In recent months I have attended funerals of former members of my old church. Each time about 25 former members also attended. It was lovely to meet up, and the one thing we all said was how much we miss the friendships. But how to maintain them? Our paths might cross - in the shops, at U3a or a special service in the methodist church. (the Churches Together services have come to an end since the new vicar decided to withdraw from them) and maybe ones and twos might meet for coffee, but we have lost that regular contact of meeting in church and exchanging news. A source of great sadness, despite making new friends in my new church.
Although I've moved to different parishes in different countries through the years, I've always been Catholic and it is in some ways a small world in which we get news of one another, catch up at workshops and retreats. Friendships have time to develop over decades (as do feuds). There is a sense in which we may well be spending not just this life but the life to come in one another's glorified company.
That said, I had to go off earlier to buy new purple drapes for the church (some of our old Lenten drapes have disintegrated) and the person driving the car was a relatively new convert. In her enthusiasm for Holy Mother Church, she has completely lost her fear of death and hurtled past taxis and buses at speed while I sat swearing under my breath. At one point, describing her Damascus-like conversion, she closed her eyes, took her hands off the steering wheel and flung them up, while crying out, "Maranatha, come Lord Jesus!" If anything could drive me into secular disenchantment, it might be converts.
At one point, describing her Damascus-like conversion, she closed her eyes, took her hands off the steering wheel and flung them up, while crying out, "Maranatha, come Lord Jesus!" If anything could drive me into secular disenchantment, it might be converts.
Well I suppose it's one way of raising the chances of meeting Jesus very, very soon.
@Gamma Gamaliel Catholicism isn't monolithic, it takes very different shapes and forms in different parts of the world. You know this but haven't experienced it.
A sudden intense conversion experience may be the reason why people leave one church for another tradition or denomination, or why they stop being agnostic and become believers. It may be preceded by an emotional crisis, by bereavement, or just happen out of the blue. For some people it is akin to the madness of falling in love, an infatuated ecstatic craziness that wears off in time, to the relief of our loved ones and fellow congregants. Conversion can involve unexpected and radical changes in lifestyle: converts go out into the streets preaching to strangers, they enter monasteries or become hermits, they go on pilgrimages or volunteer as peace workers for war-torn borders where they face martyrdom, they embark on dangerous journeys as missionaries. For some, their lives become an ongoing conversion and inspiration for others: these are our mystics, saints and prophets. Converts are the lifeblood of ageing sclerotic churches and institutions, they show us what transformation is possible.
They're also passionate, ignorant and wilful idealists, 'newborns and toddlers' who are a challenge for the congregations and parishes they join.
Sure. I did use a smiley emoji to indicate that I was teasing but that sort of humour doesn't always communicate very well online.
I am, of course, aware that the RCC is very diverse and far from monolithic. For instance, I know there are RC charismatics out there but have never met any in real life - at least that I'm aware of. I've known people who werr involved with charismatic renewal in the RCC who have now moved onto other things - either within the RCC or elsewhere.
Within Orthodoxy I'm afraid convert zeal can manifest itself in overly pernickety and Pharisaical approaches to rites and rubrics. Or trying to out-Greek the Greeks or out-Slav the Slavs.
We could do with more of the mystics, saints and prophets of the kind you describe.
In the 1980s, I heard a story about some local Charismatic Catholics. It seems they were meeting in a convent, and one of them got so enraptured in the Holy Spirit that she walked up to the top floor and asked a nun to unlock a window so she could fly out.
I suspect that the woman was, at some level, assuming that the nun would refuse to open the window.
(And, yes, I think I've related this story before.)
There are stories within both Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy of priests apparently levitating off the ground when celebrating the Eucharist.
I've heard Pentecostals make similar claims. A chap I knew from South Wales who'd grown up in The Apostolic Church there, a small Pentecostal denomination (which became much bigger in Nigeria than it ever was here) claimed to have seen people lift a few inches off the ground during one of their prayer meetings.
That would make an interesting Mystery Worshipper report.
There are stories within both Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy of priests apparently levitating off the ground when celebrating the Eucharist.
I've heard Pentecostals make similar claims. A chap I knew from South Wales who'd grown up in The Apostolic Church there, a small Pentecostal denomination (which became much bigger in Nigeria than it ever was here) claimed to have seen people lift a few inches off the ground during one of their prayer meetings.
