With this backdrop of hope – which I too am filled with, I think the church is positioned for what could be its most significant change in living history.

Over the last few weeks the local church my household is part of has encouraged us to ponder questions such as:

• What is God asking of us in preparation for the future?
• What is the vision God is laying on our hearts that God is called us to outwork?
• Have we reached that point where we have become so dissatisfied with what has been that we’re willing to embrace a different way ahead?

Wow!!

My household have loved pondering these questions, and below I share some of the things that have come out of our thinking, as well as some of the responses to our thoughts from our local faith community.

COVID-19 lockdown closed our church buildings

Christian faith communities (local churches) have been out of our buildings for nearly 2 months now. The changes implemented by pastors and churches during lockdown to sustain both spirituality and motivation for mission, have been amazing. My local church has continued to gather on Sunday mornings but online, with new online versions of the usual components of Sunday church services. The online medium has given rise to a creativity that I haven’t seen before – our pastor’s sermon on the parable of yeast permeating the loaf of bread, whilst making a loaf of bread, was incredibly memorable and has stayed with me in a way that him preaching it live in a building may not have.

There’s a toddler in my household and I’m an introvert – there are aspects to this new online way of gathering that have been much less stressful for me than “going to church”. I do however believe in the importance and significance of gathering face-to-face within a local church community.

Post-lockdown brings a whole new world of possibilities

I’ve written before about problems with Sunday church services as our primary expression of Christian faith – they can be inauthentic and lacking actual service, leading many Christians to become disengaged from the faith community. COVID-19 has forced us to do something different with our gatherings, and I hope there is no going back to what was.

Affirming the importance of regular Christian gathering, below are the thoughts that came out of my household when thinking about our local church and what post-lockdown gathering as a church together could look like:

Keep the traditional time-slot of Sunday mornings

It came to mind that practising Christians generally block out a few hours of their time on Sunday morning in order to ‘do’ church together – we can expect this, so let’s make the most of this time. The ‘normal’ Sunday morning church services of the past probably haven’t been making the most of this time together.

Often events outside of the Sunday morning time-slot are sporadically or badly attended, as people’s lives all look different – some work full time so day times don’t work, others have kids so evenings don’t work, others visit families on Sunday evenings who aren’t Christian, others play sport on Saturday, so meeting collectively to be the church can be hard at other times of the week. Let’s use the Sunday morning commitment time that we have corporately made and see what we can do with it….

People do what they see

Typically, being a practising Christian is seen as going to church services in church buildings on Sunday mornings. ‘Worship’ is often just seen as group singing of Christian songs during those same services.

Let’s expand our appreciation and experience of being Christian together by expanding what gets done/seen when we are together, alongside the appreciation that currently, practicing Christians generally, at least, give Sunday mornings to do/be ‘church’.

A new Sunday rhythm

Let’s keep the weekly rhythm of meeting together each Sunday morning, but let’s change what that looks like. Some examples that we imagined are:

Pray together en masse

Have you ever turned up to a pre-service or mid-week church prayer meeting to be one in a group of 7 or 8 people? (I know, 7 or 8 people praying together is an excellent thing!) 

We (the collective ‘we’) want people to pray together:
One Sunday morning, during the church “slot” (so, from 10 am to 11.30 am) each month, let’s gather and pray together – as one, in smaller groups, intergenerational, intercession, for healing, confession, for mission…  No sermon, no singing, just praying.

Imagine everyone in your church community praying together for 90 minutes 12 times during the year! I have never experienced that before in any local church I’ve been part of.

Love our neighbours together

We want people to love their neighbours:
One Sunday morning each month let’s gather to serve the neighbourhood. For example:

• a team cooks meals for a communal freezer to give away when needed; 
• a group go and do working-bees at people’s places who are shut in; 
• a group visit a rest home; 
• a group wander around picking up litter; 
• a group do jobs for the schools or local community groups. 

The ideas are endless, and need to be hooked into meeting the identified needs of the local community.

Once a month on a Sunday morning everyone gathers to serve the community together.

In my local church, last year on Labour Weekend Sunday, rather than a normal church service we all gathered for a morning working-bee around the church property: cleaning, gardening, maintenance, tidying, etc. While this was generally self-serving for our own church community, it showed something of how working together in service is worship. It also showed that the Sunday morning time-slot was when we could work together as a collective on this sort of project.

Diversify our communal worship of God

We want people to worship God together:
One Sunday morning each month we gather for curated worship, drawing on church tradition: singing, formal liturgy, contemplation, engagement with Scripture, ministry of the Spirit. We demonstrate/teach and practise the expansiveness of Christian communal worship, ancient and future. Skills in leading this aren’t always present in local churches – there are people and excellent resources that can help.

Learn together

We want people to learn:
One Sunday morning each month we gather to learn. For example:

• teach the bible (unpack Scripture);
• enliven Christian thought and history (train us in theology);
• inspire our action (resource us for mission). 

What pedagogy would you use to do this well in your particular faith community? Once a month everyone gathers to learn.

The sermon evolved

We could also continue our learning via weekly input – rather than a weekly sermon in Sunday church services, let’s continue to have weekly sermon-like content (earthed and coming out of the local context), but shared each week for individuals and groups to consume in their own time (video/audio/text) and then reflect on and interact with together (in home-groups, life-groups, households, on social media, etc). 

Most of us probably already listen to other content during the week (podcasts or news while walking to work, for example) – I would gladly add local content from my church community. Before COVID-19 I missed every alternate Sunday sermon as I would be in another part of the church building with our toddler – I often listened to the sermon online later in the week.

Foster a culture of generosity

We want to be intergenerational and have a culture of generosity:
One Sunday morning each month we gather in a way that embraces and affirms all of our age groups together. There’s no reason why other examples given in this blog post wouldn’t also have this as a concern, but why not emphasise this monthly. Once a month everyone gathers to intentionally appreciate and affirm the differences within. Once the culture becomes generous this need not be an actual focus.

Come on and celebrate!

We want to gather for massive celebrations, around food and in hospitable spaces, for events such as Easter Sunday, Pentecost, the start of Advent, Christmas, baptisms etc. These are times where a large indoor space would probably be required – which could be rented within the neighbourhood in order to earth them into the local community. Some of these could include other local church communities in the area, or in the case of NZ Baptists: other churches that associate together in the region. 

Blue Moon Sundays could be another reason to gather for these celebrations.

I’m thinking ‘party’ here. Imagine an Easter Sunday where 50,000 followers of Jesus living in Auckland filled up Mount Smart Stadium to celebrate together the risen Christ! (Bono and band might even come to lead a bracket of their worship songs.)

Different resources for a different rhythm

In time, this new rhythm to our gatherings may require different spaces or building designs. We might find we no longer need an auditorium arrangement (rows of seats and stages), but something more flexible. We may not even need our own space for large gatherings, but could meet in other spaces in our neighbourhood (e.g., school halls, performance spaces, town hall, community centres), thus releasing the current building/footprint/land/resource for some other purpose.

Church buildings are not the hub of community life – do you know what is the hub in your neighbourhood? The shops and the schools are the hub of my local community – what spaces might our church partner with here?

Is there an appetite for this?

Cardinal John Dew (Catholic Archbishop of Wellington) said this week, when talking about lockdown rules for church gatherings: “…Catholics have an obligation to attend mass on Sunday” and this adds to the difficulty of their lockdown experience in a way that wasn’t reflected in my experience. I wonder how much of our (in my case NZ Baptist) pre-COVID way of Sunday church services was an obligation to tradition that we’ve been socialised into, and while we have tried to make the most of it – maybe the way we’ve been gathering has limited our expression of being a Christian faith community together.

My household floated these ideas on our church Facebook group, with some encouraging interaction so far:

How might this happen?

