I only ask for the simplest of basics

George Orwell once wrote a lovely essay on the ideal pub, which succinctly laid out what he considered to be the ideal establishment. It's still pretty much bang on, though he seems to care more about china mugs than I do.

I was reminded of it a few weeks ago when, in lieu of actually going to a church away day, I wrote down what I thought we needed to do. I pretty much laid out what an ideal church looks like. Actually though, in the interests, of tact, brevity and pragmatism, I don't think I went far enough. So I have here. Much like Orwell's Moon under water, my ideal church simply does the basics right and is sensible.

It has services at a sensible time, which on a Sunday requires no one to be out of the house before 9:30, or still in church when it is really time for lunch. Information about those services, as well as specific seasonal services is available in plenty of places, including on a website. It is not evangelism to expect people to guess when the Ash Wednesday service is on if they were  not in church on the Sunday. Details of the people and the logistics are also widely shared.

Those logistics are practical, with provision for children that neither forces them to listen to a service they find tedious; nor - worse - forces the rest of the congregation to endure too many children. No exceptions are made to this rule, even on high and holy days. It is not considered essential, as it is for so many churches, for children to be especially bored and their neighbours excessively hostile in the service of Easter. Both children and adults alike are well served with cake after church. And, on days of liturgical celebration, wine.

The texts are in proper prose and include the Old Testament - because we are not Marcionites. Sermons are short, no more than ten minutes, done well, and may even have jokes. They cover the specifics of the texts read. Hymns are mostly traditional, though there is no shame in choosing those that reflect the congregation occasionally. They rarely include the infantilising modern songs that are popular with children but have no place in a grown up church. 

Liturgically, nothing too outlandish is attempted and all is done promptly. There is no Marian idolatry smuggled in through the back door of appropriate vestments, though vestments should be appropriate and reflect in no way any fashion of the last half century. In an ideal world, the language would be Cranmer's, but at the very least, the Lord's Prayer talks of trespassing, not Sin, and at no stage will there be any suggestion that the word disciple is synonymous with friend. Communion is taken in both kinds, and with red wine - no  affection around transubstantiation here. There is, of course, no pause for the Peace. Everyone knows that the right time to swap pleasantries with your neighbour is at the end of the service.

This mostly describes a Sunday morning, but my ideal church would have daily services, to which I would go rarely, but it gives me a great deal of pleasure to know they exist. When services are not being held the church is open, often for events. Some may be Christian in character, but by no means all. This is a public building, open, supportive and embedded in its community. Someone, though of course, not me, can always clear up.

I am not hopeful.

The simple things

When I was much younger, I used to aim to make Ash Wednesday mass as late as possible on the day. As Lent only starts then, you can get two drinks in after work before the 7:30 service. I remember once pelting through central London on a bike after glibly promising my drinking companion I could get from Charlotte St to Camden in under 10 minutes (you can't, but it's close enough). That was when I had time; and evenings. Now I try to work Ash Wednesday more efficiently and knock it off during the day. It's amazing how hard that is.

I suspect it's true that you can tell a lot about any organisation by how well they do the irregular activities. It's certainly true that you can tell a lot about a church based on what happens outside Sundays. Getting Ash Wednesday right should be easy. If you're a city church near a lot of workplaces, you should have an Ashing service at lunchtime. You might well want to have one after work too, but don't have it at 7:30. If you're residential, do it after dinner (7:30 is fine). And tell people about it - at the very least put a poster up outside, and you should really learn to use the Internet - I don't believe it's that hard anymore. People who are looking for a service near work should be able to look you up. In London, the diocese could even co-ordinate.

On Wednesday, I had to walk 20 minutes in the centre of London to find a church I knew had a service. I walked past two churches on the way. Even after looking at their noticeboards, I couldn't work out if they had a service at all, let alone at lunchtime. I mourn the fact that Ash Wednesday isn't a fundamental part of the rhythm of modern life, but I'm just angry that the churches don't even seem to trying. Anathema.

P.S. My old and new churches did this just fine.

Choosing a church (2): The word of God

I listened to parodies of preaching before I actually went to church enough to remember the preaching - to this day, I can't hear about Jacob and Esau without, unbidden, Alan Bennett's pastiche rising to mind (text here, even better if you can find the delivery). This is particularly true because some of the sermons in my parents' church were reminiscent of this approach (still are). Thankfully, where I go now, they're not. 

