There used to be a time when churches could rely on being filled on a weekly basis, come rain or shine.
But dwindling congregations and ageing members have forced churches to look for ways to innovate and modernise in an attempt to get the Christian message out.
And so members of Greyfriars Parish Church in Lanark have decided to exchange pews for bar stools in an attempt to spread the festive message with a Christmas Eve carol-singing session at a local pub, the Clydesdale Inn.
Their minister, the Rev Bryan Kerr, said that the church had looked at ways of getting their message out beyond the church.
I totally love this idea. I think I’ll try to do this next year.
Does anybody know whether the Greyfriars Parish Church parishioners are Christians? If they are, I’m all for this.
Chazaq (#2), if they received Christian baptism – and presumably they did – then they are Christians.
Whether they are [i]faithful[/i] Christians or not might be a question, as is indeed the case with all of us.
Their website is here:
http://www.lanarkgreyfriars.com/
Their headline is that they are “an open and affirming congregation serving God, each other and our community”. I don’t know if the code words are the same in Scotland. They have a photo of the congregation — perhaps 150 souls of mixed ages. The membership page says that they currently have 800 members.
they look like a reasonably active
It represents middle of the road liberalism. ‘Open and affirming’ means it accepts same-sex relations.
“Open and affirming” ah, there’s the smoking gun. Here in the United States, those would be code words meaning that they are neither. Oh well. Pub-crawlers, beware.