We’ve seen massive disruption since the COVID-19 lockdown began. Working differently has been a tiring experience for many. But with research indicating that hopefulness abounds, and the small but positive indicator from the Facebook comments above (from my local church at least), I wonder if the urge to return to business as usual need not influence our imaginations and decisions as we embrace the future.

This blog post describes one possible future scenario: change what happens in the 90 minutes when a local church gathers on Sunday mornings in order to expand our appreciation and experience of being ‘Christian’ together by expanding what gets done/seen when we are together.

Pastors, elders, team leaders, deacons… start floating a few scenarios of the things you’d like to see change as a result of the COVID-19 experience. Paint pictures of these scenarios – like I’ve done here in 1500 words – you’ll no doubt have your own scenarios in mind. Call for people to pray and share – like my pastor did 2 weeks ago through his online preaching. Socialise what emerges.

If you don’t have an official ‘church leadership’ role – you are part of the majority in which any change relies upon your willingness to be open to and engage with. What can you imagine? What is the vision God is laying on your heart? Many of the church leaders I know long for this kind of engagement from the people they serve – so start sharing!

No turning back?

It feels like we in the church are positioned for what could be the most significant change in living history. All it has taken is a global pandemic to rattle this global movement.

The post Sunday church after COVID-19 appeared first on Mike Crudge.

I love this stuff! Research like this helps clarify the picture of the state of things, which can then lead to greater and more sensible engagement.

Firstly, thank you to the Wilberforce Foundation for taking the initiative and making this happen. Secondly, don’t just read my blog post about this, please download the actual report and read it for yourself (it’s a 67-page free PDF online at https://faithandbeliefstudynz.org). Share it with your church leaders, small groups, and denominational leaders – talk about it!

The report is hot off the press – in this post below I share some initial thoughts and reflections.

With my own interest in the communication of the church, and the perceptions people outside the church have of the church, I was most interested to see the outcomes of this piece of research with its objective being:

“To investigate faith and belief blockers among Kiwis and to understand perceptions, opinions and attitudes toward Jesus, the Church and Christianity.”

It’s no census, but a quantitative survey of this size (1007 “nationally representative” New Zealanders) is considered significant and ample enough to draw conclusions from.

This research also included 3 focus groups with “non-Christians”; a group of 24-38 year-olds (Generation Y), a group of 39-53 year-olds (Generation X), and a group of 54-72 year-olds (Baby Boomers). 26 people across these three focus groups. Again, a significant piece of qualitative research.

Christians and church attendance

This is a great infographic. “Christianity” comes in at 33% of the population. This should actually be called “Christian Affiliation” which in the most recently published census results of 2013 was 43% of the population. We’re still waiting on the most recent census results, and Christian Affiliation is predicted to be following its decline of the last 60 years.

My suggestion is to not pay too much attention to “Christian Affiliation” or this 33% “Christiantiy” figure. We’re currently experiencing something of a correction and the steep decline will eventually align with what McCrindle call “Church Goers” (16%). I have commentated about this recently in a post called What will the church look like in 100 years?

It’s the 16% “Church Goers” (at least monthly), which include the 9% “Active Practisers” (extremely involved) that should interest us the most:

This 16% is The Church in New Zealand.

And contrary to popular belief, this figure of 16% is only half of New Zealand’s all-time peak church attendance, which was 30% in the 1890s (see my graph here…)

This data from McCrindle is the clearest snapshot of church attendance I have seen. I hope this helps us Kiwis see how much of a minority the church is in New Zealand: 16% of the population is very much a minority – we must remember this when we’re making public statements expecting the rest of society to follow our lead.

Confession

I have to be honest: some of my excitement about this McCrindle research is because it supports my own thesis and commentary on church and society. Thank you McCrindle!

Another 2018 publication

The recently published (2018) New Zealand Church Survey 2014: Report by Patrick and Taylor (MissionKoru) point out figures suggesting 10-16% of Kiwis attend weekly. In their study they suggest there are many independent churches, a high proportion being ethnic churches, operating under the radar in which there is little or no data available, so the figure could be higher. I wonder if the size of McCrindle’s study would have flushed them out?

Negative influences to Christianity

Again, here is another big affirmation of my own research on the church/society relationship in New Zealand. I came up with a list of 9 perceptions that people outside the church have of the church. McCrindle’s list below, is pretty much a re-wording of my own list:

• Church abuse
• Hypocrisy
• Religious wars
• Judging others
• Issues around money
• Authoritarian style
• Exclusivity
• Outdated

The report shows how influential each of the above are, ranked in a graduated influence scale.

For example, only 10% of Kiwis are not influenced negatively by the perception of ‘church abuse’ – which includes priests abusing children, through to church leaders being involved in scandals. For 57% this perception is a “massive negative influence.”

90% of Kiwis are negatively influenced toward Christianity because of “church abuse.”

This observation alone should stop us in our tracks.

I don’t think this is even on the radar of my local church or denomination – what about yours? Perhaps it should be if we have a concern about church/society engagement.

I suspect the influence of the church in New Zealand will continue to struggle until we corporately address this and these other negative perceptions.

Blockers to Christianity

I really like how the term ‘blocker’ is used as a way of describing what prevents positive engagement with the church and Christians.

The church’s teaching on homosexuality is the biggest blocker to Kiwis engaging with Christianity. It is the top blocker for the youngest three generation groups (this is shown in a chart below). This is the biggest blocker to half of my own generation group (Gen X, 50%).

The graphic above shows that this is a blocker for 34% of “non-Christians who are open to change from exploring Christianity”. It was a blocker for 66% of all participants.

For Kiwis who regularly go to church, the church’s stance on homosexuality is also their biggest blocker (21%) – this means a fifth of people who make up the Kiwi church are negatively affected by this issue not being adequately addressed.

This needs further comment, perhaps I will blog on this another day… I will at least say this: in my opinion, the movement of churches I am part of, NZ Baptists, our processing of this issue to date has not been adequate.

Generational differences

Occasionally the results in this McCrindle report are broken down by the age generation groupings listed above. I found this one of the most insightful parts of the presentation of results. Look at this example below showing influences for each generation to think about spiritual, religious or metaphysical things (coloured highlights are my addition).

This shows how differently the approach needs to be to relate or connect across the different generations.

Death is the only common theme across all generations, and lower down for the younger ones – many of whom may not have yet experienced the death of someone close. On the other end, Boomers and Builders are likely to have experienced the death of both parents, and possibly a spouse.

Look too at the consistency of “personal unhappiness” and “conversations with people”. The key to church/society engagement is right there.

Who makes the decisions in your local church or denomination?

In the church setting, if all leaders/influencers are from just one generation group, eg Baby Boomers, this research suggests if they do not have an appreciation of the nuances of other generational groupings, they are likely to fail in their communication and planning when seeking engagement beyond their own generational group.

You might say that’s obvious. Here we have NZ data that supports this.

See how the top three belief blockers stack up across the generations:

Bible in schools

Interestingly, the Wilberforce Foundation included some questions around Bible in Schools. Except it this research it isn’t called “Bible in Schools” but: “Non-compulsory religious instruction.” I think this terminology and lack of definition in the report is problematic.

“More than half of Kiwis are open to the discussion of spirituality and religion in state schools (55%).”

It would be possible for that statistic of 55% to be used in support of Bible in Schools. Compare that to the 16% of church goers and it doesn’t line up. Unless it’s not actually Bible in Schools the research participants were thinking about, but actual religious education.

Would the Churches Education Commission be happy if say only 1 out of 10 non-compulsory religious instruction sessions were on Christianity, and the other 9 were on other religions and spiritualities? I suspect not.

This is an interesting section and worth looking into as it touches on another hot topic that overlaps church and society.

As an aside: I am totally pro teaching Christian education in state schools, but in an opt-in capacity outside of normal class time, eg, during lunch-time, or before or after school. I have written about that here: Christendom is over: the end of Bible classes in schools.

