i keep pondering ... which leads to long dribbly blog entries ... well it saves me putting my friends through it in real life

now and then i have been popping to church in the last few months ... partly because it was a good opportunity to see friends and partly because i was curious to see if anything had changed ... i have been in a few so this is not aimed at any one church in particular ... and it has been interesting ... due to the fact that i hardly ever go it meant i was seeing it with fresh eyes ... i was curious as someone who has applied to be ordained what was this world that i will be entering looked like ... not that this will be quite my world even after ordination but i am guessing i will find it hard to avoid christians altogether :)

there is some stuff that really bemuses me ... i guess the way to sum it up is this ... in any other area of my life if i was presented with what passes for presentation and interaction of the calibre/standard that the church represents itself i would ask for my money back ... oh and i would walk out

the aspects of an average service utilise theatre, lecture, performance and audience participation usually of a level quite amateur ... i would leave even if i never got around to stopping at the box office to have my money refunded

a few snapshots to illustrate ...

the dross they sing ... why dump an amazing song like ‘How Great Thou Art’ to replace it with some of the most bland lyrics and melody found in most modern songs ... dump the rubbish and keep the best from any genre ... have a little critical courage and stop singing rubbish words ... do you really think God doesn’t cringe ... if I'm cringing then God has both fingers in his ears going la la la la

if someone is a bad singer then don’t put them in front of a mic ... a microphone amplifies ... you hear more of the bad it doesn’t improve things ... and that argument that they are doing it for God ... well he won’t thank you for it ... do a simon cowell and tell them they will never be a good singer and they should put their energy into something else ... if they are bad at singing it probably means they are good at something else ... you can only hope ... and inflicting them on a group of people every week is not helping anyone

and your overhead projectors and your projection screens ... there is a maxim in the world of computer coding ... shit in shit out ... if your slides and your song lyrics look visually bad then do them better ... there is cheap affordable software available to do it ... there is no excuse ... take some pride in how you look to visitors ... slick is good ... modern sharp and visually attractive irritates a lot less and people might not get distracted and listen to what you have to say ... some churches are losing points before they even open their mouths

oh and like the singers if you are really bad at public speaking don’t do it ... if you don’t have much personality and you mumble and can’t make a coherent point then chances are this will not be improved if you stand in front of a group of people and feels slightly sweaty and nervous ... and no you don’t have a ministry you have an ego and you need to stop ... and we all know this to be true because in the last few weeks i have seen an example of someone who shouldn’t ever ...and someone who has a natural ability to communicate ... i wonder which one God can use ... i know which one impressed me and made me think about God and not murder

and please once and for all put away the argument that God can use anybody despite their failings etc ... maybe he can but we don’t promote people in the workplace that are not effective or don’t get our message across ... we train them and appraise them and manage them ...and yet for some reason we put up with such low standards in the name of God

nearly everybody i have met in these churches have been nice decent well meaning people but as a church they seem to lose the ability to assess how they appear ... in one church i was asked what i thought of the service and i said i thought the worship was dreadful and that there was one person who was singing on the stage who should be taken outside and shot ... i was told that i will have to get used to it if i was going to be ordained and that could be one of their friends i was talking about ... so what! ... what kind of friend are you that you don’t tell them the truth? (i thought and didn’t say - see it starts getting to you this polite thing - you start censoring yourself - not healthy)

it is not that a church doesn’t have the right to do all of the above ... you go right ahead ... why aren’t people attracted to the church? ... what are you doing wrong? ... why are numbers dwindling? ... how can you communicate better? ... what are you doing wrong ... oh you know ... same old same old

one very funny moment occurred when i was with my sister in church and i wanted to stand up at the end and thank them for taking such care of my family over the last few years ... i asked my sister if it was ok if i said a few words ... if it was the kind of church that wouldn’t mind if i said something ... she eyed the man preaching and turned to me and said ... yeah but let him finish first

giggling in church is so very wrong :)