What If Church Was Like Slimming World?

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

“Where else would you get that kind of thing?” I said. “Do you not think it’s a bit weird?” I was musing on the obsession with teaching us new songs at church, line by line, like we’re a children’s choir practising to perform to a heavenly audience. “Let’s try the chorus again”. “Once more from the top”. “Watch out for the bridge”. I was in the back seat of a car being driven by a minister. There was another one in the passenger seat¹. I was taking advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pick two clerical brains whilst in a moving vehicle. I wanted to explain that some things we do at church like sing-alongs might seem odd to someone who had walked in off the street hoping to find God. It could put them right off. Even the regulars can be a tad uncomfortable. “I think I’ve left something in the car,” says my husband when the band strikes up five minutes early.

“Well, they do it at football matches,” said one of them. “How do footfall fans learn songs?” I typed. But it wasn’t quite the same. New lyrics were added to existing tunes, chants were passed down from one generation to the next. They survived through word of mouth. They weren’t complex. They weren’t particularly tuneful, but everyone joined in. “It’s one of the things that binds everyone together,” said Google. Later, I’d study a report by the Evangelical Alliance² which claimed that 450,000 people go to church every Sunday in Northern Ireland and in 2022-23, the Irish Football League announced its highest-ever match attendance figures with 360,000 tickets sold across the entire season. The report said this would suggest more people attend church each week than attend a local football match in a year. And I don’t know why but this seemed like the most ridiculous comparison ever unless we believed that people were choosing between football and church. 

“Apart from it being your job, why do you go to church?” I asked the two ministers. But maybe I also should have asked why they went to football matches and then compared the results. Their answers weren’t as theological as I’d expected and both mentioned community as much as they mentioned God, and I was glad because nowhere in the Bible does it say that you have to attend church to meet with God, but it does say it’s important to meet with each other. And I was particularly intrigued when one minister said he liked to hear how others preach and I reckoned not many of the rest of us are going for that reason. And there was another lady in the back seat too, and she liked to catch up with her friends and I thought no matter how much we try to entice people in through the doors, they’re not going to come if their friends aren’t there. “How do our churches engage with the six out of ten people who don’t currently go to church? How do our outreach and evangelistic activities land with this group?” asked the Evangelical Alliance. And I wondered why we’re always trying to land things and always asking those who do go about those who don’t and could we not just ask the don’ts directly and nicely. And I decided I’d do my own research. I’d ask my readers who don’t go to church if they’d find learning a song on a Sunday morning a bit weird³.

I listen to a podcast⁴. The episode is entitled ‘a festival of feedback’. They’re not sure how many of them they have, but the hosts have invited their listeners to get in touch with what they’d like church to be. It turns out a lot of people have an opinion on their ideal church. It’s somewhere between ‘O Holy Night’ in Home Alone, and the disciples breaking bread. No one yearns to be part of a mega church or even an extra-special church and it reminded me of what Katelyn Beaty said.

She was right. I was much happier being back in the church I’d left for a while because I’d realised it was a ‘mere church’ and I’d found myself saying to my husband that I liked how it was a bit crap sometimes especially the singing because it was songs I knew and I knew the people singing them and when we sang a song that divided into parts which was another weird thing to do and it was just a cacophony of noise, I leaned over and said to him, “let’s hope God is enjoying this”.   

A woman had written in to the podcast about Slimming World, and even though they’re usually being weighed in their halls, I wondered if there was any data on how many people had joined church via Slimming World rather than the other way round. “I wish church was like Slimming World,” she said because the leader related her short talk to their everyday life. She asked how their week had been. They shared their losses and gains. They admitted their weaknesses and their temptations like biscuits. Everyone pitched in to support each other particularly those who were feeling fed up. She found the honesty and togetherness refreshing.

And no one mentioned they wanted church to be somewhere where they weren’t being abused or gaslighted or excluded or shamed or having to deal with the bro-code or misogyny or complementarianism and all the other problems we endlessly read about because sometimes we only hear the negatives, and most churches are quiet and boring and good. The listeners wanted safe spaces. They wanted integrity and authenticity, a place where they were accepted and listened to. They wanted reflection and silence so they could tune into the mystery of God. They wanted smaller, deeper gatherings. They wanted reverence. They wanted to celebrate what God had been doing in their lives. They wanted to be seen, visible and known by name. They wanted belonging. They wanted walking and talking. They wanted vernacular expressions of faith. And there was a lovely line in the podcast blurb that said there needed to be a balance of “evangelical roughage with full-fat dairy liturgy”. “You have to change the model according to the people you have” said one of the hosts. There was a sense that perhaps we were expecting too much from the corporate get-together and all these needs couldn’t be met in an hour on a Sunday. Maybe the church needed to adapt to suit its fans and instead of complaining that people were only coming once a month, perhaps it could do something different on the other three weeks.

And some people it seemed DID NOT WANT SINGING. But lots and lots of them wanted to eat together.

The hosts concluded there had possibly been too much emphasis on believing the same stuff like creeds and statements and doctrines and canons and precepts and even though “the church isn’t the building, it’s the people” has to be the most over-used statement ever, it seemed it was mainly about being together and kindness and love and many people felt that having a conversation around a table over a meal was missing from their church experience. “A sign of a good church is where no one wants to leave,” said another minister at a ‘re-envisioning church’ brainstorming session and I said “where’s the buzz” like I was Tom Cruise saying “show me the money”, only it was “show me the buzz”, and sometimes there’s a bit of buzz with the singing but mainly it’s when everyone runs out at the end of the service to get to their favourite seats for tea and coffee and a chat.

“If we didn’t exist, would we be missed by the community around us?” asked the podcast host. But what if the community heard that church is kind of like Slimming World, or the football match and that people are bound together and encourage each other and that we aren’t always singing…

But we’d probably need to sort out the friends bit because doesn’t everyone come to church because their friends are there?

1. Get in touch if you want to know where I was going…

2. Evangelical Alliance

3. Let me know!

4. A Festival of Feedback