‘Want to come to church with me?’ Asked my housemate Joe from the bottom of the stairs. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d invited me – ever since finding out I was an avowed atheist he had been determined to drag me along to one of the services he helped out at, but until this point I’d refused, although I had expressed an interest in going along. This time, however, the church team was low on volunteers, and it would be a massive help if I came and served a few drinks for half an hour. Plus it was exam season and my only other plans for the evening involved sitting around the house and desperately avoiding work. ‘Alright then’ I said. ‘Fuck it, I’ll come, but you owe me a pint.’ And so began my adventure into the world of youth worship.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit curious. My only real experience of church was the old stuffy Catholic masses I was forced to attend as a kid, hours of mind-numbingly tedious religious dogma being regurgitated by an old man who’d picked a life without sex of his own free will. I won’t make a paedophile joke, I promise. I felt Joe’s youth-oriented church would be somewhat different, and I was intrigued as to what went into persuading a bunch of twenty-somethings to actually participate in organised worship. I wasn’t seeking out some kind of spiritual revelation that would shatter my atheist worldview (and I didn’t get one), I was simply interested.
Upon arriving at the church I was struck by how different the building seemed to other churches I’d been to. It reminded me more of the chapel my school had built about fifteen years ago than a cathedral or an abbey; a huge warehouse-esque space with a spacious stage, currently host to some band members fiddling around with their equipment, and several rows of seats. Against one wall stood a refreshments stand, and against the other was a bar, well-stocked with alcoholic drinks. A bar in a church, I thought. Praise be to god, indeed. ‘They should have called it “Holy Spirits,”’ is what I like to think I said, but if truth be told I’ve only just thought of that.
I met the team of about seven volunteers with whom I would be working. They seemed like genuinely friendly people, introducing themselves to me one by one. ‘Try not to forget all our names!’ joked one. ‘I think I’ll manage,’ I laughed. I’d already forgotten about half of them. The other volunteers were friendly, welcoming and surprisingly normal. I don’t know if I had been expecting a bunch of crazy zealots, screaming religious dogma at me and trying to banish my nonbelieving self from their place of worship by throwing holy water at me, but these guys were actually really laid back and down to earth, more the Jonas Brothers than the Westborough Baptist Church.
Before we got started, the group joined hands in a circle (myself included) and began to pray. For me, this was a hell of a weird experience. I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that I was intruding on something highly personal and meaningful, and which I was absolutely removed from. On some level I felt slightly dishonest for even being part of this ritual. At one point, I thought we might go around the circle and each be expected to contribute a prayer, and even now I’m unsure if I would have come out as an atheist and refused on principle, or just made one up.
Afterwards, we set up the refreshments area and began to pour drinks of orange juice and coffee for the congregation, who were now starting to trickle in. I chatted to some of the other volunteers, and they explained that a lot of the people who came here were quite lonely or had fallen on hard times, and simply wanted to see a friendly face and feel welcome. At one point, a man with shoulder length hair and a trench coat sidled over and explained to me in great detail his call of duty techniques over a plastic cup of orange squash.
A tall man, dressed casually, came over and introduced himself as some high ranking member of the church hierarchy. He didn’t look like a typical church official, more like a hip young headmaster or youth club volunteer, all topman jeans and adidas trainers. He asked me if I had been to church before and I told him yes, I went now and then as a kid but this was very different. I wondered what he’d say if I told him my concerns that organised religion was a powerful tool of mass oppression and manipulation that had set humanity back hundreds of years and did far more harm than good in the world. ‘It’s not really how I imagined it.’ I decided to say. We talked a bit more about everyday stuff, and as he bid farewell said he would like to see me here again, and I was welcome any time. ‘Yeah, sure!’ I smiled. He seemed so nice; I just didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.
We met up with John, a friend of Joe’s who I knew pretty well, and who seemed very surprised to see me in a church, and I think perhaps hoped I was considering becoming a Christian. We stood around in the area before the stage, and the music began. It was a Christian rock band, so obviously the music was pretty terrible from the perspective of a rock music fan, but still preferable to an organ and a hymn book. I watched, intrigued, as the worshippers around me swayed to the rhythm of the music, eyes closed and arms outstretched, singing along with emotion and passion. I remembered my old school assemblies where all the kids would do their best to sing as little as possible, throwing darting glances around to make sure they weren’t accidentally being more enthusiastic than anyone else. This was very different; everyone was belting out the words, smiles etched across their faces, proud and liberated.
It reminded me a little of a live music event, a festival or a gig; everyone briefly joined together, bound by devotion to the same music and united by an elevated state of mind. The only difference was, these people were praising god, not forming mosh pits, and their collective high came from a sense of shared devotion to their faith rather than 12 cans of Strongbow and half a gram of street MDMA. Once again, I felt a little like an intruder, like I was an onlooker to something that I could never truly be part of; I watched people revel in a sense of deep connectedness to one another that I was not permitted to share. One guy, a tough-looking bloke with a shaved head and tattoos, kept running from one end of the church to the other and then back again, skipping high into the air, becoming increasingly fatigued but never stopping, wearing down the soles of his New Balance trainers in a reverie of spiritual devotion.
After the singing was over we settled into our seats for the pastor’s sermon. Until this point, I had been impressed by how normal and down to earth everyone had been, how they had shown no sign of judgement nor attempted at any point to overtly shove their message down anybody’s throat (not bad considering that we were in a building constructed for that very purpose). Things were, however, about to get a little weirder. The pastor’s talk was based around marriage, and Christian marriage specifically. I knew some controversy was inevitable, and, sure enough, about halfway through the speech came the assertion that gay Christians should really not marry. The bible, he explained, had a strict definition of what a Christian marriage involved, and gay Christians, he advised, ought to consider remaining celibate. Easy for you to say, I thought, happily married for decades because you were lucky enough to be born straight. I didn’t say it though; I didn’t want to be chased by a mob and burned at the stake with all the other faggot-lovers. But perhaps that’s a little harsh – I had been warned about this pastor’s tendency to be a bit contentious, and I also agreed with much of his message, such as his belief that married couples should view divorce as a last resort and not an easy option.
After the service I grabbed myself a bowl of free ice cream and the pint I had been promised by Joe, and hung out with a few of the church volunteers, who invited me to several weddings and the church Christmas party (a massive piss-up, apparently). As I left the church, I found myself forced to reconsider my opinion on organised religion. I’m still no closer to believing in any of it – it’ll take more than a few impressively organised church services to change my mind on that score – but I was moved to look more kindly on it all.
The people at Joe’s church weren’t trying to convert me, they didn’t preach a message of hate or spew out divisive and obnoxious dogma; they did provide a welcoming community for some of the most lonely and vulnerable people in society and a chance for young Christians to really belong to something. The general opinion on Christianity in this country is been that it is dwindling, around 50% of the UK now identify as agnostic or atheist, and many church congregations are ageing (and dying) rapidly. For the church to survive, it has to adapt, to be dragged into the 21st century by the lapels of its ceremonial robes, and Trent Vineyard seem to be doing a pretty solid job of that. In a time where religion has become an easy target, where those who believe in God and go to worship are fair game for bullies from all sections of society, it is admirable to see that there are still places where young Christians can go and share in their faith with pride.
It’s just a shame you have to believe in God to get in.
Louis Moran 