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Observation 6
Church Six Observation Report
September 4th 2005
Church Six is the only church in its small village. I last visited the church in 1986, when the congregation was small in number, yearning for renewal and 'someone who could play the guitar' (if I remember the prayer correctly). The current minister has served there for ten years. He is well known in local Christian circles, not only as a main-stage presenter at Lighthouse for the past seven years, but also as the composer of many of the new Lighthouse songs. I was curious, therefore, to see how this church had changed over the past nineteen years, and how much of Lighthouse has filtered into the worship there, given the minister's influence and input into both. Several questions were in my mind as I prepared to observe the service.
- Is the music here going to be more in the style of Lighthouse (led by an amateur worship band, aimed at engaging the young people through lots of action songs)?
- Do the young people at this church participate more freely as a result of Lighthouse style worship (which is frequently requested by young people from other churches, I suspect because Lighthouse is the only model of worship they have outside that which they experience in their own church)?
As with many of the smaller rural churches, walking down the pathway, out of sight of the road, approaching Church Six can feel like stepping back in time. The building itself looks more like a farm building than a church. Inside, however, we are definitely in the 21st century. The ground floor retains some of the old wooden pews, but these are supplemented by comfortable modern chairs nearer the front, and the whole of the ground floor has been carpeted throughout. A projector screen hangs beneath the plain wooden cross at the front, and a lap-top computer is set up to display song words, pictures and even a video during the sermon. The worship band is undeniably modern, comprising of guitar, bass, keyboard and viola/recorder. It seemed a little unnecessary to have so much amplification in such a small space (this is the smallest church building we have observed in so far) and I couldn't help thinking that the congregation would have benefited from a more acoustic set-up. I realise the electric bass needs to run through a PA, but everything else would have been better making its own pure sound.
Upstairs, the original gallery, running round three sides of the church, has been retained. This, I was told, is where the majority of the young people like to sit. We quickly discovered that from upstairs the research team was able to view the entire congregation with ease.
Interestingly, the young people did seem a little more inclined to participate in the singing than those worshipping in more traditional styles, perhaps because they were present for a reasonable chunk of the singing. That said, 'Trust in the Lord', one of the most popular sings from Lighthouse this year, was sung by only fourteen of the thirty-five young people present.
There is no regular choir at Church Six. The minister tells me that they get together a choir of about twenty-five people twice a year, for Christmas and Easter. Maybe three or four of this number will be young people.
The church has evidently grown since I last went there, with weekly attendance at around fifty adults and between thirty-five to forty young people.
The service itself followed a pattern we've yet to see elsewhere. The entire congregation gathered together for the beginning of the service, and sang and prayed together. The primary age children left to go to their Sunday School groups after the fourth song. The secondary school children stayed to listen to the first part of the sermon and then left to discuss what they had heard in their own group. Only the oldest teenagers (I counted two) stayed in church for the entire service. After the sermon was communion and the whole research team was poised, awaiting the re-appearance of the children. The bread and wine was shared, we prayed and sang some more and then the service was over. The young people never returned to the church. It seems rather odd to entirely exclude the young people from the central rite of the church, especially as we are hoping they will all grow up to want to take part. How can they commit to a rite they have no experience of?
As a result of the rather unexpected lack of young people in the church building at the end of the service, we were unable to get them all to complete questionnaires. By the time we had made our way out of the church (without being too rude to all the folk wishing to welcome us and chat about what we were doing!) many of the older young people had already left.
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