by Norman Walford
“You do know he wears make-up, don’t
you?”
This was one of the milder comments
I got when I announced to a few select friends that after 14 years of
struggling to find my place in the Pharisee Church of St
Gregory-the-Try-Harder, I was throwing in the towel. From now on I would be
transferring my allegiance to Nearly Creative, the rapidly growing megachurch
down the road, and its secretive, multicoloured, multicultural, senior
pastor—his real name is a closely guarded secret so I’ll just call him “JP” for
now. (Not JC, that’s already taken.) He of the make-up. I’m not sure what
colour lipstick he wears—I’ve never got close enough to find out, and I
probably never will. Such is the massive popularity of the church I’m just
happy if I can get in through the door on a Sunday morning, forget any thoughts
of getting close enough to the front** to check his mascara isn’t running under
the lights.
Not that I’m moving completely of
course. How can I? After all, I write about Pharisee Church issues, and for
that I have to collect material. The best way to do that is to be a part, so
I’ll be keeping on with my membership at St Gregory’s, though perhaps with the
slightly more detached attitude of an impartial observer than before.
I’ll continue to attend the
meetings, I’ll listen to the sermons, I’ll continue to watch the thrills and
spills of this strange, strange organization as it tries by sheer force of
will-power and perseverance to impact the world for God. I’ll try to figure out
what really goes on in the soul of the institution—and others like it—and I’ll
be reporting what I find back to you, my long-suffering readers.
Right now my immediate task is to
catch up on a backlog of sermons that has been building up while I’ve been
relaxing in the snowfields of Switzerland. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. The
St Gregory’s website is and always has been a catalogue of disasters, and the
Sermon Download page—the only page that ever really interests me on a church
website—is the worst of the lot.
Disasters … yes. The St Gregory’s IT
system has been in crisis almost as long as anyone can remember.
It started with a lightning strike
on the church. Singapore has one of the highest rates of lightning strike of
anywhere in the world, so perhaps we should have been prepared better. Never
mind. The lightning conductor failed, and the entire electronic infrastructure
of the church was wiped out at a stroke.
Shortly after that, the unpaid
volunteer looking after the church IT walked off the job. It seems he got sick
of being kicked around and taken for granted as if he was a paid member of the
staff. Really, I mean how selfish can you get? Though funnily enough I’ve come
across this retrogressive attitude among a lot of church volunteers, and not
just in St Gregory’s. They feel that just because they’re giving up their
valuable time for free to help out, they should be entitled to some sort of
appreciation. Very strange. I think the last straw was the attitude of “You’re
a Christian! You’re supposed to rejoice when we abuse you. Count it all joy!”
No. He just couldn’t see it. Carnal
obviously, not spiritual. Good riddance.
Then after that the church website
got hacked. It’s difficult to understand why, out of all the millions of
potentially hackable sites around the world, anyone would choose to go for the
official website of the Church of St Gregory-the-Try-Harder. But they did. So
who? Was it a disgruntled former church employee? Or a disgruntled church
member? What about the unpaid IT volunteer? He has motive, he knows the system,
and probably has the ability. But I don’t think so somehow. I suppose I could
even have done it myself if I’d thought of it, and if I knew how—which I don’t.
Was it a Satanic attack? Perhaps the
enemy getting so panicked about the prospect of the earthquakes our radical
brand of Pharisee Christianity was about to set off across the island and then
spread like wildfire across the rest of South East Asia? No, that seems about
the least likely explanation of the lot.
Which just leaves—a trainee hacker,
not feeling ready for the Pentagon or the NSA yet, looking for a nice soft,
easy target to practice on and alighting on … St Gregory’s.
(There’s one other possible
explanation that I don’t even want to think about—that it’s all a subtle
blackmail to increase church attendance. If
we starve them of information, put it all in the Sunday morning announcements
and nowhere else, then they’ll have to come to church, just to find out what’s
going on. Actually, now that I do think about it … but no, I don’t want to
go down that road. Not today anyway.)
Anyway that’s all history now. The church IT
system is functioning again after a fashion, and the church website is back up
and running. Except for the Sermon Download page. Probably deep down they can’t
really believe that anyone would actually want to access the Sermon Download
page. And they’re probably right—except me, of course. And I have a secret,
nefarious purpose of my own that will become clear shortly. (Read on!)
Most days the Sermon Download page is
just a blank, featureless white screen. This is particularly the case early in
the week, presumably while they’re struggling to upload the latest sermon.
Sometimes the page actually comes up for a day or two towards the weekend—until
a new sermon gets preached on Sunday morning and the whole cycle repeats
itself. The trick is to catch it when it’s up and download as many sermons as
possible before it goes down again.
