I uploaded both sessions to the website earlier in the week, and thanks to Dave Walker we got some promotion for them on the Church Times Blog, and I’ve even managed to get them set up in the iTunes Podcast directory!

What is interesting is that on the day, most people I spoke to seemed to prefer the first session – “Why the Scientific World View Confirms Liberal Christian Faithâ€?, whereas the session that has generated more interest (and hits) online, and has generated discussion, is the second session – “Why Liberal Churches are Growingâ€?, indeed it was the title of that talk which Dave Walker used to caption his posting.

Not surprisingly, the talk, which was provocatively named given the prevailing wisdom on the subject has produced an inevitable response in the comments on the Church Times Blog:

Liberal churches aren’t growing, they’re dying a slow painful death.

It’s the evangelical churches remaining faithful to the Bible preaching the Gospel of repentance and the coming judgement and hell which are growing.

Certainly the idea that it is only the conservative Evangelical Churches that are growing is a favourite line with the mainstream media. Indeed just this last week we had an interesting example doing the rounds, and highlighted by Church Mouse – Chris Moyles talking about seeing a service from Kingsgate Community Church.

If you listen to what is said, traditional Churches are equated with being boring and irrelevant and out of date, whereas what is going on at Kingsgate Community Church is much more attractive with modern music and presentation.

The key thing to note though is that nowhere is theology mentioned – certainly the assumption is not made that Kingsgate is growing because it is “remaining faithful to the Bible preaching the Gospel of repentance and the coming judgement and hell�.

If you listen to the whole of the Martyn Percy lecture part way through he looks at evidence of what was important to Churches in the past, and his conclusion is that much as today, the primary interest of the average Church member is the state of the building, and whether they will get a priest. Whilst there are people for whom theology is important, it is way down the list behind the environment, the services (generally whether they go on too long), and the kind of welcome, as this article from Christianity Today highlights:

A Christian author, Rob Parsons has said to The Times newspaper, “It is not big doctrinal issues. Typical arguments take place over types of buildings, styles of worship, youth work. If not that, then they argue over the flower rota.�

If you look at a church like St James’ it is precisely the kind of church the comment on the Church Times Blog believes is “dying a slow and painful death� – but we’re not. In fact we are one of the fastest growing Churches in our Deanery, outstripping the growth of the nearby Conservative Evangelical church. Our electoral roll numbers over the past few years have on two occasions shown a 15% growth, and we regularly fill our building to capacity twice on a Sunday. As I have mentioned on this blog previously, at Christmas we now have to run one service four times on Christmas Eve to accommodate everybody who wants to come. When you look at our family roll, whilst there are now more people coming in from outside the parish, most people aren’t coming very far, generally only from the next door villages.

When you turn up at our Church, you won’t find a worship band, no glitzy presentation (our sound system is well and truly on our last legs), and you certainly won’t find anybody preaching about the coming judgement and hell. Having said that, when you look at some of the members of our congregation, you will find Christians who are from that tradition. Equally you will also find people who have come from strong anglo-catholic backgrounds and all points in between. What we have at St James’ is almost a representation of the classic definition of the Church of England in that we have evangelicals and anglo-catholics held together in a broad liberal Church that accommodates both.

So is St James’ an exception, growing despite the underlying theology? The Martyn Percy argument is that it isn’t. So in that case, what are we, and the other growing Churches doing?

I can only speak for St James’. Firstly we are not overtly trying to recruit people. We make sure our events are well publicised, and we deliver a newsletter to everybody in the parish twice a year, but we aren’t doing anything that could be described as evangelistic events, events that are specifically targeted to bring people in. Essentially we tell people what we’re doing, and invite them along, but we’re not preaching at people – what we do can easily be ignored.

Most people who join the congregation come to us either at random, having moved into the area, or via occasional offices such as baptisms, weddings and funerals, or through one of our associated organisations such as our babies and toddlers group, or the church school. We also have picked up people on personal recommendations – existing members bringing along friends or family.

