Chasing Change

I am tired. It may be to do with my being a busy parish priest with a busy parish or that life in general is just too fast and living on the outskirts of a city means that I get sucked into it’s rather frenetic life every now and again. But it’s more than that. It’s about getting caught up with this 21st century’s obsession with change where only the new is  relevant and only the recent is cool (apart from a little retro now and again – but even then it’s ‘new’ retro rather than old). It’s about trying to help the Church which I serve ‘keep up’ with what is going on around it and the fear of being left behind. It’s about trying to find ways of helping the church – known and criticised for it’s obsession with the unchanging message of the gospel – keep up with a society that is obsessed with change by embracing change itself? Or is it? That is the question that haunts me at the moment. That is what is making me tired.

Now no-one is arguing that we do not need to “keep up with the times” in terms of keeping informed about what is going on, after all as a priest I have to speak into that through sermons and articles etc.. But when that obsession with the new and the now affects the way in which we worship, well that is when I get tired. I get tired because i can’t keep up.

I am 52 years old and I have never been ‘contemporary’ in the way I relate to young people, fashion and the various trends that preoccupy people from time to time. In fact when I first met my wife, such was my old-fashioned dress-sense (and ways – I was good-mannered, very un-cool) that someone jokingly remarked to her: “You are not going out with him are you – he’s forty!” Yet such has been (and still is) my zeal for spreading the gospel that I have willingly –  and at times enthusiastically – used any method or means that lay to hand in order to make the church, and therefore the gospel, relevant. In fact one of the things that has most stung me is the criticism that the Church is out of touch with society and failing the younger generation which is hemorrhaging from the church at an alarming rate. So in my panic and sense of failure therefore I have responded by trying to embrace every trend and change, introducing modern music and modern worship wherever I can, using powerpoint, alternative worship, you name it I have/will try it.  I have introduced so many changes and embraced so many new movements, ‘waves’ and methods of evangelism that my poor congregation has not known what has hit them. In fact such was the frustration of one parishioner that in an anonymous questionaire he/she stated that the Vicar thought more of people outside the church than those who faithfully attended it week by week. Okay there may have been more issues behind the statement but the comment still bit and has some relevance to the subject at hand.

The (rather laboured) point I am trying to make is that maybe I have got it wrong – all wrong. That in trying to follow the tide of change I have been cast adrift spiritually from what church and worship is essentially all about. That by focussing on the why and what of worship I have taken my eyes off God. The problem with chasing change – which always changes and never stays still – is that it becomes God, an idol, to which all is sacrificed. Instead of becoming a means to an end – that of honouring and encountering God – it has become the end. Maybe that is why the Orthodox Church so attracts me. Okay I still struggle with chanting, the volume of scripture readings and the length of the services. The Liturgy (Eastern Rite at least) seems so complex and so full of odd stuff – processions, crossings, kissings, standing for long periods, comings and goings – that it is the very opposite of the simplifying process I have been trying to introduce over my ministry. And what happens behind the iconastasis and why is it out of sight? So many questions about why it is all so mysterious when surely the thrust of our calling is to communicate the faith not enclose it in mystery. And why make the clergy so distinct and other when surely we are creating a distance between the church and society. And Mary and the saints and confession – the list goes on. And yet..and yet..it seems despite all that so right??? It’s very changelessness makes it an oasis in a desert society where more has become definitely less.

And there is the whole argument about when does worship cease to become worship and instead become entertainment? At what point does what goes on become something that focusses on me – my likes/dislikes, what interests or titillates me – rather than on God? If I don’t get anything out of worship is that a reason to change the worship? Or is it another way of evading the whole question about my own personal need to change?

No one is saying pop music is demonic or that films can’t have a teaching value but maybe there is a line somewhere which we should not cross? But who lays down that line? And shouldn’t worship be to some extent enjoyable in the old meaning of the word i.e. giving ‘joy’? Should it be solemn, mournful, serious, sombre and all about our own sinfulness?

So you (whoever you are) can see where I am going. Or can you? If not I am just casting these questions into the ether. I don’t know if anyone can answer them or wants to. But if all words and questions end up being heard by God anyway then this is a kind of prayer, ultimately, to Him. I need help.