That would make an interesting Mystery Worshipper report.
Yeah, I've heard stories too. A God who doesn't intervene in the midst of appalling human suffering but levitates priests for no adequately explored reason has some serious explaining to do.
Well, Job is a literary work and not a transcript of a conversation on a Middle-Eastern scrap-heap as Job scraped his boils with a potsherd one Thursday afternoon.
But yes, I once read a claim that angels were visiting a Macedonian church by night to refresh the frescoes inside the dome. I wondered why they weren't filling in pot-holes or sorting out the mould in an old lady's bedroom at the same time.
The hovering priests thing could be taken as a 'sign' that we need to take the Eucharist seriously or some indication of particular sanctity on the part of those alleged to have gone into temporary orbit.
Although why levitation I don't know, unless the stories are meant to convey a partial 'Ascension' kind of thing based on an Acts of the Apostles style cosmology.
I must confess to being sceptical of 'myrh-bearing icons' and the like and don't tend to take the miraculous tales in Saintly hagiographies literally, but have come across people who appear sane and unsuggestible/susceptible who are open to such things.
I'd tend to see the story of Job as somewhere to kick off a debate rather than a set of proof texts to close one down.
'Look at Jesus, he suffered too ...' doesn't cut it of course. But I sometimes wonder what would. Whopping big letters in the sky saying, 'Hi folks! It's me-e-ee-ee!'?
We'd find a way of arguing our way out of that. But sure, I know I'm sounding like a pompous, pietistic prat.
Finished visiting all the shacks on the long list yesterday. It's been encouraging that they've all been good in their own ways.
I've found myself quite sad to feel spiritually homeless at Easter tide.
I can understand that. Nothing to stop you bobbing back to one of your shortlisted churches for their Easter services - or meetings depending on churchmanship - though and then shortening the shortlist thereafter.
Generally speaking, and this is very much a sweeping generalisation, I tend to think that within a given bandwidth as it were there's very little difference between the available channels these days. Obviously I'm thinking of churches that are either apples or pears and not pomegranates or pineapples.
In which case it comes down to where you feel you can fit in and contribute.
We will be at one of the shortlisted churches services with an elderly relative. Its that sense of not actually belonging which is having an emotional impact today.
Would you not see your friends outside of church? We touched on this on an Epiphanies thread recently, but I still find it strange to call people I only see at church and who I wouldn't make an effort to see (or who wouldn't make an effort to see me) outside of church "friends".
I have "church friends" that I see at church and church occasions. I have work friends that I see at work. I have family friends with kids at a similar age to my own, who we do various kid-related things with. And so on. Sometimes people span more than one group, but that's rare.
We have been married 20 years and parents for 12. We've moved twice in the last 12 entirely due to churches not thinking about children, especially those who don't sit nicely.
The first one suggested we should sit in the side room (and neither hear nor see the service) and the second that we should confine our oldest to the service not Sunday School (which would have meant being outside the church the whole time as he couldn't sit in church at the time, again neither hearing or seeing the service.
When looking for a new church, we generally sent one of us (once or twice with one child) to scope it out. We eliminated a few that way (others we had eliminated pre children as we were already, in our 30s/40s with no children, the youngest).
One thing that has struck me, as an aside, is that if your disability prevents you from coming to the altar rail you always get offered communion in your seat. If it prevents you from being in the whole service you never get offered it later.
We left a church once after a small clique made it clear they wouldn’t tolerate my son’s tics, and the pastor, though a friend, refused to believe us when we reported it. It’s probably why we have a church full of everybody else’s refused now. Which is a bit chaotic but worth it.
One thing that has struck me, as an aside, is that if your disability prevents you from coming to the altar rail you always get offered communion in your seat. If it prevents you from being in the whole service you never get offered it later.
At our place, sometimes parents choose to take fractious children out into the Narthex to soothe them. We have speakers out there, so you can hear the service, and you can see the service through the windows. It's pretty common for someone to hang out there with a small child during the service, and then come up for communion.
We have lay visitors who routinely lead communion by extension at a couple of local senior living facilities, for those that aren't able to come to church. The Sacrament is important - if there's a disability in your family that means that you can't be in the service, then I'd say talk to the priest, and we'll figure out something that meets your family's needs. Perhaps the priest or a lay visitor comes to your home. Probably wouldn't be weekly, but I'm sure our place could manage once a month - we have done, in the past.
