Church Search 666. Grace causes offence and doesn't want to apologise

They're very nice, those gloves of mine. They were given to me by a friend of my mother's who, as well as also being nice, is very much a respected, respectable and respectful member of a high Anglo-Catholic church. And so, given how cold it has been here recently, I wore these gloves to the church we attended this morning. I greatly admire those for whom being cold is a spiritually enriching experience, but for me it isn't. And I was told at the communion rail that, until/unless I removed these gloves, I would not be permitted to partake of the eucharistic host. And I was not told this politely, either.

I mean, WTF?

If a veto or taboo or prohibition on hand coverings were well known throughout certain echelons of the Church of England, I'd have been aware of it by now. It'd have been liturgicalised as follows

"Draw near with faith and remove your gloves.
Receive the body of our Lord Jesus which He gave for you
and the blood which he shed for you.
Eat and drink with bare hands in the remembrance that he died for you.
And feed on him, in your hearts - which though your hands by now may be stinging with cold, will be warm - by faith, with thanksgiving..."

Wouldn't it come across as rather, somewhat... legalistic? Pharisaical?

I mean, I had purple nail varnish underneath my gloves. I've been in African Indigenous Pentecostal churches with such a veto or taboo on painted nails that I'd have been instructed to don gloves in order to take communion. And if I were ever to have made First Communion in a Roman Catholic church, I'd have to have worn gloves. And it goes without saying (I hope) that Jesus has nothing to do with this. It took a few years after Jesus for the Church to consider its theological bases for sharing bread and wine and a few centuries for the Church to develop this into such fixed rituals.

So essentially, they were offended that I wore gloves. And they thought that I should have known that they'd be offended.

And that, for me, is the nub of the question. Should one, when visiting a place of worship, approach in fear and trepidation of how one might offend, be seen as inappropriate, not fit in? Or should one approach with openness, warmth and a readiness to engage with the people and their g/God/s?

And should one, when welcoming a newcomer into one's place of worship, scrutinise the finest points of the way s/he is dressed or behaving? Or should one just take them as they are for the time being, and leave the finer questions of their hand coverings as a matter of secondary importance to the gospel of Christ?

Grace and Beloved's Church Search Week 15: Catholic Mass

Whenever I'm in a Catholic church, it always strikes me to wonder quite what the Church of England and Rome have had to argue about*; the liturgies and their underlying theology being so startlingly similar to one another**. My suspicion is that, given that the Anglican communion service has used English since 1549 whereas the Catholic mass has used the vernacular only since 1964, there has been over four hundred years of people not realising this.

The mass we went to proceeded something like this.

CONGREGATION: Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

PRIEST: This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.

CONGREGATION: Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

PRIEST: Right, so let me to inject in here for a minute. This is a Catholic mass, in which we as Catholics celebrate the giving of Christ's body for us as the Catholic church. All Catholics are welcome to receive and we ask that all non-Catholics here do not come to receive unless they have made their Holy Communion as Catholics and that if they aren't Catholics that they indicate clearly that they aren't Catholics to allow me to know that they're not Catholics...

That's a first, far from Catholicism as I've ever yet experienced it. I mean, I understand the Catholic position of the papally-suceeded Church of Rome being the only True Church. And I understand that certain Catholic bishops can give priests quite a bollocking for offering the elements to non-Catholics. And I'd be open to the possibility that there may have been someone for some reasons keeping an eye on this particular priest in such a way as made him feel he needed to labour the pont as he did.

But why, why is Holy Communion [the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper] only for those the Church or church has pre-vetted as Christians? And why is the church or Church often so uptight about ensuring it is?

I mean, who was it that transformed religion, faith and society by making a point of repeatedly eating with those deemed unclean, unworthy and undesirable? How might he feel about us restricting access to his Body and Blood?

*that is, of course, aside from questions of Henry VIII's wives, the Battle of the Boyne and Bloody Sunday...
**well, apart from the Pope...