I think there’s a more fundamental
spiritual reason why our church communication system is always such a shambles.
It’s the basic spiritual principle that “the harder you try the worse it gets”.
And St Gregory’s does in fact try very hard. I can’t fault them for effort. Sheer,
unmitigated, grinding human endeavor. Our mediaeval patron St Gregory-the-Try-Harder
would be proud of us if he could see it. And that of course is a big part of
the problem. Not all of it, but a part.
Back to the sermons. It reminds me of a conversation I
had with a church member a few years ago. I don’t remember his first name but
his last name was Dell. I only remember that because he was in process of
applying for a job at Dell Computers, and we had an extended discussion about
whether coincidentally sharing a name with the founder, owner, and CEO would be
an advantage or a hindrance when it came to interviews. I think we decided
probably the latter, but I don’t remember the outcome. Anyway the conversation
started something like this:
“Norman, do you think there’s
something wrong with me? Spiritually I mean? You see, I come to the Sunday
Morning Services, and I try and engage in what’s going on. But about five
minutes into the sermon I find my mind starts wandering off onto other things.
Sometimes I almost feel myself drifting into sleep. Such a dreadful thing to do
when the Word of God is being preached—I know it’s wrong but I just can’t seem
to help it. What should I do?”
No, Mr. Dell. It says nothing about
your spiritual health. Nothing about you at all in fact, other than indicating
that you’re probably normal. It may say something about the sermons though.
So why my sudden interest in
downloading and listening to St Gregory’s sermons? After all—like most
churches, I’ve noticed—the message is generally the same from one week to the
next. At Nearly Creative it’s all about the grace of God. At St Gregory’s it
can generally be summed up in two words: “Try harder!” No one else takes the
slightest notice of that message, so why should I?
It goes back to when, as I said, I
started telling people I was planning henceforth to split my allegiance, keeping
my St Gregory’s attachment but at the same time committing firmly to Nearly
Creative. And I was quite shocked by the sheer negativity of some of the
comments I got from people I respected.
“Norman, I can’t believe you even
want to go there! It’s total heresy, surely you know that! All that prosperity
stuff, health and wealth. It’s not just about make-up, not even about the
designer leather jacket he wears when he preaches. He’s actually telling people
that they don’t have to try harder! That Jesus has done it all on the cross!
All they have to do is believe, trust and enjoy! Can you imagine where it’s
going? Anarchy! Orgies probably! No wonder they’re all fighting to get in—but
not you Norman, surely!”
In the midst of all that there was
one comment that intrigued me particularly. It came from a former Gregory’s
staff member who had been pushed out of the church under unpleasant
circumstances. She had committed two cardinal sins. The first was that she had
tried to live out the teachings of the New Testament, literally, in her life
and in her church work. The second was that she had assumed that the others
were all trying to do the same. The first could be forgiven, just. The second,
never.
Considering the circumstances, I
thought her comment was really quite noble: “Norman, you should really stay at St
Gregory’s. The preaching is very sound, very theologically correct. I grant
that they don’t live it out, but if you can ignore how they live and just
concentrate on what they teach, you can learn a lot.”
Such nobility deserved to be taken
seriously. But … Their teaching is sound,
just that they don’t actually live it. I’m not sure I can buy into that
one. Surely what you preach has to ultimately reflect what you believe. Is it
really possible to preach a perfect message and at the same time live a totally
contrary life? If you preach “Try harder” it must be because you believe “Try
harder”. And if you believe “Try harder” you probably live “Try harder”. Or do
I mean that the other way round? Now even I’m getting confused …
In that sense, I suppose they could be seen as
consistent. But then, so was Judas. So was Caiaphas. Is consistency enough? What
are the answers, and where can I find them? Are they hidden somewhere on the St
Gregory’s Sermon Download page? I need to know.
And right now, I just have a feeling
that a rare opportunity may be at hand. It’s Friday afternoon, and it’s just
possible that the Sermon Download page may temporarily be up, before its next
white-out. So that’s where I’m heading. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know what I
find …
** Unlike at St Gregory’s, where I
always sit in the front row. If I’m going to suffer through it, I might as well
at least be seen to be there. Furthermore while Nearly Creative fills up from
the front, backwards, St Gregory’s generally fills up from the back, frontwards.
So the front row always has space for last-minute arrivals, like me.
The Chronicles of the semi-mythical Church of St Gregory-the-Try-Harder
are based on real life experiences. Names have been changed to protect the
guilty and the innocent alike, but any resemblances with living persons or with
dead or living institutions are entirely deliberate and non-coincidental.
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