We have a family whose youngest child has an awkward gait and spontaneous eruptions of loud noise. After two months of coming to (almost) every Liturgy, he is now much quieter and visibly eager to receive Communion.
There were various stages in candidating for my current church. The ultimate "test" was an open congregational Q&A session, which began with a panel of four children, then aged 8 to 13, asking me questions. Both my wife and I felt that this was a Good Sign in the church's attitude to children.
We have a family whose youngest child has an awkward gait and spontaneous eruptions of loud noise. After two months of coming to (almost) every Liturgy, he is now much quieter and visibly eager to receive Communion.
I wouldn't say my children are quieter, but the older one in particular is noticeably better able to cope with sitting down, being relatively quiet, and participating in the order of things happening (including answering questions) than in any other setting, plus he helps to ring the communion bell. Being aware of the liturgy since he was a babe in arms has a lot to be said for it.
We left a church once after a small clique made it clear they wouldn’t tolerate my son’s tics, and the pastor, though a friend, refused to believe us when we reported it. It’s probably why we have a church full of everybody else’s refused now. Which is a bit chaotic but worth it.
If it wasn't such a long commute you guys would be high up on my short list
That seems rather an unkind thing to say. Whywould they ruin it?
I think @Gamma Gamaliel might be referring to a maxim floating around some years ago to discourage people from endlessly searching for the perfect church that in their deluded dreams they imagined they might one day find,
"If you do find the perfect church, please don't join it. You'll only spoil it."
I'm sure the Twangist family would be an adornment to any church they belonged to.
There may be some truth in the maxim, but for many people the experience of changing churches is not something to be treated lightly with a smiley.
Absolutely. And no offence intended. I might be wrong but I think I know Twangist well enough to post a teasing post without causing offence.
If I am wrong I am more than happy to apologise and withdraw my comment.
Shipmates who have been around a long time may remember that the late Mrs Gamaliel and myself went through a very painful process 😢 of leaving a church over 20 years ago now.
There were various stages in candidating for my current church. The ultimate "test" was an open congregational Q&A session, which began with a panel of four children, then aged 8 to 13, asking me questions. Both my wife and I felt that this was a Good Sign in the church's attitude to children.
Dear God, yes!
As for ruining our church, it is to laugh! We’ve got one low vision gentleman, one double amputee who is trying to refuse public transport because he fondly imagines the 76 year old pastor can transport him and his super heavy chair, personally, every Sunday; one lady with a touch of religious flavored dementia; a very new maybe convert who is always better than everyone else, and tells them so!; a former pastor and his wife with issues, who are doing much better, I think, and I’m so glad; and a very sweet lady who needed dentures desperately and got them through the church, and never fails to bring me tea out of gratitude. Oh, and my own household, the oddities of which are well evident on these boards. I tell you, I think Jesus decided to send us everybody who couldn’t find a place elsewhere—and that includes us. Which is rather an honor to be trusted so—but not always the easiest to cope with.
I'm sure the Twangist family would be an adornment to any church they belonged to.
There may be some truth in the maxim, but for many people the experience of changing churches is not something to be treated lightly with a smiley.
Absolutely. And no offence intended. I might be wrong but I think I know Twangist well enough to post a teasing post without causing offence.
If I am wrong I am more than happy to apologise and withdraw my comment.
Shipmates who have been around a long time may remember that the late Mrs Gamaliel and myself went through a very painful process 😢 of leaving a church over 20 years ago now.
Where I come from teasing is a sign of affection - to be teased by @Gamma Gamaliel (an absolute stalwart of the ship whom I greatly respect) therefore (at the risk of overegging the pudding) is quite an honour.
Good humour is very important as the whole thing has had some traumatic elements to it (to go both/and for good measure).
For what it’s worth, I was recently told that the number of those who felt we had to leave our former church has reached 45. Not all have found an alternative spiritual home.
For what it’s worth, I was recently told that the number of those who felt we had to leave our former church has reached 45. Not all have found an alternative spiritual home.
Sad, but by no means uncommon, or so I hear.
One of Our Place's neighbours has recently undergone the sort of sea-change Your (former) Place experienced. I don't think they've lost 45, but it can't be much less - a Sunday morning congregation of 80 has been reduced to 40+ on a good day. A few have found their way to us, others to a non-parochial Place with a good choir, but not a few are now mostly unchurched.
