What put the focus on what churches were doing regarding the Women’s World Cup final was probably an article reporting the comments of the Bishop of Derby. It was in this article where she said that church life could in effect wnork around an event like a football final. However, people’s attention was caught and controversy ensued because the headline initially suggested that she was saying it was fine if people skipped church.
In her defence, many people have pointed out that she didn’t say what the headlines suggested. The media had misrepresented her. I think there are three things noting in response to this. The first two have been brilliantly said by two other bloggers. First, Steve Kneale here deals with the issue of church life functioning around things like football rather than around our relationship to God. I agree with Steve. In fact, I suggested in conversation that what was said was at least as bad, if not worse than what the headline had suggested. You see, if people did choose football over church on Sunday, then I’m all for grace and graciousness about that. I don’t think it was spiritually the wisest move for them or their families but God’s love is not looking to catch us out because we miss a Sunday.
I think that it is fantastic that there are different church services at different times of day. My own desire has been to see the church ready to meet people in whatever time and whatever place they are able to meet in order that they can hear and respond to the God’s Word. That’s why our last church ended up with 5 opportunities throughout the weekend. However, we need to be careful that this doesn’t become about consumerism. It should not be about Christians seeking convenience and switching church services to work around their priorities.
Ian Paul, who has significant experience of talking to the media pointed out that the bishop should have thought carefully about saying things that could get misunderstood and misrepresented in the press. He observed a need on the part of senior clergy to say something, to say anything. He pointed out that sometimes, perhaps often, we don’t need to say anything at all.
Both of these points take us to what I think was the main issue and one that can also in its way into church life, the rest of the year round. It’s the desire for relevance. There seemed to be something between a positive desire to use the opportunity of the World Cup to connect with people and a fear that if we missed this then we would be irrelevant on Sunday because people would opt for the football instead. I saw someone write about the risk of a missed opportunity. They thought that finishing the service early, putting the match on the big screen and serving up some bacon sarnies would bring new people into church.
I want to observe a couple of things concerning that. First, as Ian Paul notes, more people tend to be in church than attend football games on Sunday, more people still identify as Christians than watch on TV. A big game like a World Cup final will attract a lot more than usual but even still, the figures are at around 13 million for those who watched the game live. This is a large number but it still means that the majority of people, about 42 million, in England were not watching to see history made. We may have been so heavily focused on being relevant to about 23% of the population that we missed out on the fact that what we were prioritising was culturally irrelevant to far more.
I did, partly tongue in cheek comment previously that it seemed to me that those seeking to pronounce most loudly and who seemed most keen to re-arrange their services and organise watching parties at their churches often didn’t seem to be football fans themselves. I’m tempted to suggest that watching a football game in a church hall, organised by people who don’t understand or get the game isn’t exactly an appealing prospect to your average football supporter. The point here is that we can sometimes be seen to be trying too hard. We want to be relevant, so we try to sound excited and like we know what we are talking about whether music, sport, TV etc but people can see through that. We end up about as relevant as the 40 year old youth worker with his baseball cap on backwards.
Now, I do think we need to contextualise. I don’t think Christians should try actively to be weird and out of touch. Attempting to do our own thing as though nothing else around us is happening is silly. However, it’s important that when it comes to cultural relevance that we are not trying too hard, that what we do should come naturally. It’s also important that we’ve made sure that we’ve read the culture properly. The best way to do this is to be naturally living life in our communities, getting to know people, asking them questions, showing an interest in their lives.
However, we also need to remember two things. There will be things that make us different, weird even as Christians and we cannot avoid that. Our different priorities will at times lead the world around us to conclude that we are “irrelevant.” We shouldn’t fight that. The apostle Paul might add in 1 Corinthians, “not many of you were cool, not many of you were relevant.”
Finally, we need to remember that the Gospel is itself, on its own, without any effort on our part, relevant. We don’t need to dress it up. We don’t need to desperately beg people to come to our buildings on other pretexts in the hope we can draw them back for the message another time. The Gospel will itself draw hungry needy people to Christ.
Faithroots 