By virtue of our small building, we can’t offer a one size fits all type service, so although our main Parish Communion is pretty middle of the road, we also have a very traditional BCP Matins that is well attended twice monthly, and on alternate weeks an informal service of the word targeted at young families. Whatever the service we try to ensure that everybody gets a warm welcome from the sidespeople, and to guide new attendees through the service. Most major services are also followed by traditional coffee and biscuits in the Parish Centre.

In my experience, the quality of the welcome, and the feeling of community is something that the growing Evangelical churches are accomplishing also, and also leaving the members feeling happy that they can invite friends. This is what we’re trying to do at St James’ as well. It seems to me that the churches that are growing are the churches that get this right, it’s not about theology, or the nitty-gritty of the message, it’s about the basics, basics that anybody can sort out. The whole church needs to learn how to evangelise in the modern world, and whilst some are successful, sadly large numbers of them are struggling to get it right.

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It’s not quite the same, but here is a copy of the service we used, which hopefully will give a bit of a flavour of what went on.

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As a background to this clip, this was filmed at our village concert, and the Youth Group decided to sing a song which they had done as part of a Christmas production they had put on in aid of the Congo appeal a few days before. Prior to this they’ve been having real problems with the backing track, and as our clip commences, the backstage guys have just about got it sorted.

All credit to Cathy, the youth leader here for keeping it going as it all starts to go horribly wrong…

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This is the latest album from Voces8, who we went to see in concert on Tuesday night, and who were fantastic! The group is run by two brothers, Barney and Paul, who are also the sons of a couple of friends at Church, the concert on Tuesday being a fundraiser for the St James’ conservation appeal. Paul has said that he’s been offered odds of 25 to 1 on actually getting a Christmas number one, but he’s hopeful to do well in the classical chart. To buy or download from Amazon click the picture above, for which we get a small referal fee. Alternatively you can also pick up a copy of the album or the single from iTunes.

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Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large.

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It has to be said that during the week, the weather wasn’t looking particularly promising, and whilst it didn’t rain yesterday, it was overcast for a lot of the day, however this afternoon was fantastic, not too hot, but a nice clear day, so people got great views from the top.

We were open between two o’clock and five o’clock and had a steady stream of people from opening, with it being busiest between three o’clock and four o’clock. Like all the events in the weekend we weren’t making any charge, however that didn’t mean that we didn’t have a prominent big sign asking for a donation to the conservation fund, and the majority of the visitors were happy to contribute, many gift aiding their contribution as well. We also laid on cream teas, which were also very popular – one husband who had hoped for a piece of the cake baked by his wife was sadly disappointed as by the end of the afternoon there was no food left at all! Hopefully we will have made a few hundred more towards the half a million pounds needed for our conservation work.

I took a few pictures of the afternoon, which can be seen in our photo galleries. The different time of year giving a lower sun allowed me to take some nice shots playing with sunlight – this shot of the inside of the building and this silhouette of the parapet being ones I thought came out well.

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Along similar lines, we have another example of why you shouldn’t upset a lawyer – especially if you’re another lawyer – with the latest instalment of the Mark Brewer SPCK SSG story. One of numerous actions that got people annoyed was the fact that Brewer attempted to have SSG, a UK based charity, declared bankrupt in the USA, naming a non-existent US company as the entity being wound up – the belief being that it was being done to hide from the mainly UK creditors (it is worth mentioning that Brewer maintains that it is being done in the USA for other reasons). Needless to say, the court in the USA chucked out the case as being “in bad faith” – meaning that it was filed for a wrong or improper purpose – but not before a whole load of work had had to have been done. The non-existent company wasn’t the only odd thing about it though, among another of other aspects of the case that smelt fishy were the fact that Brewer’s own firm of lawyers were the ones acting for the non-existent company that he was trying to have declared bankrupt – so Brewer was both one of the people named as being part of the non-existent company, and also the lawyer acting in the case – and there was also another Brewer company called the ENC Shop Management Company that wasn’t even mentioned in the motion.

