Tag: Christian

Church culture, Life

Church culture, part 1 – the joy of singing?

Jonny Waugh

Its a church with an informal style. Its a Sunday morning. Warm those voices up, its time for singing. Who doesn’t love a good sing?

Well…

Let the trauma begin

At the age of eight I moved to an all-boys school. It was a private school, which meant school days were a weird length (we finished at 5) and term dates were out of sync with the rest of society. The school had “a Christian ethos”, which meant that it had its own large Anglican chapel, a resident chaplain, assemblies with hymns from “Hymns Ancient And Modern”, and compulsory weekly services of a high-Anglican nature. In their first year at the school everyone had a “singing test” to see if they had any natural ability, with the hope of finding suitable candidates for the choir. Apparently I had enough ability for my parents to be asked if I would join. I was highly reluctant, and to my great relief I was allowed to escape this fate.

To be in the choir meant many things. Choir practice was at lunchtime, and took the place of football. Choir music was… traditional church choral music. If you were in the choir, then in services you had to wear a dress. Well, ok, technically “choir robes”. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

And this was before we even got to the peer pressure. Take a load of boys without a lively Christian faith, put them in a cold chapel on a Friday evening when they’d rather be elsewhere, and ask them to sing ancient hymns to choir accompaniment. And then take into account the fact that the role model for a younger boy is an older boy… which matters because (due to puberty) older boys have a much deeper voice than younger boys and… you know what the result is? Well, its hardly going to be 8 year old boys enthusiastically learning to sing their high-pitched hearts out is it?

To be in the choir was to be mocked. And to sing, well, the rule was you don’t sing.

This of course drove the head of the music department nuts. Every Friday morning after assembly we had “congregational practice”, during which the poor man tried everything to teach us a little about how to sing and get us to practice the hymns. It was a pretty forlorn exercise. For those of us of a more obedient disposition, congregational practice meant a state of tension between the orders of the teacher and the pressure of the group. In my case the result was trying to sing… but in such a way that other people couldn’t hear me. Obviously, that just doesn’t work. Later on, I latched onto the idea of trying to sing lower than my natural voice.

Result: after ten years of “church singing”, I had

  • learnt the lesson that you don’t sing (though by 18 it was okay to sing if you sounded like Tom Jones or Eminem, i.e. a secular superstar).
  • learnt to sing in a uselessly inaudible fashion (no technique)
  • lost the ability to sing what I was hearing (by spending half a decade singing the wrong notes)

In fairness to the school my year-group was particularly sports obsessed, and the school has changed a lot since I was there. During my time it began the transition to co-ed and it has been modernised a lot. Who knows, maybe kids do like singing now!

Widening the field of view

The point of the above is to give a background as to why, for me, singing in church is usually not a fun activity. I lack both competence and confidence – and my technique is dreadful, so it often makes my throat hurt.

Now, many people do love “(sung) worship” as it is often called. Great! There is nothing wrong with singing Christian songs at all. One stereotype of Africa is that there everyone sings. But the UK is different: we don’t have a singing culture. Adult men sing at the football and at karaoke; otherwise we’re happy to watch, but generally leave singing to the professionals. Singing badly is a thing to be mocked. Singing among women is, I think, more socially accepted. Obviously I’m generalising here, but its a generalisation I feel that many people will identify with. In short, for many men simply being asked to sing in public is a bit of a facer.

In churches are there any things that aggravate the problem? Yes! Such as

  • Music factors: You know that bit in most modern church songs where the volume of the instruments drops low, so that just voices can be heard, and there is that lovely harmony? Well, think about what this means for those that have trouble with singing: their voices are directly exposed to public view. Or they have to stop for a break.
  • Language in modern songs: You know how these days teenage guys and single men show their appreciation for their male friends by telling them how much they adore them? No, neither do I. This isn’t language we use! But it is the language in our songs to God (who chooses to be known as a Father) and Jesus (in terms of his humanity, a human male). Mental gymnastics time!
  • Emotional expectations: Look at pictures of a service on a church website, and there’s a fairly good chance you’ll see a picture of a large number of people with their eyes shut, hands in the air, singing or praying. In this style of church there is an unwritten rule that “proper Christians not only love singing, but have an ecstatic emotional experience, in public.”

