Church Crawl

Interesting experience yesterday evening. We did a church crawl/trail with the young people. Where we visited the churches within our Old Town - Holy Trinity (Anglican), High Street Methodist, Church of Transfiguaration (Roman Catholic) and if we had had the time, our own church Bunyan Baptist. Walking in and spending time in these different buildings was fascinating to see how each church tradition shapes its space according to what it sees as important in the worship of God. The symbolism that is present in Anglican (high Anglican anyway) and Roman Catholicism, at its very best, help the Christian narrate and locate themselves in God's story. This is unfortunately lacking in many free churches. These two church traditions also see the eucharist as central to the life of the church, rather than secondary to preaching and sung worship, again so common among free churches. Visting different church traditions allows one to see that there is something to learn from each other - although I think we should be careful not to take 'this tradtion' and 'that tradition' and attempt to mix it all together, which is so often the postmodern tendency.

Anyway, let me encourage you, especially youthleaders to open your young people's eyes to see the Christian life beyond the tradition they find themselves in.

Comments

I think yes it is good to see how other people worship God in different places but aslo i think it does not really matter what church your in but that your worshiping God!!! Although i think it is right to be in a stable and sutiable place to worship God as God is so worthy to be praised in a great place!!

[ash]

Sounds like a wonderful thing to do! I think a lot of us are probably too afraid to do this with our young people... we are afraid they will become 'one of them' or pick up some 'dodgey ideas'... all of which is a tad moot (to put it nicely).

I'm so glad you're doing this with your young people... I think it's pretty vital if we care at all about eccumenism.

[Jon Bishop]

Learning from the different traditions is a great thing. My youth group got together with a number of churches including Roman Catholic and Anglican (I am from a Baptist church) to do a prayer event for the Persecuted church and it was fascinating seeing the different traditions and their approach to prayer and worship. It was a real experience bring it all together in one place and allowing each other to experience God in new and creative ways.

If we werent a village church then the church crawl would be a really good idea. But I suppose its not impossible to organise tranpsort between them. (Sorry rambling to my own thoughts!)