Comments
Then stay away. In fairness, it took me months of not going at all to work out that the thing I missed was the community.
But it was close.
That said, I had to go off earlier to buy new purple drapes for the church (some of our old Lenten drapes have disintegrated) and the person driving the car was a relatively new convert. In her enthusiasm for Holy Mother Church, she has completely lost her fear of death and hurtled past taxis and buses at speed while I sat swearing under my breath. At one point, describing her Damascus-like conversion, she closed her eyes, took her hands off the steering wheel and flung them up, while crying out, "Maranatha, come Lord Jesus!" If anything could drive me into secular disenchantment, it might be converts.
Well I suppose it's one way of raising the chances of meeting Jesus very, very soon.
I've only known Penties act that way ... 😉
Scary AF.
A sudden intense conversion experience may be the reason why people leave one church for another tradition or denomination, or why they stop being agnostic and become believers. It may be preceded by an emotional crisis, by bereavement, or just happen out of the blue. For some people it is akin to the madness of falling in love, an infatuated ecstatic craziness that wears off in time, to the relief of our loved ones and fellow congregants. Conversion can involve unexpected and radical changes in lifestyle: converts go out into the streets preaching to strangers, they enter monasteries or become hermits, they go on pilgrimages or volunteer as peace workers for war-torn borders where they face martyrdom, they embark on dangerous journeys as missionaries. For some, their lives become an ongoing conversion and inspiration for others: these are our mystics, saints and prophets. Converts are the lifeblood of ageing sclerotic churches and institutions, they show us what transformation is possible.
They're also passionate, ignorant and wilful idealists, 'newborns and toddlers' who are a challenge for the congregations and parishes they join.
I am, of course, aware that the RCC is very diverse and far from monolithic. For instance, I know there are RC charismatics out there but have never met any in real life - at least that I'm aware of. I've known people who werr involved with charismatic renewal in the RCC who have now moved onto other things - either within the RCC or elsewhere.
Within Orthodoxy I'm afraid convert zeal can manifest itself in overly pernickety and Pharisaical approaches to rites and rubrics. Or trying to out-Greek the Greeks or out-Slav the Slavs.
We could do with more of the mystics, saints and prophets of the kind you describe.
In the 1980s, I heard a story about some local Charismatic Catholics. It seems they were meeting in a convent, and one of them got so enraptured in the Holy Spirit that she walked up to the top floor and asked a nun to unlock a window so she could fly out.
I suspect that the woman was, at some level, assuming that the nun would refuse to open the window.
(And, yes, I think I've related this story before.)
I've heard Pentecostals make similar claims. A chap I knew from South Wales who'd grown up in The Apostolic Church there, a small Pentecostal denomination (which became much bigger in Nigeria than it ever was here) claimed to have seen people lift a few inches off the ground during one of their prayer meetings.
That would make an interesting Mystery Worshipper report.
Yeah, I've heard stories too. A God who doesn't intervene in the midst of appalling human suffering but levitates priests for no adequately explored reason has some serious explaining to do.
I've always felt Job got a shitty answer, FWIW.
But yes, I once read a claim that angels were visiting a Macedonian church by night to refresh the frescoes inside the dome. I wondered why they weren't filling in pot-holes or sorting out the mould in an old lady's bedroom at the same time.
The hovering priests thing could be taken as a 'sign' that we need to take the Eucharist seriously or some indication of particular sanctity on the part of those alleged to have gone into temporary orbit.
Although why levitation I don't know, unless the stories are meant to convey a partial 'Ascension' kind of thing based on an Acts of the Apostles style cosmology.
I must confess to being sceptical of 'myrh-bearing icons' and the like and don't tend to take the miraculous tales in Saintly hagiographies literally, but have come across people who appear sane and unsuggestible/susceptible who are open to such things.
I'd tend to see the story of Job as somewhere to kick off a debate rather than a set of proof texts to close one down.
Hmm, "I know the answer should be Jesus but it sounds like a squirrel to me!"
Heh.
Well, I think that distinction has been pretty blurry for some time now. Tongues of fire and all.
@KarlLB - nice one! Ha ha ha.
But you get my point, as indeed I also get yours.
'Look at Jesus, he suffered too ...' doesn't cut it of course. But I sometimes wonder what would. Whopping big letters in the sky saying, 'Hi folks! It's me-e-ee-ee!'?