The issue of singing is picked up on in research from the States. In his book “Why Men Hate Going to Church” David Murrow gives this wonderful picture relating to the second point in the list above –

Picture two male hunters sitting in a duck blind… One hunter decides to express his affection for the other, using the words of a popular praise song. He turns to his friend and says, “Hey, buddy…

Your love is extravagant,
Your friendship, it is intimate
I feel I’m moving to the rhythm of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in this secret place.”

Readers, I cannot imagine saying these words to another man – especially one carrying a loaded shotgun.

This particular song isn’t so familiar in the UK, but you get the general idea. Its not that the ideas expressed are wrong, or that this song shouldn’t be sung, but if you ask a random bunch of men to sing this sort of stuff, don’t be surprised if men think that church isn’t for them. And this really gets to the heart of the problem. What and who is church for, and what is the singing for? In my observation, here are three groups that find singing an issue

  • Many adult Christian men often don’t sing, at least not with too much gusto, or stop part-way through songs for a break. (The more times a chorus is repeated, the more men stop singing – have a look out for this phenomenon!)
  • Teenage and young adult men often don’t sing, even if they have a Christian faith.
  • Non-Christian visitors (of both sexes), such as those who come into the church for things like baptisms, often don’t sing. I imagine that many of them often feel pretty uncomfortable with being asked to sing when really they’d rather not join in.

The church puts considerable effort into reaching out to people outside of the church (particularly to men), and in trying to bring up young men to adopt a lively faith for themselves. Now, for some people coming into the church and hearing sung worship is instrumental in bringing them to faith. However, I would suggest that for others it is more of a stumbling block. And a fairly big one: by my estimation something like 40% of every service is taken up with singing. That is a lot of time to have to endure being put on public display doing something at which you aren’t competent, comfortable or confident!

Being helpful

Let me re-iterate that I have nothing against singing. For many people “sung worship” is something they enjoy and is integral to their Christian life, and it has drawn others to the faith in the first place. So it is a good thing and I certainly don’t want to stop others participating – go for it! However, I suggest that both its unquestioned prominence and its current format could do with serious consideration. Here are a few ideas.

  • Make greater use of performance. Even people who don’t like singing themselves are generally happy to listen to someone musically-gifted singing at a good standard.
  • Make greater use of a wider variety of creative arts by the congregation. Music and singing is only one of the creative arts. What about the rest – traditional art, video-making, writing and so on? Why are these usually limited to kids, or reduced to low-standard, novelty items?

This post is long enough, so I will wind up here. One final thought – why do I care about this subject so much? Singing is not an issue alone, but part of a broader concern I have. I became a Christian as an adult, and see Christianity as a good thing that I would want to share. But I am single, male and mid-thirties. Most of the friends I make are in their twenties and thirties, they don’t have kids, and their interests are a long way from a church context. Which gives me a real difficulty: “church” is simply not somewhere I can bring people to, or in which they would truly thrive. And that really is a problem.

This is a big statement to make, and needs some justification. I hope to return to it soon in another post.

J

P.S. You may have read in another post that I’ve started internet dating. Given the general tenor of this article, it might surprise you to hear that one of the things I think would be quite nice is to find a partner I could sing with (!). As I’ve said several times, I have nothing against singing. But for me singing is a highly vulnerable activity – essentially intimate in nature. If I sing with you, its a mark of great trust and/or value.

Dating, Life

Let the online dating begin!

Jonny Waugh

So, three days ago curiosity finally got the better of me and I signed up to an online dating site.

For those of you who know me, that might be a bit of a where-did-that-come-from moment.

The reason’s a simple one really. The way church is usually structured in the UK, in my experience if you’re above 25 and live in suburbia, its virtually impossible to meet a single Christian woman in the same age group and spend enough time talking to actually get to know one another.

Lots of things contribute to this:

Church size

Most churches in small towns or suburbia are about the same size, something like 80-150 people on a Sunday morning. In consequence, the number of single people in any age group is just small.