Super Rugby

I hate to acknowledge the existence of rugby or its significance to New Zealanders, so I didn’t warm to the results of the question “Which Super Rugby team do you support?”

I’m sure some preachers will get some mileage out of this from the pulpit on Sunday.

Terminology

I have a concern with some of the terminology throughout the report and the lack of definitions. There are 4 main “segmentations” in this research and I assume participants could fit into more than one:

• Kiwis who identify with Christianity
• Non-religious
• Spiritual but not religious
• Non-Christians

The biggest definition of any of these segments is only 10 words long. I wonder if the participants had more to go on when deciding how to define themselves.

Sometimes the report mentions “faith” – which is also in the report’s title.

“Two in five Kiwis believe faith is very important for mental health, personal growth and overall wellbeing” (pg 22).

“Faith” is not defined, or its relationship with religion or spirituality.

Christianity is portrayed as a religion but not a spirituality. I wonder if active-Christian-faith-community-participating-Jesus-followers would define themselves as “religious” or “spiritual”. I think this matters – maybe not so much in the snap-shot this research offers, but definitely in the church’s engagement with society.

I feel some of the terminology use in this report doesn’t offer enough understanding or acknowledgement of the different ways the various segmentations use and understand these terms.

I have the same critique of Statistics New Zealand’s census. This report is far more insightful than the census on this topic.

One step further

This report looks like a piece of work from an off-the-shelf commercial research company. It looks good, and it is what it is.

My understanding is Mark McCrindle himself, and all employees are Christian. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect McCrindle doesn’t employ any experts in theological reflection or the sociology of religion.

The design, analysis, and presentation of this report lacks a missiological guiding influence that could have taken it one step further.

It’s a 67-page document. It would have been excellent to have seen 6 or 7 full-page reflections on the data and analysis by 6 or 7 New Zealand experts in the topics of church, society, religion, and spirituality.

I hope this research is repeated in 5 years time – this 2018 report will make a great base-line to compare against. My hope for the next report is the inclusion of some local expert voices engaging with the material.

Download it

There is some gold in this report. It is an excellent piece of work. Please download a copy from the official website (it’s free) and read it through yourself.

I will be interested to hear your thoughts – please come back here and share them.

The post Faith and belief in New Zealand: McCrindle Report May 2018 appeared first on Mike Crudge.

I called the conference talk “something is different now” because our context is different to any other time in the history of the church in New Zealand. And while some of these changes might be unpleasing to us as the church – I think viewing the church through the lenses of these ideas can help with our engagement.

1. Secular

We sometimes talk about being in a “secular society”. And this is often said as if secular is bad or evil.

If you looked up a definition of ‘secular’, it simply means not concerned with religious or spiritual matters, so a secular society is a society not concerned with religious or spiritual matters.

Secularisation can refer to the historical process in which religion loses social and cultural significance. Sometimes this loss of significance can be accompanied with active disregard, but mostly in New Zealand I think the response is fairly passive.

The idea of ‘secular’ actually emerged from within Christian thought and culture. The most widespread contemporary understandings of the terms ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ were fashioned in the modern era, and encourage us to think in terms of separate, stable domains: the religious and the secular.[1]

We know life isn’t usually as clear-cut as binary or black-and-white grand frameworks, but we create them to aid our understanding.

What people mean by ‘secular’ is tied to their particular conceptualisation of ‘religion’…  and vise-versa.

So religion and secularity are intertwined. I don’t think we need to lament about the secularisation of society – I think there’s a lot of good in it for the church.

Questions to ponder

If society in not concerned with religious or spiritual matters, have we, the church, fostered this?

Have we encouraged secularisation?

History and tradition

The church tradition I’m part of should flourish in a secular context: early Baptists were known as dissenters. I like to imagine them giving ‘the finger’ to the then current societal framework: no king or pope was going to tell them how to worship God!

This got them in trouble – because society was concerned with religious and spiritual matters – but in a way that some Christians thought needed reforming…

How does your own church tradition and expression fit within the idea of secularisation? Are there any stand out moments that still have an impact today?

Secularisation brought with it some angst toward religion – or at least an underlying negativity.

The next idea follows on:

2. Post-secular

I’m hearing this term more and more – it refers to a range of theories – (which you can look up online yourself if you’re interested…)

Not everyone is on board with this idea, some would say it’s just part of secularisation. I think it’s worth mentioning briefly here, because I think it brings (or will bring) a lot of freedom for the church:

The idea refers to a resurgence of religious beliefs or practices, and a new peaceful dialogue and coexistence with multiple expressions of faith and reason. (That’s quite an ask!)

The ideal is that religious people and secularist people shouldn’t exclude each other, but rather learn from each other and coexist tolerantly.

So in a post-secular society, religious and secular perspectives are on even ground, sharing equal importance. Fully secular societies may end up changing their value systems to accommodate this co-existence.

I’ve heard a scholar in the UK suggest New Zealand and Australia are showing the most signs of post-secularism of anywhere in the world…

Freedom

I do think we’re increasingly free to do whatever we want – as Christians and the church – so long as we’re not trying to control society with our religious ideology.

• We are free to be the church,
• to be radical disciples,
• to be bringing forth transformation through our following of Jesus…

The ideas around secular and post-secular and my own personal experience, give me a sense of ease and neutrality: I am free to be Christian, and others are free to be Christian too if they see value in it.

Being Christian in this current context is a great thing – so long as we have an appreciation of others: that Christian spirituality is one option among many: our doctrine might not affirm that, but our engagement with reality must.

And we must not cloister ourselves away, but be gently contributing to many things – including in the public square. 

3. Christendom

Academically the idea of Christendom gets a hard time – it’s either too simplistic, or can mean too many things (my colleagues at Carey don’t like me using the term, but I think on one level it’s very helpful).

I think it’s useful as a way of trying to illustrate there was once a period of time where certain things had influence, and now we’re in another time, where different things have influence.

So for me, you can’t have Christendom, without also considering post-Christendom (which is point 4).

Christendom can be described as a society where there are close ties between church leaders and secular leaders, where laws appear to be based on Christian principles, where Christianity provides a common language, and where most people are assumed to be Christian. Hugh McLeod[2]

I think New Zealand used to be a bit like that.

Here’s a really basic diagram – the last 2000 years:

Christendom can be defined as the period of time from about the 4^th century (AD) until some time in the 20^th century, so about 1600 years – which is why historians don’t like the term: so much happened over that time.

Constantine and his Christian conversion are said to have been the launch into this new paradigm called Christendom.

• Christians were now free to gather in public spaces
• The church began to be more formally organised
• It is said that sitting in organized rows of seats in big rooms are also a product of Christendom

In Christendom-dominated-cultures the church had significant power in shaping the way of life. Some of this was good: for example, a lot of our systems of law and order are based on Christian principles. But some of it was bad: the church became a well-oiled religious institution. It lost some of its organic-ness and creativity.

Over time, due to things such as the abuse of power and control, and influences such as science and modernity, the church gradually crumbled in terms of its position and influence in society.

Christendom changed the church.

In some expressions of the faith, Christendom brought a church-building, institutional and power focus to the Christian-faith-community (church).

That’s not to say plenty of good things haven’t happened because of the church through this time – this is just a critique of some of the evolution of the church into what we have today.

The net effect…

A favourite quote on Christendom from a neighbouring pastor and academic, Mike Frost:

The net effect over the entire Christendom epoch was that Christianity moved from being a dynamic, revolutionary, social, and spiritual movement, to being a static religious institution with its attendant structures, priesthood, and sacraments.

And this leads us into idea number 4:

4. Post-Christendom

People who subscribe to the idea that our current period of time is very different to the paradigm of Christendom, have a desire and hope that in this new period, the church will again become a dynamic, revolutionary, social, and spiritual movement.

Baptists then and now

For Baptists – back in our history, Baptists have been known as ‘radical disciples’- there are some great stories from our origins.