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 13: Somewhere else About Which Cannot be Blogged

So let's just call it SEAWCBB for now. I feel as though I'm treadng on ice thinner than eggshells in even mentioning that I daren't blog about them. It's not that there's anything controversial, dodgy or risky about SEAWCBB, and no suggestion they'd take particular offense if they knew that I was blogging about them. It's simply that

a) they're so distinctive a faith group that I cannot yet work out a way to blog about them without revealing their precise identity and location and thus my own

and

b) a significant cohort of their congregation apparently work for New Employer, and I'd currently like to keep my working life disentangled from my religious dramas, especially as New Employer admits to almost not have shortlisted me for my post on account of their fear that I'd Bible bash them

and

c) I'm probably being paranoid about it all, I'm aware

But God was there and they were friendly so I think we'll be back to SEAWCBB. Watch this space and be intrigued. We're returning tomorrow to Exceptionally Friendly Church. Looking forward to that, too...

Grace and Beloved's Church Search Week 11: An exceptionally friendly church

SCENE 1: A SERVICE AT EXCEPTIONALLY FRIENDLY CHURCH (EFC)
EFC is celebrating the Eucharist. GRACE stands up to join the line as BELOVED stays seated, as is his preference. Three women approach Grace as she queues.

WOMAN ONE: Does your husband need communion taking to his seat?

GRACE: He doesn't take communion. But thank you, anyway.

WOMAN TWO: Would he mind us introducing ourselves to him after the service?

GRACE: Not at all. He'd love that, I'm sure. Thanks.

SCENE 2: ALMOST AN HOUR AFTER THE END OF THE SERVICE
All three women plus the husband of one of them and the vicar and curate are still sitting talking intently, animatedly and interestedly to BELOVED. GRACE has protested several times that she and BELOVED do not want to detain them, but all insist that they have nothing more delightful to do than consider the questions of such a man as BELOVED.

Jesus, I think, would have been so proud.

ChurchSearch Week 10: Grace considers Patricia King's Extreme Prophetic XPWebChurch, but is put off by the $50 demanded at the door

Extreme Prophetic with Patricia King. A brief glance at their website suggests that they're likely to be what most Christians would consider somewhat heterodox or a bit dodgy. Their Doctrinal Statement which concludes

We believe God loves us with an everlasting love and has come to give us a future and a hope! Yippy! Yeah God!

does little to dispel this impression. However, I'm intrigued by the shamanic, gnostic, generally New Agey and mystical tone to it all. It seems very unusual, and I'd wanted to learn more. I'd wanted to try out their XPWebchurch both because of this and because, as an online community, it seems very well thought out and structured and generally very interesting.

And then they asked me for $50. In fact, if you read the introductory page, the link to the Tithes and Offerings page appears above the link to the Doctrinal Statement. That's seriously a bit worrying. And then, if you click to read the Tithes and Offerings Policy, you're told

Some have said, "I can't afford to tithe.” I would simply answer this by saying that you can’t afford not to!

Do they seriously not realise that the phrase you can't afford not to is the utterly stereotypical response of every money-scamming Scientology-style cult?

Can they not afford to freely share the good news of Jesus which came for free and brings limitless freedom at no cost, even for a 7-day introductory trial?

Normal service will shortly be resumed...

... but for the moment, I need a few days away from blogging here. In light of all of the offline fallout from our Church Search* and my blogging about it**, it feels somehow wrong that I should carry on blogging here without doing anything about it. Not that I know, however, what to do about it... but I'm hoping that God might have some suggestions.

I'll be back Tuesday, after the Bank Holiday weekend. I'll still be lurking, paranoidedly checking for sudden clusters of local pageloads and troll comments... but in the meantime, I'll put all of the non-contentious "church search" and "place of former employment" posts back.


* basically, Beloved and I visiting a lot of local churches with a view to finding one in which he as well as I is welcome to participate
** not that (I'm fairly certain) any of our detractors have read even found this blog to read anything I've written

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 9: St Paul-of-almost-anywhere

[Original post deleted because it was probably unnecessarily hard on the place. We'll go back when it isn't raining.]

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSeach Week 8.1: Grace seeks to discover the spirituality of homemaking

As in, homemaking, homemaking, homemaking...

If this weren't an anonymous blog, I'd upload you a webcam picture of my tongue poking ever so slightly into my cheek. I was brought up as a liberated young lady, a child of Madonna and Whitney Houston and the early 80s girls days school movement, all primed and Miss Jean Brodied to conquer the workplace with my shoulder pads and trek as a missionary to Darkest Africa. So the idea that I dedicate the next week to trying to find some connection with God through mere domesticity, it's all a bit, er, challenging.

But then, I need a challenge. New Job is not going to be commencing for another few weeks, Beloved is insisting (oh how harsh of him) that I don't busy myself with agency bum-wipings in the meantime and, yes, our Marital Home is needing some hardcore housework. And, as much as I take the mick out of such things, I do want to look after my Beloved.

