different route home tonight…

Frenzy: A Review

Only kidding.

No way am I going around reviewing Christian music festivals… I'd never be able to show my face in a church ever again. Infamy in a dozen Glasgow churches is enough for me, thanks.

Frenzy was good – although mostly it was just a great chance to meet people. The four of us from St Silas who drove through together had a competition to see how many people we could speak to who we knew. Boosted by a minibus load from my old church in Inverness, plus a few pleasant surprises from elsewhere in the country, I finished a healthy second on 20.

The music was excellent, better than I thought, with some top Christian bands from all over the world. The headliners were Delirious?, who have apparently got stuff into the mainstream charts. They, and indeed many of the other bands, were kind of ubiquitous U2-style heavy rock music, but Delirious?'s visuals on the giant screens and the atmosphere they generated was especially phenomenal.

As I say though, the music throughout the day was a little samey, and I'm aware that many Christians do wonder about the point of Christian music festivals, especially because we are called to change the world we are in, rather than have a parallel reality.

David Shedden writes a wonderfully cynical blog I've recently discovered and he discussed the idea just the other day. And a non-Christian friend of mine said he never really got the idea of specialist Christian music… after all, we don't have separate Christian cheese and other produce.

So I can see both sides of the debate: I enjoyed Frenzy and might consider going to something like it again, but still hope I can be a fully paid-up member of the human race at the same time.

Coping with alcohol

After weekends away in Aberdeen and Inverness, it was good to be able to stay in Glasgow and get to St Silas, my probable new church. I guess I should say that this draws to an end my church search – which has been a fascinating exercise. I'm delighted to be settling where I am, and have had fun getting to know St Silas and its wonderful characters.

I don't have many more reflections on my search other than what I wrote after round one, except to say that it's been an incredibly enlightening experience. I've learned a lot, and am surprised I found somewhere as soon as I did. This means that there's lots of places I was hoping to revisit that I probably won't get to. Two exceptions are Destiny, which I know a couple of people at and will occasionally slink off to when I fancy a sly shot of pentecostalism, and Re:Hope, which is such a re:freshing place and where I hope to visit every few weeks just to see how it changes in its exciting, early life.

Today's services at St Silas were excellent. In the evening, David the minister preached on coping with alcohol. Rather than advice on how to drink seven pints and still be able to walk or what spirits best go with heavy ale, it was a cocktail of scriptural lessons about how we as Christians can keep alcohol in its place in life, enjoying it (if we drink it at all) in a context of mutual support, moderation and so forth.

We had some interesting discussions about the issue in the pub after the service.

“I just want a decent, normal church. Is that too much to ask?”

Hank goes church-hunting in “King of the Hill” – see the video here.

It’s very funny, and not a million miles away from some of my experiences. It encapsulates the weird and wonderful things visitors encounter in churches.

Thanks to Brian, pastor at Glasgow’s only church to have a colon in its name, for drawing my attention to it.

Though you’d never catch me leaving somewhere over an issue as petty as uncomfortable pews, like Hank.

Honest.