Church for Beginners

It's Sunday morning and I arrive for the morning service of worship at the church. It's just gone 10am and the streets around the church are packed with people. Already the cars are parked on the pavement, all round the church and even across the church gateway. I am pretty sure that it is illegal to park a car close to a corner and even surer that parking at the traffic lights is asking for a ticket. The crowds start arriving from the early morning, rain , hail or snow, even on Easter Sunday. From what my mother tells me it must have been like this in the 40s and 50s when people walked to church or to work each day. Is this some kind of spiritual revival? Will we have to consider building a new church to hold all these worshipers? Alas no is the answer, they are not arriving for our church; they are not arriving for any church, as we know it. They have found a new way of worshiping and a new church to attend. This church serves their needs to browse and to shop, to talk with their friends and to do so at their ease. It also allows them to take part as a shopper or as a seller. This is the new Sunday observance. The swings are no longer locked up on the Lord's Day and the traders do not stay at home. In fact this corner of Tennent Street is busy only on this one day.

We respond in a number of ways: we get angry when our members ( some of them are very elderly)are unable to find a place to park their cars. I have phoned the police very often and they have come and they do give out tickets but this people power has continued regardless. The PSNI cannot control the situation even though, it could be said, that there is "an accident waiting to happen" unless the control is increased. To help alleviate this problem we opened a small space for members to park only to find that the gateway is regularly blocked by parked cars. Secondly, we can, and we do, complain about the inconvenience when forced to drive around the area looking for a space. We understand that the Queens Highway is not ours but we have come to expect to be able to park at the church and not have to go half a mile away.

Another possible way of looking at this is to embrace the situatuion as an opportunity for ministry. We have tried to do this by setting up a prayer ministry in the market each Sunday. Over the weeks dozens of people have come to the person sitting at the table to talk and to bring their prayer requests. Some are looking for general prayers for the welfare of their family but others have really complex and difficult situations that they seek help with.

Its no secret that the church in the UK is on the retreat when compared to the situation 50 years ago. Even in Northern Ireland, where 45% of the population are still making the Sunday journey to worship, that is considerably fewer than it used to be. Against this we have this success story and I wonder how any of these people would feel if they decided to cross the street and come to church one week. Would they feel welcome, strange, included or excluded?

They might feel that they had to dress up before coming and that's not the way of the world today. They would probably feel ill at ease when asked to sing ancient hymns using words in a foreign way and they would probably not have any cash to put into the plate as it came round. How would they know when to stand, and when to sit. Do they need to close their eyes when praying? Can they bring food and drinks with them and can they talk at all?

I wonder if they would come back again the next week. If we are going to expect outsiders to come to our church we will need to have some understanding of the cultural difficulties and be ready to make the changes that are necessary to make. Each week as I turn the corner and see the crowds, just feet away from my church I have the fleeting thought that they could be coming to church and we could be faced with the thought that our building is not big enough but then reality returns and I wonder what we need to do to make contact with some of these people and what would we need to change to make them feel welcome among us. The question form us and all churches has to be how to make then outsiders feel like insiders.

To be completely honest I also wonder how they could be encouraged to give us a little of this space we thought was ours. outsiders feel like insidders