For a long time I went to a local Anglican church in Sussex. In my age bracket there were two single people, me and “the single woman”. In comparison, at my church in Aylesbury there is a positive riches of singles – me, and TWO single women. Heady days. In fairness, I don’t know everyone at the church equally well, and there may be people who come less often that I haven’t considered, so technically I may have miscounted. But my estimate can’t be out by much. The point is, within a church of standard size the “dating pool” in any age category is tiny.

Churches rarely work together

So for dating, church size is an issue. However, in a reasonably sized town there are lots of churches, most of the same standard size. So if churches worked together, it would be possible for a working dating pool to operate. Aylesbury is large. It has 20-30 churches, so if each has one or two single people of each sex in each age group, that means that town-wide each person has perhaps 50 potential partners. Great! There is plenty of scope there for some happy campers.

However, churches don’t really work together very much. So the chance of meeting more than a handful of these 50 people is, well, small.

Relationships are based on communication, and communication takes time – which is hard to come by

Really getting to know other people takes time. And churches don’t make this easy. Church on a Sunday morning usually takes the form of a service, followed by a short time for coffee/tea and a bit of chatting. Services generally don’t involve much communicating with other people, and coffee time is a fragmented affair – if you speak to the same person more than once a month you’re lucky! Based on Sunday mornings alone, getting to know anyone well is virtually impossible.

Churches generally do have more going on than just Sunday morning services. Our church has a lunch once a month, there are midweek homegroups for Bible studies / talking about specific issues / prayer, and a few times a year there are social events. However, not everyone goes to everything all of the time, and there may not be any other single people of a similar age in a homegroup (there aren’t in mine, and I go to two groups from different churches!). Over time it is still possible to get to know people. But slowly is the key word – and waiting 3 years to get to the point where you might know someone well enough to know if you want to ask them out is not really workable!

Changing social opportunities

By their late twenties most Christians are married and have started a family. This is great, but comes at a price. Suddenly, they aren’t available as much socially – and for a single person their social scene often contracts. Some couples consciously make an effort to include single people (particular shout out to B&R, who are wonderful at it) but even their time may be limited.

Meeting friends-of-friends is one of the best ways of meeting other people. Not only might you be introduced to someone that your friends think you might be interested in, but the fact that you share a friend means that in a sense you come pre-vetted, which greases the wheels. A lack of this social mixing is only exacerbated by changing location, which is often a hazard of modern life. I’ve lived in four different places as an adult, each time moving hundreds of miles. Those I know best are scattered over the whole country, and meeting up with them in person is rare.

In short, for a Christian over the age of 25 and living in a small town or suburbia, the off-line dating scene can be pretty much non-existent. If only there was a solution to this problem…. Which is why I’ve decided to give on-line dating a go. Dating sites are set up to solve exactly the problem I’ve just described.

Last thought

At the start of this post I said that those who knew me might find this action bewildering. I think this is probably true. The reason is kind of sad: in the ordinary course of events, no-one ever asks me about relationships. No-one asks if I’m dating anyone. Or have ever dated anyone. Or whether I’d like to. Or whether I want to be married. Or whether I’d like to have children (a separate but related issue). So in crucial ways no-one knows what I am actually like.

This was brought home to me a few years ago when talking to a counsellor. During one conversation they asked me about my experience of relationships, what kind I thought I wanted, what kind of a person I would be interested in meeting or was attracted to, what I thought about sex, and children, and so on. And as they did so it suddenly occurred to me that this was a unique conversational line, the kind of subject that may come up only once every few years. It was eye-opening, and a somewhat painful experience akin to a kind of grief.

I’m not sure what the reason for this is. Partly it may be a desire not to pry; partly because I’m male, on the quieter side, or not astoundingly good looking; partly because my closer friends don’t live nearby. But I think that a lot of it has to do with the dominant style of Christianity in the places where I’ve lived. When I’m down the pub for Drink-and-Draw* night, or to play board games, relationships come up in conversation all the time. With church people – usually tumbleweed: relationships are things that just happen, or don’t.

(*I should clarify that Drink-and-Draw night is a monthly art event, in which a group of us spend the evening in the pub with a drink in one hand and artists’ materials in the other. My proofreader was sent into a five-minute hysterical laughing fit at the thought of what “Drink-and-Draw” might be, given that the context of this post is dating related. I still haven’t got to the bottom of this, but their suggestion that I clear this point up has been noted.)