Now comes news that the person who had to do a lot of that work, trustee for the case Randy Williams has hit back filing a motion for sanctions against Brewer. Matt Wardman has a great review of the motion, but some of the gems it contains are worth highlighting:

• Requests that Randy Williams expenses in dealing with the case be claimed back from Brewer.
• Accuses Brewer of incomplete disclosure, including using one of Dave Walker’s posts to highlight the ENC Shop Management Company that wasn’t mentioned in proceedings.
• Accuses Brewer of perpetrating a fraud on the court:
  

  “Mr. Brewer and his firm engaged in a concerted scheme to mislead this Court and to file a bad faith bankruptcy case. Mr. Brewer’s action in failing to disclose the true name of the Debtor and the cancellation of its contract and assignment of those rights to another closely held company of Mr. Brewer is a fraud on this Court. “Fraud on the court� is an intentional act by an officer of the Court to deflect the Court from knowing all of the facts necessary to make an appropriate judicial decision on the matter before it.�

• Suggests that Brewer needs “20 hours of continuing legal education in the area of legal ethics”.
• States that “the filing of this case in the United States where almost every creditor is located in the United Kingdom brings disrepute to the Bankruptcy Courts of the United States as they are being used as a haven for a party attempting to escape justice”.
• That Brewer “seeks to use the designation of St. Stephen as a charity to somehow suggest that his conduct does not bear scrutiny”, before pointing out that the opposite should be true.
• Concludes that “creditors, especially those in a situation like this who are looking at the system from outside U.S. borders, can see that parties who would attempt to subvert the law to escape their responsibilities will be punished”.

The whole impression of the document is that Randy Williams is really rather cheesed off. But putting that aside, the motion provides a lot that can be used back in the UK, and does seem to represent another spectacular backfire on Brewer’s part. Rather than quietly winding up the charity, the US court is now looking to punish him and his firm for bringing the motion in the first place.

Update: Brewer has issued a response to the request for sanctions, which Matt Wardman has reproduced largely admitting to the accusations and accepting the majority of the charges made against him. Another thing to note from Matt’s posting is that there is enough about Brewer on the internet now that even searching for his company name brings up a posting about him misleading the court as one of the first links. As I said, another spectacular backfire – the original postings by Dave Walker never had this sort of page rank on Google…

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As everybody now knows, there wasn’t any kind of storm that hit Denver on that night, but for those God fearing Christians who believe in an interventionist God who will show them who to vote for in the upcoming election, Michael Moore has pointed out that there is a big storm on the way. Hurricane Gustav is currently heading straight for New Orleans, a city which need anyone forget was decimated by Hurricane Katrina three years ago, whilst George W Bush and Senator McCain celebrated McCains 69th birthday in Arizona. Not surprisingly although some of New Orleans has been repaired, residents are once again fleeing the coast.

The interesting thing is the current prediction of when Hurricane Gustav will make landfall – just around the time George W Bush will be speaking to the Republican faithful at the upcoming convention. The timing isn’t lost on the Republicans either, who are even now talking about postponing the conference – whether it is postponed or not, the news media is already reporting that Bush will now not attend.

Now if I believed that God would manipulate the weather to influence the result of the US election, the idea of sending a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, something that produced significant criticism of Bush in terms of both preceding policy and over the response does seem to indicate a rather perverse sense of humour on behalf of the almighty. But seeing as this is hurricane season, as far as I am concerned it is just a rather ironic coincidence. Whether the Focus on the Family on the family crowd will have some great epiphany as a result I seriously doubt as well. All we can do is hope that the US is better prepared this time and that the loss of life can be minimised.

