Tourist church

Last week I was sat talking to some people about the week and what we'd been up to. I mentioned I was the minister of a church..... 

It's amazing the conversations that this sometimes starts. Ranging from 'I'm not into God myself' to 'how do you promote your church' to 'so you baptise adults - are they naked?' 

This time though I was talking to an amazing storyteller. She told me about the time that she went to New York and while they were in New York her and her friend wanted to go to a 'proper' Baptist church. They went to a famous church in the area.... 

When they arrived they were amazed to see the queue - going on for rows and rows of people. At the door were two men (bouncers) dressed in sharp suits. They came down the rows looking at what people were wearing. They stopped at my story teller and looked down - they saw her flip flops and her trousers and said she couldn't go in like that. 

Then they pointed to a stall selling shoes and skirts......

As she got shoed and skirted up her and her friend were asked to stand closer to the people in front so the queue had more space to grow. 

And then, eventually, after a long period of waiting, the doors opened and the bouncers let them in small groups to wait for the service to begin. Gospel choir, passionate preaching.... all those things you'd see on telly....! 

I sat there and thought.... I wouldn't queue. What is this church doing? Bouncers? Flip flop rules? 

Church as tourist attraction. And yes, my storyteller and her friend were tourists. It was a must see for their time in New York. They loved it. It was an amazing experience. Buzzing. 

But church as a tourist attraction? I've always been uncomfortable with paying to go into cathedrals when they should be a place of worship.... but then if I am going in just to look around....? Last year I went to midday communion at York Minster - a calm oasis of worship and thanksgiving in the middle of a busy stream of tourists. In the summer I looked down at the parish congregation in Sagrada Familia and felt out of place as one of the people who had paid to stare. 

A worship service as a tourist attraction? I guess it's become so strange that to have a look-see to experience something strange could be seen as something good. Just as you might go into a cathedral to sense some of the awe and wonder of God, participating in a lively New York Baptist church might help us experience the joy of worship and encounter God through that ..... there is something about the peculiarity of a worship service that people just want to go and see that we should embrace as the church seeks to be light in a dark world.

But, it's not the desire of the storyteller and her friend to go and experience worship that I find difficult (although I've never heard of anyone going to a church like that on the tourist trail) - it's the story of the queues and bouncers and clothes stalls that I find hard. 

What would the King of Kings born in a manger on that first Christmas make of all this? A quiet and subversive entrance to turn the world upside down. Born to a very young couple, far from home, met by shepherds still smelling of the hills, bowed down to by men from far far away. No bouncers, no dress code, no cathedrals, no queues, but the quiet entrance of Emmanuel. 

God with us. 

God..... with..... us.