Louise and I just got back at the weekend from a holiday to Austria and Slovakia - I say a holiday, it was definitely a rest for the brain but maybe not so much for the body. Lots of walking around cities and up mountains! One day I ate a sword full of meat, another day we went into a random guy's house to look at his furniture. While in Vienna we visit St. Stephensdom - the cathedral in the city centre. Call me biased but you can see more stuff for free in Gloucester Cathedral. That's not the point of this blog post... In the picture there's a mini altar with candles and a picture of Jesus (I really hope Jesus didn't look anything life the pictures but hey) with some pews. There was about half a dozen of these around the Cathedral each one of them had a few people either praying, thinking or musing.
I found this pretty strange - obviously I'm used to church but this was different. The altar in this picture was literally by the front door, and what you can't see are the hundreds of people standing around, walking by, taking photos or led by tour guides and their Wikipedia printouts. This made me think... of all the places you could go to pray why would you go to an exposed wooden bench surrounded by a hundred other people speaking a dozen other languages? I think for two reasons: Number 1, it's because they have been brought up in a culture that says go to church because it's where God is. Number 2, it's somewhere they believe their prayers will be heard by the Big Guy. I believe you can pray everywhere and anywhere and God will hear you, but there's clearly some who feel that the one place they can speak to God, even if it means sharing that moment in front of a lanky English guy with an iPhone camera, is in church.
So how do we make church accessible to people... make it somewhere people can connect with God, and create moments where people genuinely feel they can speak to Him.
Posts
