OUTSIDERS

Bailey entered a strange place, well, strange for him:this was not a place he had been in for a long time. He felt, and looked, very ill at ease. It was like all the eyes of the people were fastened on him. He was all dressed up, and that was very unusual. Stranger still he was on his best behaviour, normally speaking he wouold still be in bed, recovering after the night before. Maybe he was more comfortable than he looked but I don't think so. He had no idea how he was supposed to behave: when to stand, when to sit, when to talk and when to be quiet and his friends were no better. Then there was the singing: he didn't normally sing unless he had been drinking for some time and as he sat down it ocurred to him that he had no money in his pocket and what would happen when the plate came round, how embarrassing?

Fortunately he began to feel a little better as time went on. By the time the sermon came he was feling much better: thankfully the preacher took a more conversational style and encourged inter-action. When one of the other visitors agreed to take some of the honey and when he laughed at a lame joke the akwardness left and the body language changed and there was even the faint glimmer of a smile,

Every time we have people with us who seldom if ever go to church these are the kind of cultural hurdles we expect them to cross. The way our services are arranged suit the people who know what happens and the way it happens: they are the people who have no need to be persuaded by making things suit them. The very ones that we should be helping by the way we worship are the ones who feel like fish out of water and when they don't return we are surprised because we think we have reached out to them. The church that wants to be apostolic in the way things are done and in the way they worship will ask the regular queston about how to make outsiders feel like insidders. Nothing we do will guarentee success, no external changes will ensure that non-believers will flock to the church: that rests in God's hands but that is no excuse for making life as difficult as possible for them.

As the service progressed he felt increasingly tense: would he be bored by the sermon? Would it embarass him? Surprissingly he began to feel less tense and his face reflected that. In fact he actually began to find it all interesting even though it was an involuntary decsion ............................................