We'd find a way of arguing our way out of that. But sure, I know I'm sounding like a pompous, pietistic prat.
I've found myself quite sad to feel spiritually homeless at Easter tide.
Generally speaking, and this is very much a sweeping generalisation, I tend to think that within a given bandwidth as it were there's very little difference between the available channels these days. Obviously I'm thinking of churches that are either apples or pears and not pomegranates or pineapples.
In which case it comes down to where you feel you can fit in and contribute.
I have "church friends" that I see at church and church occasions. I have work friends that I see at work. I have family friends with kids at a similar age to my own, who we do various kid-related things with. And so on. Sometimes people span more than one group, but that's rare.
Me too!
The first one suggested we should sit in the side room (and neither hear nor see the service) and the second that we should confine our oldest to the service not Sunday School (which would have meant being outside the church the whole time as he couldn't sit in church at the time, again neither hearing or seeing the service.
When looking for a new church, we generally sent one of us (once or twice with one child) to scope it out. We eliminated a few that way (others we had eliminated pre children as we were already, in our 30s/40s with no children, the youngest).
One thing that has struck me, as an aside, is that if your disability prevents you from coming to the altar rail you always get offered communion in your seat. If it prevents you from being in the whole service you never get offered it later.
At our place, sometimes parents choose to take fractious children out into the Narthex to soothe them. We have speakers out there, so you can hear the service, and you can see the service through the windows. It's pretty common for someone to hang out there with a small child during the service, and then come up for communion.
We have lay visitors who routinely lead communion by extension at a couple of local senior living facilities, for those that aren't able to come to church. The Sacrament is important - if there's a disability in your family that means that you can't be in the service, then I'd say talk to the priest, and we'll figure out something that meets your family's needs. Perhaps the priest or a lay visitor comes to your home. Probably wouldn't be weekly, but I'm sure our place could manage once a month - we have done, in the past.
I wouldn't say my children are quieter, but the older one in particular is noticeably better able to cope with sitting down, being relatively quiet, and participating in the order of things happening (including answering questions) than in any other setting, plus he helps to ring the communion bell. Being aware of the liturgy since he was a babe in arms has a lot to be said for it.
If it wasn't such a long commute you guys would be high up on my short list
That seems rather an unkind thing to say. Why would they ruin it?
"If you do find the perfect church, please don't join it. You'll only spoil it."
I'm sure the Twangist family would be an adornment to any church they belonged to.
There may be some truth in the maxim, but for many people the experience of changing churches is not something to be treated lightly with a smiley.
Absolutely. And no offence intended. I might be wrong but I think I know Twangist well enough to post a teasing post without causing offence.
If I am wrong I am more than happy to apologise and withdraw my comment.
Shipmates who have been around a long time may remember that the late Mrs Gamaliel and myself went through a very painful process 😢 of leaving a church over 20 years ago now.
Dear God, yes!
As for ruining our church, it is to laugh! We’ve got one low vision gentleman, one double amputee who is trying to refuse public transport because he fondly imagines the 76 year old pastor can transport him and his super heavy chair, personally, every Sunday; one lady with a touch of religious flavored dementia; a very new maybe convert who is always better than everyone else, and tells them so!; a former pastor and his wife with issues, who are doing much better, I think, and I’m so glad; and a very sweet lady who needed dentures desperately and got them through the church, and never fails to bring me tea out of gratitude. Oh, and my own household, the oddities of which are well evident on these boards. I tell you, I think Jesus decided to send us everybody who couldn’t find a place elsewhere—and that includes us. Which is rather an honor to be trusted so—but not always the easiest to cope with.
Where I come from teasing is a sign of affection - to be teased by @Gamma Gamaliel (an absolute stalwart of the ship whom I greatly respect) therefore (at the risk of overegging the pudding) is quite an honour.
Good humour is very important as the whole thing has had some traumatic elements to it (to go both/and for good measure).
Sad, but by no means uncommon, or so I hear.
One of Our Place's neighbours has recently undergone the sort of sea-change Your (former) Place experienced. I don't think they've lost 45, but it can't be much less - a Sunday morning congregation of 80 has been reduced to 40+ on a good day. A few have found their way to us, others to a non-parochial Place with a good choir, but not a few are now mostly unchurched.