May 25
Church is strange: get over it!
Church is strange. I know there are people who make heavy use of nearly contemporary music in worship who level this accusation at people who prefer more traditional patterns, but, truth to tell, just about everything Christians do when they meet together is either going to be exceedingly strange or reduced to entertainment. Corporate singing, talking to an invisible person (sometimes together), and reading out loud to adults are all decidedly weird activities.
There are people who talk about making it all accessible. The problem is, everyone has their own different idea of that. The church I was visiting today seemed to think that you made your worship booklets accessible by printing them in Comic Sans. (Ugh!) Shame they forgot to give the booklet any page numbers.
Personally I think we just need to accept that church is strange, and people will need to be acculturated to it, especially while it’s evolving through a time of rapid social change. What we need are better relationships outside the liturgy, good opportunities for “halfway-houses” (on Sundays or weekdays, and in homes, cafés, pubs or churches) and, when someone does venture into a liturgy ancient or modern, a warm but non-patronizing welcome.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Yes, so true. If church isn’t giving us access to mysteries why go?
May 28th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
It’s helpful to remember that church is way more than what happens on Sundays. It seems to me that the constant focus on trying to make services better is largely a distraction. It will be a great when we finally realise that what each of us do everyday is the important thing, not 60/90/whatever minutes on Sundays. It will be even better when we act on it.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
[...] have several Roman Catholic blogs that I read, and I really enjoy the MetaCatholic. Last week he posted some helpful words about how church is strange: Church is strange. I know [...]