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The item treads a similar path to that of the earlier Telegraph article, focusing primarily on Joanna Jepson, who perhaps as expected has come out fighting against what she sees as a programme that portrayed Christianity in a wholly unbalanced way. Although she has apparently taken legal action to stop the programme, that failed to stop transmission, but apparently did have some effect on what was shown. A spokesman from Channel 4 described the purpose of the programmes as follows:

“The programme aims to demystify Christianity and introduce its basic teachings to a diverse group of people.�

Unfortunately Jepson hits the nail on the head with this comment:

“It was so destructive. The take-home message was almost that you can’t come to God unless you sort out your sex life.�

Perhaps one of the things to consider is that maybe with the way that Christianity gets portrayed in the media, especially with the massive arguments over homosexuality, the impression of the basic teachings of Christianity are being skewed in the public perception.

Anyway, on to the final programme. Interestingly it didn’t feel nearly so much like the George Hargreaves show. Thanks it seems to the intervention of Joanna Jepson and the Catholic mentor Father John Flynn, two of his targets from last week actually seemed to get a beneficial outcome.

Although it wasn’t shown in the programme, the Church Times report quotes a statement made by Joanna Jepson to the whole group about Laura, the lesbian participant in the programme. Jepson is quoted as saying the following:

“I said to all of them: ‘When God looks at Laura, he sees Laura, not a lesbian that we have labelled.’ I told Laura on the very last day, if you want to encounter God, forget about your sexuality for a moment; put that to one side, and then see what God says to you in the context of your relationship with him.�

The comment can be equally applied to a number of the other participants, all of whom were labelled to some extent by George. However, although there were a couple of scenes in the programme with George and Laura, Joanna Jepson’s influence seemed to be coming through. Initially Laura had discovered the Metropolitan Community Church, a small denomination which reaches out in particular to the LGBT minorities. Laura went to one of their services in London, but didn’t seem to get much from it – George of course dismissed the whole church. However after that Jepson suggested a retreat at a convent, to give Laura time to think. We didn’t hear the opinion of George on this, but from Laura’s point of view it certainly seemed beneficial, and by the end of the programme she seemed a lot more comfortable both with her sexuality, and her burgeoning faith.

Another significant change was again no thanks to George. Aaron, who had previously had an argument with George over sleeping with his pregnant girlfriend – being told that it was fornication – introduced Catholic mentor Father John Flynn to his mother, who was currently in the midst of a cancer scare. The big thing was that she was massively anti-Church, and really wasn’t that keen on her son being involved, however she was also obviously scared about the potential of having cancer. He didn’t try to convert her, or start preaching at her, all he did was sit and talk to her, and then wrote her a letter saying that he knew that she didn’t believe, but that did she mind if he prayed for her anyway. That seemed to open a door, and by the end of the programme she was sitting with the other participants in the programme.

There were possibly some successes that could be attributed to George. The badgering of Kevin, who was repeatedly cheating on his long-term girlfriend resulted in him admitting what was happening to her, and Faye, the lap dancer seemed to have made some changes too. The family included even threw a neighbourhood barbecue and sorted out a long time disagreement with one of their neighbours. The Muslim participant was largely forgotten for the final episode, which just leaves Martin, the atheist biker.

Certainly, George didn’t get very far with Martin in a religious sense, largely because George seemed incapable of actually discussing anything with him. The people who did repair Martin’s opinions of Christians were the Salvation Army. Despite some initial reluctance, he went along to a local Salvation Army old peoples centre, where he helped with transporting the pensioners to the centre, and then with serving them a meal. At the end of it he highlighted that these were one of the first groups of Christians he had met who were actually putting their faith into action.

There was also one final parting gift to Martin from George – a set of false teeth. One of the first things you noticed about Martin was his lack of teeth – this was because he had a massive fear of dentists, so much so that he had removed his own teeth with pliers rather than go along and have treatment. Whilst George singularly failed to make Martin a Christian, he did succeed in getting him to a dentist.

