31 Flavours

From 1992-3 and 1996-7 I worked for YWAM in a rural corner of Canada. There, of a humid, sultry summer's evening - if you could stand to be out at the same time as the mosquitoes - a really great thing to do was to drive into the nearby Cowansville (there are no cows - misleadingly) and visit the Baskin Robbins Ice-Cream Parlour.

I love ice-cream... Oh, how I love ice-cream... So, I considered it my mission (after all, I was a missionary, was I not)... to try each of the 31 flavours on offer.

Some weren't great. Root Beer for example - an acquired taste at the best of times and in ice-cream form rather like sucking on a frozen Elastoplast... bizarre in a cone.


Some were perfect. I don't think I ever made it past Maple and Walnut... on its own... no dips, no syrups, no hundreds-and-thousands - Pure perfection.

Which - in a squeal of tyres as my metaphors go into a power-slide - brings me to church...

For the last couple of years Jo and I have been trying different flavours of Church... Not because we're shifty types who can't make up our minds... but because we've taken advantage of the inherent instability of moving house to address some of the awkward questions about what Church is for us.

The first place we lived was Cardiff... Where we visited:

• A church with a mood-swinging pastor - I walked out after mellow worship-pastor metamorphosised into passionate prayer-pastor, and then became shouty preacher-pastor... it was that or shout back.
• A church with children 'playing' recorders and violins in the worship band - We were told that the 'real' worship band would be back the following term... but we never found out if they returned or not.
• A church that smelled of wee - I'm sorry, but it did, and baked potatoes. And it had metal pews that were screwed to the floor...
• A church that met in a theatre, seemed to think it was offering a performance of Jesus Christ 'my own personal superstar' and required the congregation to join in, in a panto stylee with waving of hands and souls, and general flopping aboutness.
• A church that met in a pub - which turned out to actually be a group of friends who met in a pub, which is ideal if you're one of the friends, but we weren't...
• A church where if you were new, you were also clearly a student. As a married couple who were no longer teenagers and didn't really want to be treated as such, we didn't fit.
  

... we finally ended up going on-and-off to a church that was pretty 'straight' and whose services were largely predictable, but which didn't involve any of the inconveniences of the above... but where we didn't really meet or talk to anyone... so, not really Church... more a weekly pew-warming sing-along.

Then we moved to Nottingham... where we visited:

• A church where we were told afterwards that they were 'very sorry we chose to come that day, but to try to avoid the minister speaking whenever possible because he's entirely inappropriate most of the time'.
• A church that was as 'straight' as the one in Cardiff... but we'd had enough of straight by that time and were looking for something decidedly bendy...
• A church that had a bar and where they gave out chocolates during the offering (we nearly stayed there) but that had such a high turnover of people that the services were like identikit pictures that looked the same each week - each with it's own suspiciously whiskered front-man who couldn't bring anything of longterm value because half the people weren't there the week before, and wouldn't be there the week after.
• Another church that had razor wire around the roof... actually, we only went there to vote in the local elections.
  

Now, I don't want to knock those for whom these churches are their Maple and Walnut... but they're just not me... actually, for me, they're just not Church. Like Root Beer ice-cream... other than to prove to myself that it's possible to create something that tastes so odd that it makes me feel queesy... what's the point of me eating it?

... and what do I do when I can't find my Maple and Walnut out there anywhere... and it's not for want of trying.