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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Are Protestant denominations too girly?
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PhilA:
I've seen loads of churches that run men's breakfasts, and women's coffee mornings. There is nothing new in this idea of giving different groups of people (however they are demarcated) different things - its a simple case of working out your audience and then giving them the message you need to give in a way that they can understand and respond best.
And that confirms my suspicions.
Nobody has so far answered my question about why any of this really matters as much as it seems to matter to some people. I explained the Catholic understanding of church that a few of us here are coming from, and why we are perhaps struggling with getting a grasp of why the individual's wants are so important in light of that. I asked what it was about the protestant understanding of church and worship that makes them depend on these things so much, and LutheranChik has re-phrased and asked again, and nobody has provided anything approaching an answer.
I'll be honest. My suspicion is that the focus is too heavily on the individual. I know that this is one of the main problems that I have with the way theology is worked in in many protestant traditions (and it is actually how the protestant tradition came about in the first place), but I didn't want to jump to the conclusion that this sort of individualism was what was causing this unease of certain groups in church without discussing it first.
Fr Alex, on another thread, noted the trend he has noticed of what he called the church of I - I want, &c.
I'm trying to avoid jumping to the conclusion that that is the mentality behind the concerns raised here, but I've asked and nobody has attempted to explain otherwise. Now PhilA's post very much conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.
If I'm wrong, then I apologise, but someone please tell me what the actual understanding of worship is from a protestant perspective, so that people like LutheranChik and me can understand why "masculine", "feminine", "old", "young", &c. preferences are so much depended on to make people feel that going and taking part in it is worthwhile.
[ 22. December 2005, 16:02: Message edited by: Back-to-Front ]
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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duchess
Ship's Blue Blooded Lady
# 2764
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Posted
I have to say Zwingles hit the nail on the head for me on why I don't post as much in these type of threads usually.
ETA: B2F, What you describe to me is a Seeker type church. Focusing on the Word of God to me is never "me oriented", if anything, it is about serving and rolling up my sleeves for others. The great Commandment & also Great Commission emphasize this...putting the LORD first and then serving one another.
[ 22. December 2005, 16:05: Message edited by: duchess ]
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♬♭ We're setting sail to the place on the map from which nobody has ever returned ♫♪♮
Ship of Fools-World Party
Posts: 11197 | From: Do you know the way? | Registered: May 2002
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quantpole
Shipmate
# 8401
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Posted
B2F, I don't see a huge thing about individual wants at my church, or for that matter others I've been to. People do seem to be genuinely trying to 'do' church in the best way for everyone (which of course will never work, but we've got to try).
The problem is that there are large groups of people who aren't coming along and it would be really rather nice to work out why.
[ 22. December 2005, 16:10: Message edited by: quantpole ]
Posts: 885 | From: Leeds | Registered: Aug 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zwingli:
I recall a similar thread not too long ago (I think under a title like "why are there more women than men in church?" where one or two people kept saying "that's a sexist stereotype" in response to any attempt to answer the OP, slowing down the discussion and contributiong zilch. We're well aware that these generalisations are not true in every instance but, unless you have some way of only making statements that hold for all induviduals across all countries and Protestant denominations (good luck) we will continue the discussion in such terms.
If people keep on making statements that perpetuate sexist stereotypes or are based on them, others will keep on objecting. Ditch the stereotypes and this discussion might move forward. The problem is not simply that these generalizations are "not true in every instance" but that they are inadequate characterizations of large groups of people.
It does not serve the football-watching, beer-drinking, curry-eating, fast-car-driving men to label their behavior as "masculine" or "macho" and then try to figure out how to get them into church on that basis. I think it's the stereotypes that are keeping these guys out of church.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
quote:
conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.
I think you've hit on something here. I think that, unlike in churches with a sacramental understanding of worship, other churches tend to see church as an evangelistic tool.
Historically, becoming fully integregrated into the life of a faith community happened after someone was drawn into faith - hence the dismissal of catechumens before the Eucharistic part of the service, etc. I'm not saying that that's a particularly desirable thing to return to, but I am pointing out that,in the beginning, worship services were for worship by the Christian community and not for hooking in converts. The conversion process was assumed to be happening through Christians' interactions with others throughout the rest of the week , and the non-Christian community's observance of Christians' behavior (the "Look at how they love one another!" -- which really did seem to make a mark in pagan antiquity).
I would argue that that is the model that we should follow -- not using worship as a sales pitch to the outside.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
I've heard that the hardest people to sell anything to is young men, and that much of advertizing is therefore directed their way.
I don't know if I buy that ![[Biased]](wink.gif) , nor do I see any confirmation from google. So it may be wrong.
The relevance here, if true, is the idea that churches can only succeed if they succeed in selling themselves to young men. Young women are supposedly an easier sell.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nightlamp
Shipmate
# 266
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
but someone please tell me what the actual understanding of worship is from a protestant perspective, so that people like LutheranChik and me can understand why "masculine", "feminine", "old", "young", &c. preferences are so much depended on to make people feel that going and taking part in it is worthwhile.
A church I used to go to had a group that catered for people that liked dressing up and getting ritual correct they were called servers. Another church I want to had bell ringers and they had a wild social life. I went to a group, when I was into that kind of thing, that said the used the Rosary an silence for an hour and then went to the pub. Many churches have choirs who consist of people who like singing.
None of these seem like particularly protestant activities to me.