As a movement of churches in New Zealand at the moment, words like ‘dynamic’ and ‘revolutionary’ aren’t used to describe us. In fact, we’ve been described as ‘stale, pale, and male’ and that we’ve run out of imagination!

That’s perhaps a bit harsh. If you’re not a New Zealand Baptist, how is your own church tradition/community being described at present?

What’s different about us now to when Christendom was in full swing?

Loss of coherence

Post-Christendom is the culture that emerges as the Christian faith loses coherence within a society that has been definitively shaped by the Christian story and as the institutions that have been developed to express Christian conviction decline in influence. Stewart Murray. [3]

Something is different now.

But I think we often operate as if Christendom still exists: As if the church still has influence like it once did. With an expectation that society will follow our moral code and listen to our… clanging cymbals?

Embrace, relax, fear not

However we define the changes that have formed the current context, I think we need to embrace the context as it is, relax within it, don’t fear it, and find new ways – which might actually be very old ways, to be the church and engage with society.

The final idea on my list is

5. Post-Christian

Here Christianity is described as a sub-culture. At the end of last century an English academic described Britain as post-Christian. He didn’t mean there is no Christian existence or expression, but rather that Christianity has become marginal.

In this post-Christian Britain, there are obviously still people like us that find Christianity a profound and vital influence in our lives, but we are situated outside the mainstream of social life, culture and influence. He described these Christians in post-Christian Britain as:

Like the early Christians in a pre-Christian, classical world, they became a ‘peculiar people’, anomalous in their primary beliefs, assumptions, values and norms, distinctive in important aspects of outlook and behaviour. They become a sub-culture. Gilbert, A. D.[4]

I think this sounds great! This is starting to sound a bit New Testament – a bit radical even!

A purpose of the church

If one of the purposes of the church is to realise the kingdom of God – or God’s transformative plan for the world – people will see the transformation in this sub-culture: in our lives, and families, and neighbourhoods – and they’ll want to know why – not because a church billboard said they should, but because my life, and your life has been transformed – and that is attractive.

These 5 ideas, or lenses

However we frame the changes in society – let’s try to be at peace with them, and find ways to be transformative within them. Let’s not expect the church to have any control over society, but imagine how we might express the love of God in ways that connect and engage with society.

Hope

Something is different now. But as far as I can tell, there is still no substitute for the present and future hope of salvation that the church has and does offer with its ideals of justice and selfless love.

I can imagine an amazing church existing in New Zealand in the year 2117. I expect it will look a lot different to many of our 2017 expressions.

[1] Troughton, G. (2016). Introduction in Sacred Histories in Secular New Zealand. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press. Page 12.

[2] McLeod, H. (2007). The religious crisis of the 1960s. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

[3] Murray, S. (2004). Post-Christendom: church and mission in a new world. Milton Keynes, England: Paternoster. Page 19.

[4] Gilbert, A. D. (1980). The making of post-Christian Britain: a history of the secularization of modern society. Harlow, England: Longman Group. Page ix.

The post 5 ideas that shape church and society engagement appeared first on Mike Crudge.

Click to enlarge

Looking at the census data in the graph below, the top line on the graph: Christian Affiliation – this is the line we hear sensational headlines about in the media when census results are released: about the church dying as this line on the graph plummets toward zero…

The vertical axis is percentage of adults, and horizontal axis is time from 1867 to 2013.

Click to enlarge

I don’t think we should believe the stories of doom! There is some bad news for the church, but I don’t think this is it.

I don’t think this downward line matters at all: what we’re seeing as this line falls is a correction in the data that will eventually match what the reality is.

As a comparison

This pie-graph shows current religion in Thailand. The yellow shows 93% are Buddhist.

I first went to Thailand in 2001, the Kiwi friends I went to visit were working with Buddhist monks – teaching them English. Looking at this pie chart, you’d think nearly everyone in Thailand was Buddhist. They might be culturally Buddhist, but not practicing Buddhism – there’s a massive difference between a cultural identity, and the following of a religious faith. My friends told me they had discovered that for Thai people: “to be Thai, is to be Buddhist” – which doesn’t mean they are Buddhist.

150 years ago in New Zealand

Think about where the Pākehā colonizers came from 150 years ago: Christian Brittan. A culture that had centuries of Christian influence shaping it.

In the first New Zealand census in 1851, I think “to be a coloniser, was to be Christian.” 93.35% ticked the Christian box (interestingly, the same amount that are currently Buddhist in Thailand – it’ll be interesting to see the figures in Thailand in 150 years from now).

I think most followers of this blog would agree: that to claim affiliation to a cultural identity shaped by an historical religious framework – does not make you a follower of that religion.

A correction

What we have with the downward line on the census graph, are people deciding they no longer need to have a cultural Christian Affiliation, and they’re now happy and able to say “No Religion” – which is the increasing green line (I don’t think “No Religion” was even an option for a long time in the census.)

Eventually the downward blue line will level out at roughly the amount of what I would describe as active-participating-followers-of-Jesus: the church. I don’t like to use the descriptor, but maybe the blue line will eventually represent actual Christians (I know – who am I to judge? – but I hope you see what I mean: the difference between participation compared to identity-only).

This plummeting line on the graph, what I’m calling a “correction” to reflect reality, Pew Research refer to as “Religious Switching”.

These are global figures projecting the change between 2010-2050

They are suggesting: Christians globally will drop by 66 million. Unaffiliated will grow by 61 million.

This doesn’t mean 66 million people will lose their faith, it just means they will be able to articulate a different cultural association – one that matches their reality: of no religion.

This data matches my prediction with the blue line on our census graph: that it will eventually reflect actual Christians not cultural Christians.

Pew also have this chart:

This chart is showing that New Zealand won’t have a Christian Majority in 2050 – they’re using Christian Affiliation figures – to suggest in 2010 57% of New Zealanders were Christian – that’s a cultural reference not a reality reference – the church was no where near that big in 2010.

If you hear hype around this – that the church is dying – don’t believe it – it’s scare-mongering.

We don’t have a Christian majority now – what we have is a cultural identity with an historical Christian framework that is declining rapidly. New Zealand’s cultural Christian affiliation is dying.

The actual church?

The data that is more significant, that might be a better indication of the church in New Zealand is this:

Click to enlarge

This is a rough graph of church attendance in New Zealand – across the same time period (percentage of adults on the vertical axis, time on the horizontal from 1867 to 2013)). The data is rough and incomplete – I talk more about this graph here in a post about when church attendance peaked in New Zealand… This line is an attempt to show regular church attendance of adults – as a percentage – by counting bums on seats at Sunday church services.

Assessing the state of the church by bums on seats is a pretty rough way to measure.

While you can be a follower of Jesus and not turn up regularly to church services – I do think regular participation in a local church community is a good indicator of “actual” Christians, rather than “cultural” Christians.

A new way to measure the church

As an aside: I’d be interested in coming up with a new way to measure how the church is going. What about this list forming some new measurement Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the church:

• good news to the poor,
• released captives,
• sight recovery,
• freedom from oppression,
• proclaiming the Lord’s favour.

This list comes from Luke 4:18-19, the bit from the prophet Isaiah’s scroll that Jesus read out as a manifesto at the beginning of his Gospel ministry. That’s what Jesus set out to do. Could that be a way of defining what the church is to set out and do?

The reality is, it’s much easier to count bums on seats.

The 1890s peak

Looking at the graph above – from the data we have, church attendance peaked in the 1890s – at 30% of adults attending. I think that’s a much better indicator of the church than the census affiliation numbers at the same time. New Zealand church attendance then is lower than in Great Britain at the time, which may have been 40% or more.

The right thing at the right time

The photo below was the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church building in Christchurch, New Zealand. I was an assistant minister there for 6 years from 2009. This building was destroyed in the 2011 earthquakes and no longer exists.