In fact, I've been fortunate to have a succession of good, and different, preachers at St Michael's. The depth is important because it's exposed me to a variety of tone, which not only reduces the burden on the rector, but also relieves the audience. Elsewhere, things have been mixed. One of my recent local experiments was excellent - he did a short exegesis of the gospel text as his sermon. Others have been considerable less memorable. Some have been terrible, though none have plumbed the depths of St Giles, Camberwell, where some years ago, the priest floated the possibility that the four beasts of the apocalypse of Daniel might be interpreted as modern day figures of evil - "Hitler, Stalin, Mao ... and Thatcher," without a hint of irony. I never went again.

It's obvious why this is important, but here my five point guide to what I want from a sermon, aside from standard public speaking drill - be intelligible, speak, don't read etc:

• Substance. Say something. This is not Thought for the Day. Everyone wants to be here. They know being nice is a good thing. Ditto Jesus loves us. Something more pointed and more material is called for. 
• Scripture. However, this is not an opportunity to regurgitate some thoughts you've been having about contemporary issues based on yesterday's Guardian. Root it in the scripture you've just read. And that's all the scripture, not just the gospel. The other two readings aren't just there for decoration. 
• Focus. Wide ranging sermons lose the congregation, and usually the preacher. Given you get to do this every week, best to stick to one message. It also means you can do it justice.
• Personality. Be careful here, as overpersonal interpretations can simply be a mess, but everything goes better if preachers preach about the things they want to say, rather than things they think they ought to be talking about. Also: if you can't do Greek, don't talk about it. Don't do it badly.
• Brevity. Most importantly, don't go on. I don't have a strict time limit in mind here, but anything longer than ten minutes should be looked at hard. It's probably not worth it.

It's actually not that hard. It's astonishing how many vicars fail.

Choosing a church (1): No more Peace

We're thinking of moving house to accommodate the child and my expanding bookshelves. As a consequence (of the child) we need to start thinking about schools, and as a consequence of that, I need to think about churches. Specifically, I need to think about churches that have good schools attached. As a result, I've been going to some churches in areas we might move to - this has not proved an entirely happy experience. So I though I'd start to jot down some rough criteria for churches in a series of posts. This one is going to talk about the Peace. For the avoidance of doubt, while I will do a great deal for the child, I will not go to churches whose main liturgical instrument is the guitar, and nor will I regularly attend a service led by someone not in clerical dress and who believes Jesus would like us all to clap more. All of what follows therefore assumes a church that is at lease middle of the road CofE and ideally a little higher. So far, I've avoided accidentally going to churches that spend too much time with tambourines.

Nonetheless, in all of them, bar none (and I realise now my church is guilty of this too), the Peace is excruciatingly awful. I've a number of objections to it, but at heart the issue is that it simply goes on far, far too long. I've not timed it, that's hard to do surreptitiously, but it exceeds my ideal by a significant multiple. The ideal length of time for the Peace, if any time must be allocated at all, it the time it takes to shake hands with your immediate neighbours, of whom there will be no more than six, allowing 4-5 seconds per person (and it doesn't take that long usually), you should have the whole thing done in half a minute. That could easily be shorter. Instead, it goes on and on, people come over from other parts of the church to say hello to friends, priests wander in your direction, especially if they've noticed the new person who looks young. And I try to look the other way, or read the hymnbook. Once, anticipating this grimness, I stood by a noticeboard and read there entire presentation about the local school. The Peace was still going on when I finished.

As well as being excruciatingly embarrassing, I also think it's unsound. There's a nice theological reflection on this here, which I found with a cursory google and broadly agree with. But I most profoundly disagree with it because it cheapen the church community. One of the great glories of the parish church is that is genuinely does forge community out of unlikely ingredients. What has masked the awfulness of the Peace in my church is that I do know most people; and so it's not an unpleasant experience to shake their hands in the middle of the service. Nonetheless it's a false bonhomie, a formalised handshake isn't real engagement, but it looks a bit like it, especially if you remember the other person's name. It's quick. formulaic and shallow. In reality and overlong Peace betrays a lack of community - if we were bound together properly, even a little, you'd do all this over coffee afterwards or even outside the service, not pretend to chat in a messy Peace.. Now real engagement has happened in all the churches I've been too, though not always in a way that pulls newcomers in. In which case, the Peace isn't only painful, it's pointless. Cut it down, or better still, leave out the audience interaction altogether. I'm looking (in vain) for the church that does that.