And, more to the point, unless I can find some spiritual fulfilment in doing the "homemaking", it's not likely to happen to any reasonable standard. Honestly, I can't be bothered. I don't have the OCD-type drive to keep things in order, nor do I derive any particular pleasure or pride in tidyness, nor does Beloved ask, encourage, demand or complain about the state of Marital Home, nor does he take any particular delight in things being neat. So essentially, I'll need God to motivate me off my arse to get started. And I'll give Him a week, to start off with

My tasks for tomorrow then, are as follows
1. To do a big, economically-minded trip to the Budget Supermarket to stock up with 11p tinned tomatoes, Polish drain cleaner, recycled loo paper and the like.
2. To take our final few frame-requiring wedding items to the local frame shop.
3. To replace the teapot someone dropped last week.
4. To replace the sofa cushion someone weed on last year.
5. To scrub Marital Bathroom until it's all shiny.

And in the meantime, I'm sitting here blogsearching and reading about Christian homemaking and Biblical womanhood and the joy of housework and wondering whether, if I truly seek God enough, I could reach such a level of serenity and peace and warmth from scrubbing cat hair out from between the shower tiles

I will update you...

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 8: Grace stays home to take stock of it all

One of the main things I've realised during the past eight weeks of churchsearching, is how most curchgoers claim a very clear and fixed idea about what church or The Church is or should be, but how different from one another these understandings can be. In academic theology, there's the discipline of ecclesiology, which deals with questions of what the church is or means or does or should do, but I'm not sure that this has much of an impact on the views or understandings or breadth of thinking of most churchgoers.

What follows, then, is a Survey of Popular Views on church observed amongst congregation members in a variety of Protestant denominations in urban Britain, June-August 2008

1. As the Body of Christ on earth (Embodied with the being, essence, substance, authority of the risen Jesus)
2. As what Jesus founded when he made Peter and/or Peter’s Confession the origin of apostolic succession (See the start of my Crowded Handbasket piece)
3. As a way the early Christians found to organise themselves as a group, which subsequent generations have continued and/or replicated (See the rest of my Crowded Handbasket piece)
4. As a club (Somewhere for people who believe what we do)
5. As a community (Somewhere for everyone to learn and share together)
6. As a personal thing (As something between the individual and God)
7. As a sacramental community (Celebrating communion/Eucharist/Lord’s Supper/Breaking of Bread together, conducting marriages, baptisms/christenings/confirmations etc)
8. As an evangelical community (Existing to spread the gospel, proselytise, covert individuals)
9. As an incarnate and or missional community (Existing to transform society, bringing the Kingdom of God to earth)
10. As a building used for praying and singing (It’s all about the singing and praying)
11. As a group of people who get together to pray and sing (it’s all about the people who sing and pray)
12. As an organisation submitted to the authority of a Man of God (it’s all about the Minister/Pastor/Vicar, who is always to be right)
13. As an organisation submitted to the authority of the Word of God (It’s all about the Bible, which needs to be interpreted (fairly) literally)
14. As a place for everyone (It’s about welcoming everyone like Jesus did)
15. As a place you need to be middle class/straight/white to be welcome (It’s about finding a place where you feel comfortable)
16. As a concept we don’t really like to talk about because we’re British and to talk about religion isn’t the British thing to do (Self-explanatory, surely)

I think it was Wittgenstein who pointed out that, unless you begin a discussion by extablishing a common meaning of your terms, the discussion will become frustrating, fraught with misunderstandings and, ultimately, meaningless. It is beginning to occur to me that the church (local) and Church (worldwide) is so divided not because of doctrine or practice on specific points, but because we cannot lack a common agreement od who we are...

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 7.2: Grace goes Appalachian snake handling via Google

The Church of the Lord Jesus with Signs Following in Jolo, West Virginia, USA

This is the town, situated in one of the five most deprived counties of the whole United States.



This is their church website...

... and here's a YouTube clip I found of part of a service...


... and here's a documentary clip I also found about them...


... and here's a Wikipedia page about it all.

Is anyone else out there utterly intrigued?

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 7: St Ninian's-on-the-Park, Studentsville

From last weekend, before aforementioned events all hit...