A close up of the top text:

This church building was built in 1881. They built that impressive building a decade before church attendance peaked in New Zealand. It was literally a case of “build it and they will come” – they couldn’t lose! There are stories of it being full to overflowing several times each Sunday for many decades.

I like to think they had their finger on the pulse as they sought to discern what was needed at that time and into the future. There will be similar stories throughout New Zealand. Those must have been exciting times for the church.

A strong minority

Current regular church attendance probably sits around the 10-15% mark. I think this is an indicator that 10-15% of New Zealanders are probably active, participating, followers of Jesus. Together we could be a strong minority.

In the graph below I’ve added the church attendance line to the census data:

Click to enlarge

What will the church look like in 100 years?

Now I want to predict 100 years into the future.

Click to enlarge

In the graph above I have added a church attendance line 100 years into the future that stays constant at 10% of the adult population. Imagine if the church stayed the same – we continued to be 10% of the population for the next 100 years.

This would actually mean the church grows significantly over the next 100 years, obviously as population increases, the size of the 10% increases too – so this is a pretty optimistic scenario: we stay the same percentage AND grow bigger.

As shown in the next graph, the Christian Affiliation line will correct itself and be in line with however we end up measuring the church. This is the so called Religious Switching of Pew Research:

Click to enlarge

In this scenario I’m guessing Other Religions will continue to increase – mostly with immigration – as shown in the next picture. I’ve drawn this as linear, reaching 25% in 100 years – but it might end up being exponential and much higher depending on our immigration policy…

Click to enlarge

Object to Answer will dwindle – people will be happy to tick No Religion, and No Religion will peak and then diminish as Other Religions increase:

Click to enlarge

Do you think this is possible? Is this a realistic projection?

Could the church match the historical peak?

I’ve got one more scenario:

What if, over the next 100 years, the church grew back to its 30% peak – so in 100 years, 30% of New Zealanders were active followers of Jesus:

Click to enlarge

The other lines could end up looking like this:

Click to enlarge

Can you imagine that happening?

Imagine if in 100 years nearly a third of New Zealanders were active followers of Jesus.

Coming back to 2017 – I’m interested in the things the church needs to consider now as we plan the next 100 years:

Click to enlarge

What are your thoughts on all of this?

Imagining the church in 100 years is a way to introduce ideas that help us consider what to do now as we plan for the future. In a following blog post called 5 ideas that shape church and society engagement, I run through five ideas that I think help us situate the place of the church in society – five ideas that help us critique and potentially adjust our engagement – helping us get our finger on the pulse at this time as we plan for the future. Click here to continue reading…

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Imagine expecting one thing but getting all the messages of something completely different. Imagine years, perhaps decades of familiarity being turned upside-down before your eyes. It was one of those exhibitions that played with my mind at every step.

The brief was to take two existing products with different target markets and values, and swap the semiotics within the labels (semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation). It wasn’t just for art, it was a test: an exercise in semiotics. The exhibition was well done, with the effect on me being a sense of twisted logic and initial confusion – and fascination – a bit like the final ten minutes of a good psychological thriller.

Swapped expectations

I wondered if this is what it was like when the Messiah turned up in a stable, when he didn’t look like a strong leader to overthrow Rome, for the hearers of Jesus when he said “…the kingdom of God is like…” and it was nothing like what they were expecting. When Jesus talked about the first being last, the poor being rich. And then the Apostle Paul when he said there was no difference in the new faith community between being a Jew or a Gentile, or a woman or a man.

It was often the leaders of the faith community that were the most thrown by things not turning out how they had expected.

The way things should be

We expect things to be a certain way – a box of toothpaste shouldn’t look like a bar of chocolate – we’re so used to seeing things in a certain way, when it’s different it’s harder to make sense of, or to interpret what’s going on.

With this art exhibition it was fun having my sense of familiarity and what I knew turned upside down for a moment. With the first swapped products I saw I did a double-take, and then I was drawn in – I looked at them all – it fascinated me.

Sometimes what we’re familiar with, or what we’ve grown up with, or the way we’ve been viewing certain things – they’re just not right and need to be challenged and turned upside down.

The future church

I imagine a future where in wider society the word church is defined by the positive transformative lifestyles and attitudes of the people following Jesus, who are both well connected in their neighbourhoods and globally aware, sharing holistic expressions of worship and faith in action.

The kind of radical stuff that at this moment, to be honest, makes me feel a little anxious and uncomfortable about: sharing my possessions so that everyone has enough, not having a home to live in, giving my wealth away, giving up my time to stand up for injustices, to visit sick and lonely people and those in prison, and to give away my cactus pants.

Is this music to your ears, or does it feel like crayons in cigarette packaging?

Are there voices in your faith community talking about a different future? Are there thoughts in your head of discontent with the status quo?

I suspect the future church won’t own buildings or pay clergy, it won’t be Sunday-church-service-centric either. Does this seem like toothpaste in chocolate packaging?

Images: In the exhibition credit was as vague as “AUT Communication Design Students 2016”. Photos: 1, taken with my mobile phone. 2, Stephanie Zwerink (photo & project). 3, taken with my mobile phone. 4, taken with my mobile phone. 5, from the Auckland Art Gallery website.

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There has been so much change in my life over the last few months. Dickens sums it up well: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” ¹ Through it all I feel I have a better understanding of myself and of stress. In this post I introduce a test I have found helpful in the assessment of life and stress. (Soon I will write again about communication, church, and society.)

When people ask Geri how her wedding was, she says “not textbook”. After shifting back to New Zealand from London, on the Wednesday before the wedding day she arrived in Motueka (my home town). Dad wasn’t particularly conscious but lifted his arm off the hospital bed in recognition of her arrival. The next day she sat with my mother and sister and I around his dead body. The next day she attended the private family cremation. The next day was our wedding day; it rained the whole day. Two days later she’s staying with her new mother-in-law, the next day attending a celebration-of-life service for her father-in-law. And then during the remainder of our ‘honeymoon’ we spent time checking in on my mum, taking mum to a cat show(!), and attending gatherings with my Motueka family and friends.

Geraldine and her family compromised a lot in our attempt to plan a wedding day with my father present – I am grateful, and glad we tried.

“Not textbook” is a very gracious response.

Recovery

I now feel like I’m in recovery from the culmination of events over the last twelve months: redundancy, shifting (twice), living away from home for 4 months (in two different places), being with Dad over his three-month illness, starting a new job…

The stress test/scale

In the Stress Test (or the Life Change Index, or Social Readjustment Rating Scale), stress is measured by the amount of change that occurs in your life over a twelve month period, and the result of stress is defined as the likelihood of illness or being unwell. Change doesn’t need to be defined as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but simply difference to normal – lots of positive change in a person’s life can still cause stress.

Right now I have a fairly high stress score according to this test. Even though the events that caused the high score are over, the impacts of stress don’t abate just because those events finish. This could be the reason I’m finding I get tired sooner and I’m less motivated to do things I find difficult. I’ve been sicker in the last few months than I have been in the last decade – with pesky things such as a sinus infection, and a lingering cough and sore throat, and a couple of migraines – nothing major, but these have worn me down.

From Wikipedia:

The Holmes and Rahe stress scale is a list of 43 stressful life events that can contribute to illness.

In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe examined the medical records of over 5,000 medical patients as a way to determine whether stressful events might cause illnesses. Patients were asked to tally a list of 43 life events based on a relative score…

Their results were published as the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), known more commonly as the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale. Subsequent validation has supported the links between stress and illness.

To measure stress according to the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, the number of “Life Change Units” that apply to events in the past year of an individual’s life are added and the final score will give a rough estimate of how stress may affect health.
For example:

Death of a close family member: 63 Life Change Units.
Marriage: 50 Life Change Units

Score of 300+:       At risk of illness.
Score of 150-299:  Risk of illness is moderate (30% less than the above risk).
Score <150:           Only have a slight risk of illness.