My suggestion to the Christian community is this: if you know single people, but have no idea about what they think about any the kinds of things listed above, why don’t you ask? By all means tread the waters carefully, as not everyone will want to talk and for some people the subject may be a raw one. But some will. By doing so you will get to know much more of the person under the hood, and who knows you may even be able to help them out!

Updates on progress to follow…

J

Life

Welcome to the new Life and Lions blog!

Jonny Waugh

Hello!

Welcome to my new blog on my new website!

My name is Jonny. I’m in my mid-thirties and currently live in the town of Aylesbury in the UK.

I have interests in a wide variety of different things. I studied physics at university, where I became a Christian, so I am interested in both of those. I create art both using traditional media and digitally. I play computer games and board games. I enjoy gardening, and photographing the flowers, plants and bugs that live outside. I love light-hearted detective shows, science fiction, fantasy and (despite any previous denials) romantic comedies. Oh, and cryptic crosswords. In short, a whole lot of different things.

The fuel

Since finishing uni a decade ago, life has turned out nothing like I would have expected.

Here I am half-way through my thirties, still single, and living with mum. It is less than five years since my dad got diagnosed with cancer and, after a lengthy and unpleasant illness, sadly died. Do I have a traditional career path? No. I have, however, gained plenty of first-hand experience of social isolation and anxiety problems. For a couple of years I was badly agoraphobic, though that has now passed and we have since moved to Aylesbury, where there is much more for someone of my age and abilities to be involved with.

This is a long way from the “standard Christian narrative”. In this archetype you get a job in your early twenties, ideally a stable job-for-life in a middle-class profession – preferably something caring like a teacher or medic, though traditional careers like architect and engineer and so on are also acceptable. After a courtship that is sexless yet somehow also absurdly long, you marry a beautiful spouse in your mid-twenties and move in to a place filled with inspirational Bible quotes written on sunset or woodland backgrounds. By your thirties you have several beautiful kids. And then life is more or less set. You’re in an Instagrammable groove, heading for sending-the-kids-to-university and retirement, one hosted Bible study at a time.

There is nothing wrong with any of this. At all. Trouble is, my life looks nothing like that. At all.

The motivation

When expectation and reality collide there is friction, which is uncomfortable. But it is a great learning experience. I wouldn’t have chosen the last decade to take the path it has, but now that it has happened and I have had a chance to reflect, I think it has given me a fairly unique perspective on practical life as a Christian with a lively faith; on church culture; and on the relationship between the church and the wider world. And I think its the right moment to usefully start to share this angle.

At times I feel like a canary in a coal mine. The canary detects a problem, and alerts the miners to its presence. He serves to highlight to the miners an issue that is actually affecting the whole body of workers, but which is not easy for them to notice. This doesn’t make the bird better than the miners or vice versa – they are a team. The miners are needed to mine the coal, the bird to look after the miners, and the miners in turn feed the bird. They work together. (Okay, the analogy is a bit limited. If the bird does detect a problem he…. keels over dead after inhaling poisonous gases. Its only an analogy, I don’t intend to do that!)

The timing

So why start writing now? During my experience of social isolation, I became used to communicating with people mainly via the internet as most of the friends I had were hundreds of miles away. Using YouTube and tutorial sites I taught myself some computer graphics skills. I took up gaming, both online and on my own. I learnt something about using a greenscreen. In short, my social world became largely digitally-mediated.

Currently, we are in coronavirus lockdown throughout the country. This is a serious illness and a serious situation, and I wouldn’t want to trivialize it in any way. One consequence of the shutdown is that it has forced people online, helping many who were formerly resistant to overcome their reluctance – Christians and churches in particular. In a specific sense, and without intending to be flippant, it now feels like suddenly everyone is playing in my back yard (metaphorically of course!). They are in the digital world, where I am already fairly comfortable. As a result, socially I am more connected than before. This is a space I feel fairly comfortable operating in, I feel less alone, and that I can make a worthwhile contribution in a way that hasn’t previously been possible. Such as starting a blog.

Getting going

To start the blog and the website off, I am launching with three posts. This introduction is the first; the next two are

I hope you find these interesting and learning something from them, and stay with me for future posts,

Best wishes,

J