So did the programme teach anything about how to make someone a Christian? Whilst the overriding impression given is that Christianity will have a big thing about your sex life, hopefully for those people that stuck it out, the work by Jepson and Flynn maybe will show that there are other ways…

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• Review: In Over Her Head by Judi Fennell

Once again, the overriding theme that comes through from George Hargreaves is “Thou shalt not�. Most importantly, “Thou shalt not question George�. This contrasts sharply with courses like the Alpha Course, which although it is underpinned by some similar theological beliefs to those George expresses, is very much about being non-judgemental, and allowing participants to be free to question.

Some of the prime targets this week were the participants who were in unmarried sexual relationships – fornication according to George. First off we have lap dancer Faye, who having been told that she is a practising witch last week, was visited by 27 year old virgin Hester who was there to give Faye and her boyfriend tips on how to avoid having sex. Her tip? A game of Pick-Up Sticks. Needless to say that didn’t work, so she moved on to Kevin who lives with his girlfriend, but has multiple partners behind her back. The suggestion here was a bit of boxing, and again didn’t go down overly well. The third couple had the dubious honour of having George rather than Hester. On the retreat, George bans Aaron and his pregnant girlfriend from sleeping in the same bed, something that has Aaron threatening to walk off the programme. In all three cases, George and co banging on about sex takes the focus away from the core beliefs of Christianity. Whilst all Christians would probably consider the ideal to be marriage, most Christians I know given the three weeks of the programme would happily accept a couple in a committed but unmarried relationship and spend the time focusing on something more important.

Another example of George banging away on a secondary issue was the dealings with lesbian Laura. Not surprisingly given George’s attitude to the unmarried couples, Laura gets a really rough ride. It is worth bearing in mind that even given the much mentioned splits over the issue of homosexuality in the episcopate, the Church of England has the following to say in the Bishops Statement on Civil Partnerships:

…the Church did not want to exclude from its fellowship those lay people of gay or lesbian orientation who, in conscience, were unable to accept that a life of sexual abstinence was required of them and instead chose to enter into a faithful, committed relationship. ‘The House considers that lay people who have registered civil partnerships ought not to be asked to give assurances about the nature of their relationship before being admitted to baptism, confirmation and communion.’

The differences between the mentors show up a bit here too, as after being hammered over her lifestyle, Laura goes to talk to Church of England priest Joanna Jepson. What is interesting is that in the final cut she doesn’t directly contradict George, and in what comes over as a deft little bit of political spin, she instead presents George’s attitude as being about wanting to give Laura some space to experience the course. Although that changes somewhat when you read that Joanna tried to take legal action to get her scenes removed from the programme, and states that:

“There was clearly an agenda behind making the programme designed to make Christians look obsessed with people’s sex lives and intent on imposing Christian behaviour on everyone else. Christian behaviour is only possible after a spiritual transformation.â€?

The impression then is that this is very much the George show and the others are there to add some sort of credibility to his opinions by some deft editing, rather than to show that there is a breadth of belief over some topics.

Having said that, George doesn’t get it all his own way. In a rather ironic demonstration of another way to evangelise, practising Muslim William, whose religion George equates to devil worship manages to get militant atheist Martin, someone who wouldn’t even go into a Church in the first episode, to participate in prayers, not by bashing Martin with the Koran, but by giving him the opportunity to participate without forcing the issue, and by answering his questions. This, as I mentioned before, is exactly the same principle under which the Alpha Course operates, and perhaps is a demonstration of how the programme should have spent it’s three weeks, rather than haranguing the participants over their sex lives. Needless to say George is not at all pleased with this turn of events, and gives William a telling off worthy of a headmaster – throwing in some insulting comments about Islam for good measure.

Thankfully we’ve only got another week of this to go – and I’d be surprised if many of the participants will have got much out of the programme other than a totally skewed opinion of Christians, and equally I dread to think what some of the viewers will have thought by the end. What perhaps could have been a good exploration of the Christian faith has sadly been edited to highlight the most confrontationist and hard-line elements of Christianity, and in much the same way as Muslims are misrepresented by being associated with Islamic fundamentalists, Christians are misrepresented by this. If you want to see real Christianity, you’d do a lot better looking at programmes like The Monastery.

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