Being healthy is obviously the optimum state of being for the human body – being sick is the state of being we most want to avoid. Sudden changes in stimuli and the reordering of important routines can cause stress resulting in actual physical and mental un-health.

My assumption (from my brief investigation into the stress scale), is that someone living a normal ‘good’ life with no major change will be as stress-free and potentially as healthy as possible. In this ‘normal’ state, a change in residence (with a stress score of 20) wouldn’t effect life’s equilibrium too much. Changing residence 5 times within a year would add 100 Life Change Units to the final score, therefore contributing to potential stress reactions.

Currently my score on the stress scale is more than 300, and so is Geraldine’s. The score is calculated on the events of the past twelve months, which for both of us also includes “change in church activities” which is one of the life events on the scale, and this gives an indication of the age and origin of the original test – this wouldn’t feature on a revised 2015 test.

I’m looking forward to a twelve month period that results in a score of less than 150.

Take the test yourself

It’s a blunt tool, but one I have found helpful in quantifying my state of being at the moment: all of the changes I have experienced this year together have caused me stress, or in other words, have had an impact on my mental and physical well-being. Maybe this scale will be helpful to assess your own encounter with stress or that of other people you know. Click here to take the test (link goes to a wikipedia page that shows the scale).

Criticism

This test isn’t without criticism by the research community. The scale is deemed inaccurate because it includes events that might be sudden, negative and out of a person’s control (the death of a spouse), alongside events that might be positive and controllable (shifting into a new house) – the former being much more predictive of illness.

The scale also doesn’t account for different people’s interpretation of the same change event, for example, a change in school might be a very positive experience for one person, while being very sad and disappointing for another.

Nevertheless, it is still a tool found useful by researchers. I have found it a useful way to understand how I feel after a year of much change.

Summary

Lots of change in a person’s life within a short timeframe has an effect on their wellbeing. The Holmes and Rahe Stress Test is a way of quantifying some of the changes that may occur in someone’s life. Having this knowledge about yourself may be a way of understanding why you’re not feeling ‘normal’.

Having this knowledge about change and stress may also be helpful in aiding your recovery: I’m trying not to measure myself against the same expectations I had of myself a year ago – my productivity and capacity may be less for a while and that’s ok. I’m trying to schedule regular things into my life that I get energy from, and I’m generally being easy on myself.

Marriage

I have found marriage to be a massive lifestyle change – which I quite like!

I really liked being a single person, and I really like being married to Geraldine.

While our wedding day is memorable for some unhappy reasons, it is also memorable for some amazingly awesome reasons:

• Geraldine and I shared vows making commitments to each other for the rest of our lives.
• Some of our best friends were able to join us for the day.
• We were reminded of how much we are loved by our family and friends.

Our relationship so far hasn’t been textbook, but that would be boring.

Image: Me & Geraldine, 18 July 2015 by Stu Corlett, Photographer, Wellington, New Zealand.

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On Friday 24 April Geraldine and I came to the point of deciding we wanted to get married and spend the rest of our lives together. This was in London.

The next morning I was woken up at 5.30am by the vibration of my cellphone. When I saw my sister’s name on the screen I knew it wouldn’t be good news. She was phoning from New Zealand to tell me our Dad was very sick and I needed to come home.

Our first year

Geraldine and I met a year ago. Mutual friends living in Thailand hooked us up via a Facebook message. Geri had been doing some volunteer work in Chiang Mai and Burma for a Christian aid charity called Partners Relief and Development and was heading back to London via Auckland, her home town.

After several emails, I went to Auckland (from Christchurch) for our first date. It was pretty good as far as 9-hour first dates go, considering I was also highly medicated due to one of those bad head-colds men get.

That is how our global romance began. In the last year Geri’s been to New Zealand three times, I’ve been to London twice, we’ve had Skype calls where one of us was in Singapore, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Spain, Dubai, Australia, and many times from Auckland, Christchurch, Motueka and London. This alongside long emails, thousands of text messages, and traditional voice calls, I reckon we’ve squeezed in a lot more focused communication than your average couple does in their first year of dating (in my experience at least). We really like being in the same city at the same time too, which is fortunate as that’s our longterm plan.

Our last months

Life had been pretty healthy and normal for Dad until he was rushed into Nelson hospital with suspected Appendicitis. It turned out he had a blockage in his bowel caused by Chloangiocacinoma (bile duct cancer) that had “seeded” into his abdomen. The surgeon who operated to remove the blockage recommended Dad’s son in London come home as soon as possible as the days after surgery could have been his last if things didn’t go well.

In the evening of the Saturday my sister had called me, I stood in the boarding gate at Gatwick Airport minutes before boarding, blubbering on the phone to my Dad moments before he went into surgery. I told him what Geri and I had decided the night before and that I loved him, and then I boarded the plane. It took 43 hours of travel time to get from Bethnal Green in London, to Ward 10 in Nelson hospital.

As it happens, the bowel surgery went well, with Dad’s bowel “waking up” 5 days afterwards. The cancer is too far advanced and spread to do anything about it. Statistically someone with Chloangeocarcinoma has 2-12 months life expectancy from discovery. From all we’ve picked up from the professionals talking about Dad, we’re expecting about 3 months.

Juxtaposition

Ever since I first heard the word ‘juxtaposition’ I’ve liked it – I like the way it looks and the way it sounds. I’m sure I use the word in the wrong way sometimes. I think it’s correct to say the two events of 24/25 April were quite a juxtaposition for me. I emailed some friends about this a few days after arriving back in New Zealand, one thing I said was:

It’s a strange time. These two events are giving my Emotional Intelligence quite a work out! I’ve just left behind the person I most want to be with, to be with the person I can’t yet imagine being without.

The joy and security I was sharing with Geraldine was juxtaposed with sadness and fear around the revelation of Dad’s cancer and imminent end of life as we know it.

Within hours the tunnels of the London Underground were juxtaposed with the corridors of Nelson hospital.

The intimacy of living in the same timezone as Geraldine was juxtaposed with the disconnection of 18,000 kilometres.

The hope of engagement

I haven’t used the word ‘proposal’ as it doesn’t sit well with my ideals of egalitarianism: the concept of a man proposing to a woman is so complimentarian. I’m not very keen on the word ‘engagement’ either because much of the meaning behind that concept is no longer practiced. There are many traditions around the event of a wedding that don’t make sense any more – I’ve been doing my own critical analysis of weddings for a long time, but now isn’t the time to outline my thesis…

Geraldine had only met my parents online via Skype, and with things being uncertain about Dad, and her eventual return to New Zealand being planned for later in the year, she got on a plane and spent 10 days in Motueka/Nelson. Up until this visit I thought I had done well to have had dinner with her parents on my own a few months ago, but that doesn’t compare to having one-on-one time with her terminally ill future father-in-law in a hospital room while still getting over jet lag.

What joy the news of our future marriage has brought my family. They love her already. After 10 days hanging out with my family in a fairly difficult situation, they too can see why we want to spend the rest of our lives together.

Why Geraldine?

A sense of ‘home’ – that’s perhaps a weird way to define love, and only works when ‘home’ has positive connotations. With Geraldine I feel at peace with the world and very relaxed – without realising what I was looking for, I have found it in Geraldine.

We’re very different. She is fun and chaotic – not usually words people use to describe me!

I spend a lot of time thinking about making the world a better place, Geri actually makes it a better place (she likes a lot more interaction with humans than I do!)

Geri has a career built around advocacy that gives her a framework to facilitate her natural anger against injustice (I hadn’t taken notice of the Rohingya until I met Geri).

You can learn a lot about a person by the people they spend their time with. Geri has some amazing friends. I’ve had several introductions to people who I look forward to spending more time with.

You can learn a lot about a person’s spirituality by their engagement with their faith-community. Geri and her friends are teaching me a lot about the transformation Jesus was on about.