Beloved chose this church on account of the nubile young sunbathers who'd been using the expansive church grounds to revise for their uni exams. That's not entirely fair, of course. Architecturally, too, it's an almost-impossibly-old church which makes an arresting site. And I'd heard a few friends and the Ship of Fools website make generally approving noises about the place.

The service was fairly nondescript middle-to-high-Anglican. The sermon was somewhat unimpressive, but it was the preacher's last day in the church and area and I'd forgive him for sounding somewhat preoccupied by that. And yet, the prayers - usually the bit of the Anglican liturgy I find least meaningful or engaging - were delivered with such energy and passion that, for me, they brought the whole church to life.

And the coffee afterwards was excellent. And not just coffee but cake, musical entertainment from a brass band, a parish library to browse and people saying hello.

Definately worth a return visit.

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 6.75: St Pixels

St Pixels being the online "church" sponsored by the UK Methodists.

Friendly people. I think I'll stick around and try and get to know the place. If I were still failing to get on in any local church, I'd be happy to make it my main or regular fellowship. As much, though, as I enjoy all most quiet and reflective forms of devotion, the silent sessions in the chatroom-style worship do seem something of an oxymoron. I'd be curious to see what happened if someone were to start *leaping around in joy* and shouting 'HALLELUJAH' and 'PRAISE THE LORD'. Maybe there still remains an inner charismatic in me, waiting to be suitably disinhibited to jump around a bit. Maybe, after all these weeks of normal, sensible parish C of Es and sedate ecumenical partnerships and friendly informal groups, maybe it's time for us to investigate something a bit louder tomorrow morning..?

(If anyone out there's ever at St Pixels, I'm gracegrace on there... my avatar's got lots of blonde hair and sneaks a cup of tea into each prayer meeting. Come and introduce yourself to me...)

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 6.5: Toddler Church

A service specifically for those 3 and under. I'd been invited along merely as a storyteller, and as an extra pair of hands to empty potties and sweep excess manna off the sanctuary carpet.

A wonderful, wonderful set-up. Even if I am, like, 30 years too old. Even if I did get soaked within an inch of my life cycling back.

And it got me wondering, too. There's so much written and discussed and proposed about how to bring the yoof ov 2day to Christ. But, if certain strands of developmental psychology are to believed (and personally, I'm not sure either way) it's from aged 0-5 rather than from aged 13-19 that we are most receptive to learning, experience, relationships and attachment. So why, then, isn't there more consideration, experimentation and research on how to engage 2 and 3 year olds in faith and worship?

"What are we going to sing now?" asked the worship leader.
"Twinkle, twinkle little star!" shouted one little one.
"No but I want to sing a GOD song," insisted another. "That's what's really great."

True, yes.

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 5.5: A Bible study with friends that Grace is now about to inflict on her blog

OK, Mark 5:1-20. Wotsit all about, then?

Basically, I'm looking for people's ideas. I'm utterly stuck.

They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!" For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"

Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"

"My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many." And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.

A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, "Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them." He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.

As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.

Various perspectives emerged:

1. That it's just as it says it is, and that the man was demon-possessed.
OK, but why and how, and what do we mean or understand by possession? In the most literalist readings of the Bible, even with the vague fallen-morning-star explanation for Satan, it's unclear when or where or how demons enter the frame. Most scholars think the Zoroastrians, whom the Jews in exile would have met, have something to do with it. But for a fundamentalist reader, a proposition that any other religious/philosophical practices have had any impact upon Christianity is unacceptable even to contemplate. So what, then, can one really say about demons?

2. That there's no such thing as demons.
If there's no such thing as demons, why do many, many people see, hear from and chat to them on an intermittant or regular basis, mainly in non-Western cultures but also in Britain today? Even if one takes the social-constructionist view of demons being merely a humanly-devised concept, or the non-realist view that demons can be there for some people if not for others, or even regards demons as a literary archetype or tropic device, surely one cannot deny that demons, in some sense of the word "existence", exist?

3. That what they in 1st Century Israel/Palestine understood as demon-possession, we can now interpret as what we know today to be mental illness.
Probably. But to say too swiftly is to risk missing the context and to ignore what it was like for the man to be and/or be considered as demon possessed. Him being chained up by those around might give some sort of clue. But all the Levitical purity statutes about how to deal with menstruation and mildew make no mention of how to handle the demon possessed. And as far as I'm aware, there's been no research done to investigate this. So what was life like for this man and what can we learn from his experience of possession?

