A new habit

The Very Rev Dr John Chalmers says the Church has to be prepared for the possibility that church-going patterns have been changed for good by Covid-19.

THESE days more and more people are turning to Alexa (other brands are available) for advice!

Alexa is just one of a number of the artificial intelligence services which are powered by cloud computing. Sometimes referred to as virtual associates, these devices get more sophisticated by the day and they can do much more than set a timer for your soft-boiled egg or keep your shopping list up-to-date.

If you ask Alexa to say a prayer for you she replies “I have a few skills that can help you with that”, and from there you can open a link to the Church of England or you can hear passages read from the Koran or the Bible.

Credit goes to the Church of England for the development of an Alexa Skills App, which was launched in 2018. In the first year of its use, the Church of England received over 75,000 questions, ranging from people wanting to know more about the Christian faith to those wanting directions to their nearest Church. In a typical week 40% of the requests are for prayer; evening prayer is the most popular and while I was writing this column I enjoyed the Archbishop of Canterbury leading a service with canticles, Scripture lessons, prayers and responses.

We know that during lockdown many more people accessed spiritual nourishment and worship online, and these virtual associates have played their part in this revolution. Search a little further with Alexa and you will find that you can access the daily meditations provided by Sanctuary First – the Church of Scotland’s online congregation. Alexa could do with some voice training for public worship, but all credit to those who have made the church’s presence known in this environment which has become so much a part of our new normal.

Now that our church doors are being swung open again, there are big questions about how quickly our pews will be repopulated. Did you miss your Sunday morning outing to church? If not – why not? Did online worship work for you? Is it possible you may have lost the habit of a lifetime? And if the local church is to be a worthwhile choice in today’s spiritual marketplace what should be its unique marque? These and many more big questions are facing congregations across the land.

It has been said that, for many sectors of society, life after Covid-19 will never be quite the same again, and this is certainly true for our churches. Back in the 1960s nearly every congregation in the Church of Scotland had well-attended evening services; then from January to July 1967 the BBC screened The Forsyte Saga in 26 Sunday night episodes. 26 weeks was more than enough to change the Sunday evening habits of families across the nation. We should not be blind to the possibility that the lockdown associated with Covid-19 could do to our Sunday morning habits what The Forsyte Saga did to our Sunday evening habits.

We know that during lockdown many more people accessed spiritual nourishment and worship online...

That is why, with some alacrity, we have quickly to reorganise the structure of our church life so that across Scotland there are strong, vibrant and viable congregations capable of meeting the spiritual needs of the communities they serve.

Alexa may have the answer to the burning question of what our unique marque should be. When asked to pray she says: “I have a few skills that can help you with that”. Organised in multidisciplinary teams and working out of far fewer but well equipped buildings, our ministers and congregations have the skills to help people to pray, to worship, to serve, to love and to grow in their relationships. We may well have a job on our hands encouraging people (when it is safe for them) to return to their pew, but the greater challenge still is reaching out to those whose lives could be enriched by developing a new habit. ¤

This article appears in the September 2020 Issue of Life and Work

Click here to view the article in the magazine.

To view other articles in this issue Click here.

If you would like to view other issues of Life and Work, you can see the full archive here.