A Father’s influence

Back in the 1990s I used to listen to a singer/songwriter called Charlie Peacock. One of his songs has always captivated me, and in my early adult years it prompted an appreciation of my father that has stayed with me. The song is called “My Father’s Crown” where Peacock sings about his father having died and what he misses about him:

It just happened again; I wanted to call you up, I wanted your opinion about something. It’s funny how I valued it so little before, and now that I can’t have it I value it more.

It’s been more than 20 years since I lived in the same town as my parents, so phone calls have been the main way of staying in touch, usually three-way conversations with both Mum and Dad on the line at the same time.  Whether it’s talking about big life decisions I’m working through, or more trivial things like comparing different models of cars we like, seeking the opinion of my Dad is an integral part of my life. This is one of the things I will miss the most, which I think Peacock encapsulates so well in his song. I’m glad I’ve been able to appreciate this while I’ve had it, and something I see as a tangible expression of love: to seek someone’s view of the world and have it freely given.

The church and faith

It’s not often I praise the church on this blog – not because there aren’t praiseworthy things, it’s just not really the modus operandi of my use of Critical Studies which aims for reformation: it’s not that good doesn’t exist, but rather the focus for me is on what needs to be different.

My parents have been part of the same local church for nearly 30 years. The people of this Christian-faith-community have excelled in the care and support they have shown my family at this time. From simple practical things like providing meals (the day Dad came home out of hospital he wasn’t eating much and had made a passing comment that he felt like Shepherd’s Pie: that afternoon someone from church brought around a Shepherd’s Pie they had made!), to specific spiritual care like pastoral visits and prayer. Many people in their neighbourhood have also shown amazing care and support – one advantage of living in a small town I think.

I’ve also experienced some really meaningful support from people I have in my life.

Faith in the face of death

A strong motif of Christian spirituality is death and resurrection and the mystery that surrounds both of these things. After 2000 years we still don’t fully understand this as we continue to figure out the communication of God-becoming-human (Jesus the man). What I do know through watching the experience of others, is the mystery of peace in the face of death, through this thing called faith. I am already seeing this a bit with Dad.

It could potentially be a sombre thing having chats with your Dad as he plans his own funeral, but it has been the opposite. One of the silver linings of Chloangiocacinoma is having a period of time to prepare for your death with clarity of mind.

Dad has always been into music and singing – Mum and Dad meet in a choir 50 years ago. It was nice going through the words of different hymns while he was lying on a hospital bed recovering from surgery. Playing different hymns on my tablet to hear the right tune, noticing him tapping his foot to the music, and laughing at his instructions such as where the musicians are to be positioned on the stage and how to save a bit of money with the funeral arrangements.

Thankfulness

Everyone’s parents eventually die, and Dad getting cancer at 73 is not a tragedy. I know how my Dad has expressed his love to me, what his “love language” is and how that has been expressed throughout my life. I have no regrets and will have only fond memories. This is not to diminish the sadness and sense of loss that still exists.

I’m glad Geraldine has met my Dad while he was well enough to appreciate her fun, chaos, and warmth.

I’m glad the timing of us meeting has been as it has, and that it was through something we are both passionate about.

I’m glad the global nature of our relationship so far has forced the priority of communication.

I think our life together will have the capacity for plenty of adventure. We both want to make the world a better place, and have been prioritising things in our lives in order for this to happen.

I once described Geraldine as being fiercely independent, and I have to admit to enjoying my own independence in terms of the efficiency and productivity it has enabled. I look forward to the challenge that bringing our independence together will create – I’m already imagining the possibilities!

I’m getting married and my Dad is dying – such a juxtaposition!

Image: Dad and Geraldine, 14 May 2015, by Mike Crudge

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I went to The Passion of Jesus play in Trafalgar Square, a Tenebrae service at Moot, a family Easter Sunday celebration service at Christ Church Fulham, and Hillsong London’s Easter production. Keep reading to see what I learnt.

The Passion of Jesus play, Trafalgar Square, 12pm Friday

Imagine cosplay for biblical times enthusiasts in an amphitheatre of urban awesomeness with red double-decker buses passing by and background noises of police sirens and the occasional busking bagpiper playing the Star Wars theme, as well as several thousand spectators.

This performance in Trafalgar Square by the Wintershall Players started in 2010 and is among other biblical reenactments in their annual programme. Founder Peter Hutley says:

I had high expectations for the experience, but a fairly low bar for the performance based on the feedback on the website that had Christian people stating how good it was to have the message of Easter out in the public for everyone to see – I was a bit worried it would be cheesy and preachy. I was wrong to think that. It had some particularly good moments in the 90 minute portrayal from Palm Sunday through to the resurrection.

There were moments when the crowd of us watching became the crowd in the story, and a really interesting conclusion where it felt like the risen Jesus was inspiring us all with his great commission.

The bit that caused me the most pondering after the event was one conversation between the High Priest Caiaphas and the Roman Governor as they negotiate the fate of Jesus. I have heard and read the conversation many times, and seen it portrayed on film. In this particular take the characterisation of these two men were such that I had a totally new realisation of what it might have been like.

Caiaphas the high priest, not dressed too dissimilarly to a Church of England bishop, a Babyboomer-actor with obvious political nous, in conversation with the military-clothed Roman governor, a seemingly honest military man with clear boundaries of rank and purpose, clearly not able to come to terms with the demands of the Priest so washes his hands of the situation. You can see this bit from about the 50 minute mark in the video below.

https://youtu.be/Vg9NEOSZgl8

For me this interaction was a House of Cards moment: I could have been watching the priestly-Frank Underwood carefully manipulating the situation for his own purposes… For me, at that time, those performers on Easter Friday nailed that scene in a kindof ah-ha way. There were a few other moments like that, such as when Jesus healed a few people.

I suspect most of the audience were Christian – by the applause when Jesus came to life. I’m not sure the performance illustrated the benefits of faith in God as suggested by Peter Hutley, but it certainly portrayed the story well. English accents and plastic helmets aside, there was something moving about being part of this performance with that particular crowd in that particular space.

At the end of the performance a senior clergyman said some final words and prayed. I felt the words here were far too in-house and church-centric for that very public setting. My choice would have been a person half the age, wearing normal clothes, who came across as friendly and warm and not ‘official’, who explained briefly what The Lords Prayer was and why Christians often pray it…

Tenebrae service at Moot, 7pm Friday

I’ve only been to a few of these types of church services since my tradition and experience has largely focused on the singing/sermon genre of gathering together. There’s something in my personality that finds great meaning in sitting with the darkness of the Easter Friday event, and I haven’t come across a better way to do this than some form of Tenebrae expression.

From wikipedia:

Tenebrae (Latin for “shadows” or “darkness”) is a Christian religious service celebrated in the Holy Week within Western Christianity, on the evening before or early morning of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Tenebrae is distinctive for its gradual extinguishing of candles while a series of readings and psalms is chanted or recited.

I have a lot of time for Moot, a new-monastic community whose home is the Church of St Mary Aldermary in the heart of the City of London (I’ve blogged about their Host Cafe…). I really appreciated the slow pace of this service attended by a small group of people, full of readings from the Bible and long periods of silence for contemplation and prayer. It could have been an hour later to really capitalise on the literal darkness of the occasion.

ChristChurch Fulham, Easter Celebration, 10.45am Sunday

I need to mention that this was my first ever Easter experienced in the northern hemisphere – the location where Easter was invented. For a long time I have wanted to experience Easter in a place where the season is also seen to be participating in the hope that resurrection brings: Spring, with its longer warmer days, trees in blossom, daffodils and tulips bursting with colour. It’s the total opposite in New Zealand with the dying leaves of autumn and the onset of colder darker days. I wasn’t disappointed! The photo above was taken walking down a street to church in Fulham on Easter Sunday morning.