4. The the demon-possessed man was designated/scapegoated by his community to embody and represent the "demons" of social, mental or spiritual "Other-ness", and Jesus set him free by talking to him as a sane and rational human being, therefore breaking the powers of the taboos surrounding him, and enabling him full inclusion, welcome and participation in the Kingdom of God.
I like that. But then, if the demons or "demons" weren't really to be feared, why did Jesus so theatrically cast them into a herd of pigs? Why didn't Jesus just do what happens in all of the other New Testament "deliverance" narratives, and simply tell everyone that the demon has left?

Would anyone else like to join in?

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 5: Grace and Beloved have Family Commitments instead

Family Commitments of a scale and magnitude that nobody would deny to be more important than churchsearching... but, as such, totally unblogaboutable. I'm sure there's a good few posts in there about doing Family Commitments as an expression of faith, about how/why the church constructs Family and/or constructs itself as a family... but I probably won't get there today.

The train home yesterday evening was cramped, stuffy and very slow. We shared a carriage with a family of nine children, all aged below five (cousins? foster children?) and all piled on top of one another and all yelling and throwing jelly babies at one another in a mixture of French and a language I couldn't identify. About an hour into the journey, their dad (or uncle? big brother? carer?) took out his iPod and some speakers and plugged them in, broadcasting "We want to see Jesus lifted high" at full volume to the entire train. And slowly, five of the nine children climbed into the aisles and began to dance. I wasn't sure whether they were dancing because they wanted to or had been trained to, but they were giggling and seemed to be enjoying themselves. The rest of the carriage watched, amazed...

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 4.5: Friday nights

Most forms of Judaism seem good at encouraging people to socialise. To find kinship and spirituality and community in the conversation, in the shared home space, in the food. Shabbat, for a start. Where or when did Christianity lose the concept of simply getting all one's family and/or friends together once a week for a meal? Is it because, when Jesus told his disciples that the Seder bread and wine were henceforth to be regarded as his body and blood, the sanctity or sacramentality of the event seemed so overwhelming that it needed a place of worship rather than a home, or a male priest rather than a woman cooking to contain and officiate at it? Or is simply because Christians have this earnest guilt thing going that says they need to be doing "important" things, rather than just sitting eating? Or is it even more simply that Christians have lost touch with the importance of time and relationships?

Can anyone out there explain this , either historically or theologically?

Can anyone out there explain, phenomenologically, pastorally or otherwise, why getting friends and family together in such a way, usually even without any explicitly declared faith content, just seems to work?

Does anyone else ever invite people round for food on a regular basis and think about what it says or reveals about God and community in it all?

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 3: Grace takes Beloved back to her teenage church

Whereas most churches have a cross or crucifix or altar at the front, Big Charismatic Baptist Church has a giant world map. Whereas Place of Former Employment sees its mission as to a small inner-city neighbourhood, BCBC sees it as to the world. Whereas PoFE employs a few people for its community work, BCBC sends and supports dozens of missionaries across the globe. BCBC is, then, the sort of place that's really exciting to be part of as a teenager: you feel the world as at your fingertips and that you can make a difference.

BCBC is, however, a Church with a Past. In the seventies, one of its leading lights landed them into all sorts of theological controversies over Baptism in the Holy Spirit (which it liked) and The Place of Woman (which it didn't). So whereas they're obviously the type of church with a predisposition to declaim to individuals that their life choices will land them in hell (they tried this when they found out I was doing a degree involving the study of Islam), they don't like to be portrayed as the Lunatic Fringe they probably are.

The first time Beloved and BCBC leadership found themselves in the same room, there was Controversy. Suffice to say, it ended in the wife of said leader being banned from attending our wedding. Oh pleeeeeease...

It was thus with some trepidation we went back yesterday. Instead of running into any of the leadership, though, we met Catrina. Catrina and I were in the youth group together and it's Catrina who had the Dramatic Healing. It didn't even seem remarkable at the time. When she turned up to the group that night to tell us that her ever-worsening chronic backache had been diagnosed as a serious skeletal deformity that could render her immobile within months without surgery, we just did what 16 year old Charismatics did it such situations, and laid Catrina down on the floor to pray for her. And we prayed for her. And we saw her spine straighten and her pelvis realign. It didn't surprise us that God did this. It didn't surprise us that Catrina had no further pain, nor that she was suddenly three inches taller than before we'd prayed... and nor that, the following week, Catrina was deemed by doctors no longer in need of surgical intervention. God did it, we knew.