I would describe the ChristChurch Fulham faith community as a charismatic evangelical Church of England parish church. This Sunday morning service was very all-age focus, warm, and pretty happy about the idea of Jesus coming to life a couple of days after he was killed.

This was a well done sing-along-and-sermon format church service with a friendly, happy and inclusive vibe, among a group of people where there were signs of obvious relational depth and consistency, reinforced by the modest size of the gathering. I felt this service provided everything I would expect from a traditional family church.

One thing didn’t sit with me well: during the sermon, which was about resurrection power, one of the video clips used to illustrate immense power was a military fighter jet taking off. I had never seen such a display of warfare as part of a church service before. While I can technically see the point of the illustration, the pacifist within me was distracted away from the point, and the preacher/communicator within me thought of several other illustrations which would have been just as ‘powerful’ with the potential for less offence. Isn’t it interesting, the things that can derail a person’s engagement with the intended message?

Hillsong London, Easter production, 7pm Sunday

I would describe Hillsong London as a pentecostal megachurch part of the Hillsong franchise of churches around the world. I don’t use the word “franchise” in a derogatory way, it’s just the best adjective that comes to mind to portray the impression I get from their stunning image, branding, and marketing, which is clearly a very important part of their modus operandi.

I think the Easter production was performed 5 times on Easter Sunday, at the usual Dominion Theatre venue. We arrived early for the 7pm performance, and joined a queue that went half-way round the block. I felt like the oldest person in the queue and a tourist. The marshals were friendly. There was a positive vibe outside as the queue grew. I wondered if we might have been too far back in the line to be let in. We did get in. Before the show the vibe was like any other theatre production – for a predominantly young audience.

There was a sing-along to begin with and some other usual church service stuff, including a great prayer-for-others slot where regular punters had somehow submitted their prayer requests, either by social media or some other online way, or by writing on cards. Many of these were scrolled through on the big screen, all sorts of things: health, jobs, relationships, world issues, many random topics for prayer – it’s one of the most participatory prayers-for-others slots I’ve seen in a church service.

I was a little surprised with a couple of things by how the pastoral staff came across on stage: Firstly, a bit flippant and perhaps ill-prepared to be speaking to such a large crowd, and second, the age of the lead pastor surprised me – he seemed very old compared to my perceived much younger average age of the audience. That’s not intended to be an ageist comment, in fact I felt like he wasn’t acting his age and I wish he was.

Then the production began. It was an amazing contemporary retelling of the Easter event showcasing drama, multimedia, music, and dance (including a dance-off between the disciples to see who was the greatest). We should have all had to pay 30 pounds for a ticket. it was West End production at it’s best (appropriate to the West End location of the venue). The amateur video below shows the first 15 minutes:

Like any good theatre, the audience were taken to another place, and our emotions were played with in order to give impact to the logic of the story.

At one point there was a montage of media reports showing news clips and newspaper headlines some of which had the authorities portraying Jesus as a terrorist, a clever contemporary comparison – this too can be seen in the video above.

The hanging-on-the-cross moment had a verbally graphic medical narrative of what happens to the human body throughout the process of crucifixion – it was horrible.

Comparing this telling of the story with the Passion of Jesus play in Trafalgar Square, this one had much less dialogue and much more to be visually engaged with. The Passion play relied on a continual dialogue. For the Hillsong production I was sitting in the dark and might as well have been on my own, the Passion play made me feel like I was part of a massive crowd – at some parts even part of the story. The Passion venue was public and spacious with a juxtaposition of contemporary location with historical costume, the Hillsong venue could have been any theatre in the western world.

Both were amazing, provoking thought in me for days afterwards.

Your Easter church experience

Easter is often a time where non-regulars or new people might join in with the things going on in a church community. Reflecting on your own church’s Easter stuff, can you think of things that might have been helpful for new people, or differently engaging for regulars? Did you learn something from attend something new?

The post A London Easter: church reflections appeared first on Mike Crudge.

In this post I draw your attention to an interesting article over at PR Week website where David Benady looks at what “four major religions are doing to keep themselves relevant to an increasingly secular and critical society.” He looks at The Church of England, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism and how they have set themselves up (in the UK) to respond to the media.

Below I highlight a few points of particular interest to me from the article and I ask two questions that you might like to ponder around this issue of how the church is represented in the media. If this interests you I suspect you’ll find the original article called Spreading the word worth a read.

This interests me because data from my own PhD research showed that people who are not part of the church get a lot of their information and understanding about the church through what they see on TV, in newspapers, and online, both fiction (movies and television programmes) and non-fiction (news reports and documentaries).

Public relations plan or public relators?

The concept of PR got a hard time in the area of Communication Studies I was a student in. PR appeared to have the reputation of a shallow branding exercise about sales and marketing that manipulated the public or polished the truth through spin. A comment in this article puts aside the idea that the organisation of the church needs PR experts and considers the concept that everyone in an organisation (church in this case) is living out its values and purpose:

George Pitcher, who founded PR consultancy Luther Pendragon and is now an Anglican vicar, says the idea of having a PR function to communicate an organisation or company’s message, reputation or competitive advantage is “a very old model”. Modern communication requires everybody in an organisation to live out its values and purpose in their activities. These tend to be communicated to stakeholders through social media and customer relations. “If companies are unable to operate the old PR model, it is worth looking at the way religions have operated, because everybody in a faith is supposed to be a communicator of that faith,”

This is a great idea in theory. I think the best and worst PR for the church comes from its people and not any grand communication strategy.

Churchland has its own language

Religious language also has multiple dialects. People not privy to this might wonder what we’re on about.

Broadcaster Roger Bolton, a trustee of the Sandford St Martin Trust which promotes religious programming, says journalists tend to be secular and lack religious literacy. But this is not helped by poor comms from religious groups. “Religious organisations have been slow to wake up to the need to communicate and find a way of speaking in terms that ordinary people can understand,” he says. He gives the example of former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, an academic who struggled to use language that resonated with the media.

Questions to ponder

The church and Christians are often in the media, such as the example highlighted in my post last week about the episode of the television journalism programme Media Take which looked at Christianity in New Zealand. The PR Week article in question here shows some of the things selected Christians, Muslims and Jews are doing as they consider their approach to being in the media. When considering the communication of the church I find it useful to find ways of completing the communication loop between church and society, whether that be real or imagined. Here are are few questions that I might use in that process:

1) Imagine being a human who hasn’t been Christianised: if the media has been your main source of information about the church what would your understanding be?

2) Think of the church denomination or group your local church is part of: what might the dominant impression of this group be to those not part of it who have learnt about it through the media?

Image: Spreading the word article image from www.PRweek.com 2015

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The show is in two parts, firstly with the co-hosts Russell Brown and Toi Iti talking to Wesleyan Methodist minister Francis Ritchie and historian and Anglican priest Hirini Kaa. The second part has Brian and Hannah Tamaki of Destiny Church and Clay Nelson minister at the Auckland Unitarian Church. It’s quite a nice snapshot of the diverse Christian voice in New Zealand.

NewsLeads

Francis Ritchie introduced a new initiative called NewsLeads which among other things appears to be a chaplaincy provision to those in the media.

Māori spirituality as poetry

The co-host, Russell Brown, self-defined atheist, made some interesting comments around a connection he has with Māori spirituality that he doesn’t have with Christianity, this was to do with some comments Hirini Kaa made.

New Zealand should be a Christian nation

It was interesting to see how Christendom-centric the world view of the Tamaki’s is. They think New Zealand should be a society that claims Christianity as its national religion (NZ has never had a state religion), and they doubt the accuracy of the census results that show a decline in Christian affiliation in New Zealand.

Separation of church and state

Clay Nelson is at the total opposite end of the spectrum to the Tamaki’s and it was a shame there wasn’t more time for these three to compare their differences on air in a way that didn’t require defensiveness from any of them.

* viewing the video outside of New Zealand may require the use of a VPN.

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