I wish that I still expected so much from God and from churches. I wish that I still had that sort of faith. Still, though, even now I experience God so much more easily in BCBC than in any other church I've ever visited or been part of. With Beloved in tow, I know that I would never be welcomed or accepted as a BCBC member (and, of course, being a woman is still a bit iffy... oh pleeeeease) but for once in a while, for a quick injection of nostalgia, hope and faith, yes, it's OK...

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 2: Grace starts crying halfway to another new church and decides to come home instead

That says it all, essentially. I'm at a point where I don't want to walk into a new church looking all emo and snivelly and dishevelled, where I don't want anyone's first impression of me to be one of patronisingness or sympathy or pity or a pastoral care assignment. That's not to say that I'd never cry or get upset in front of church people (it's not something I have a great deal of control over, much of the time), but I want to do all I can to start off with people seeing me as thoughtful, intelligent and aiming to serve, affording me equality, crebility and respect. And so, at 10.23am, we returned home.

Beloved says that people in churches should learn to accept the fulness of one another's life experience and that if I'd gone into a service crying that it shouldn't have mattered. Jesus, from the look of the gospels, would undoubetdly agree. But I just don't want any more messy and [*Grace struggles to avoid use of a four-letter word*] church relationships. But the whole point of Christ's message of grace is that all our human relationships (whether inside or outside of church structures) will be messy and imperfect yet endowed with the potential for healing and joy. So if I cut myself off from other Christians because I fear their sympathy and their pity, then I'm cutting myself off from God, too. And yet, even knowing that, yesterday I continued to ealk home.

Ultimately, then, I'm concluding that perhaps the question of being inside or outside the church becomes a secondary one. Perhaps instead, it's about the quality of the relationships developed, and the way in which God and faith and community are expressed through those relationships. The nebulous evangelical concept of a personal and individual relationship with God is fine, but as Teresa of Avila points out, Christ has no body on earth but ours...

Once we were home, Beloved and I sat on the sofa eating leftover fruit salad. And Beloved said "I just want a way of worshipping where we can talk to people, where we can be with them."

Yes.

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 1.5: A community formed outside of institutional structures ie Group Process Discussion

Steve and several other people have been challenging me to think, if I believe that Christ is accessible in all places and discernable within all people, why do I limit myself to the traditional understanding of Church in seeking a worshipping community? Why can I not find faith, grace, hope, love and God in those around me?

So I thought I'd have a go, this evening. To go into a situation familiar (to me at least) and to seek to identify what of God I could find there.

Basically, a living room full of people there for camomile tea and a discussion on the meaning of guilt. An incredibly diverse collection of people, most of whom I've known, listened to, shouted at, cooked for on a regular basis for a few years. So I know the set up. Sitting there, though, thinking about what I could find of God and community there, that was new.

In some ways, it's easy. People are very accepting, tolerant of one another, warm with one another. There's not the moral pressure found in churches which can drive people to pretend they're something they're not.

In other ways, it's hard. With no shared value systems and no common frame of reference, it's hard to discuss a topic such as guilt as anything beyond the individual, beyond the interpersonal; there's no room to consider anything beyond, I cannot talk about my relationship with God as absorbing (most of) my guilt, there's no ultimate Other. In essence, it becomes merely about the group worshipping itself. But then, Durkheim says that's all that organised religion does anyway. Thinking of the many church groups I've been too which degenerated into an aren't-we-a-marvellous-fellowship mutual backslapping, I think he has a point.

I know I need to value the friends and the relationships and the community I have as a gift from God and as a place to experience Christ. However, I think I do still want a church, too...

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 1: St Catherine's Parish Church

At St Catherine's this morning, during an unusually relaxed and somewhat chaotic Anglican service, I had a tambourine thrust very firmly into my hands.

Tambourines always make me giggle, especially when I'm nervous. And then there were the sparkly pink flags to wave about in worship, which a group of 7 year olds spent most of each song playing swordfighting with.

An intriguing church then. The main role of the vicar seemed to be to disentangle cardigans snagged on the indoor azaleas, everyone else leading the service was in their teens or below, and everyone else in the congregation was in their seventies or above. But there was energy there, and joy, and a real warmth towards the young people.

How would I feel about making it our regular church? Fine - but please, never ask me to play the tambourine.