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I don't know what you are talking about so it couldn't have been that important- Nightlamp
Posts: 8442 | From: Midlands | Registered: May 2001
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ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
My church is in the broad catholic tradition of Christianity. We're not going to jettison almost 2,000 years of Christian worship praxis -- which, BTW, seemed to be just fine for generations of males -- and turn Sunday mornings into gender-segregated, ridiculously stereotyped Does and Stags confabs because of some whingeing subgroup of insecure individuals who evidently can't define themselves otherwise.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
And I like both "macho" guys and at least the concept behind those "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs!! ![[Axe murder]](graemlins/lovedrops.gif) But then I see that as being quite orthodox theology of Christ the Bridegroom and us the Bride. (The question of lyrical or musical value in any given song is another matter.) I think this is a point of Christian doctrine which, if it is an obstacle to men coming to church, they will have to understand sooner or later, whether here or in the afterlife.
David
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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
duchess and quantpole, thank you.
At my church, we aren't a large community. Our Sunday attendance can vary between 8 and 30, although there are a few other people associated with the parish. We have Russians, Greeks and Ukrainians. Now as Orthodox churches are hardly to be found on every street corner, I can hardly use that as evidence in the point I'm making.
However, we also have a married couple - the husband, Nigerian and the wife, English - we have elderly and young people, we have two male and one female professional musicians, we have a female teacher and a female counsellor, a male social worker, we have two new people who are preparing to be received - both men - one of whom is gay and the other of whom has no church background whatsoever. We have another relatively new person who is a recent immigrant from one of the non-English-speaking Caribbean Islands, where Orthodoxy is unknown. She can manage only a handful of words in English and yet she comes along too.
The point I'm making is that we don't alter what we do to tailor it to the preferences of any of these people. We just teach the Orthodox Faith and worship according to the Orthodox way, which is solidly Trinitarian and God-focussed, and the people come. It is the Faith that we have in common: the teachings and worship that are central to what we do and the Sacramental grace received therein. We focus our efforts on that and we try to do it well.
Over coffee afterwards, yes, of course when socialising we try to be as open as possible to each others' backgrounds and varied situations, but that doesn't amount to tailoring church to individuals or groups: that's just us exercising basic social skills over tea and scones.
I think there's something in what RuthW has said about the sterortyping being a possible deterrent. Making a particular effort to "reach out" to a particular group by playing on what we think that group will like, usually stinks to high heaven of "gimmick". I remember this from my recent teenage years, when everybody seemed to know what "young people" wanted in church, as though we were some sort of homogenous group. One result was a service in Manchester Cathedral, where the penitential rite involved people walking round with wheelie-bins, singing "Put your sin in the bin: give it to the Lord", while we put bits of (a rather nice, satin) fabric in said bins.
Now I'm not suggesting that anything of that vomit-inducing scale would happen in trying to cater to men, but I still don't see what is lacking in the worship that altering it it to suit our perceived ideas of the tastes of particular groups is seen as necessary.
[ 22. December 2005, 16:45: Message edited by: Back-to-Front ]
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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PhilA
shipocaster
# 8792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
I'm trying to avoid jumping to the conclusion that that is the mentality behind the concerns raised here, but I've asked and nobody has attempted to explain otherwise. Now PhilA's post very much conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.
Its based on 1 Corinthians 20:23 for a start, but also on plain common sense.
As it says in the OP, this is about 'attracting men'. Not just how the services are run on a regular basis. If some people on the thread are talking about how to run weekly services, and some are talking about outreach, and others that don't differentiate between the two, then we will never get close to talking to each other, let alone learning anything from what each other is saying.
As I said in my post you quoted it is not about changing the message for different groups of people, but it is about putting the message across in a way that is best understood by those listening to it so they can respond knowing what it is they are responding to.
I don't see thins as individualism at all. I see it as plain common sense.
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To err is human. To arr takes a pirate.
Posts: 3121 | From: Sofa | Registered: Nov 2004
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
A great book on this topic is Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down by Dr. Marva Dawn, a theologian specializing in the theology of worship, and a church musician as well. Among the issues she tackles is "What is worship for?" and the pitfalls of imposing a marketing model on the worship service.
As a matter of fact, Dawn has a number of good books on this topic.
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
quote:
conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.
I think you've hit on something here. I think that, unlike in churches with a sacramental understanding of worship, other churches tend to see church as an evangelistic tool.
Historically, becoming fully integregrated into the life of a faith community happened after someone was drawn into faith - hence the dismissal of catechumens before the Eucharistic part of the service, etc. I'm not saying that that's a particularly desirable thing to return to, but I am pointing out that,in the beginning, worship services were for worship by the Christian community and not for hooking in converts. The conversion process was assumed to be happening through Christians' interactions with others throughout the rest of the week , and the non-Christian community's observance of Christians' behavior (the "Look at how they love one another!" -- which really did seem to make a mark in pagan antiquity).
I would argue that that is the model that we should follow -- not using worship as a sales pitch to the outside.
Incidentally, my church still dismisses the catechumens, and it isn't just a token gesture. We are actually expected to leave.
quote:
Originnaly posted by Nightlamp:
A church I used to go to had a group that catered for people that liked dressing up and getting ritual correct they were called servers. Another church I want to had bell ringers and they had a wild social life. I went to a group, when I was into that kind of thing, that said the used the Rosary an silence for an hour and then went to the pub. Many churches have choirs who consist of people who like singing.
None of these seem like particularly protestant activities to me.
Or to me.
Regarding the servers and Rosary group, these examples don't work. I'm guessing that they weren't a bunch of people, all from one particular grouping, who had come to the church because their grouping was targetted. I rather suspect that they were a different people, more than likely from diferent backgrounds, who came along and bypassed those differences to engage in the worship of the church, exercising a particular type of ministry therein. The same goes for the choir. Did the church in question specifically target people who were musical or did people who were musical come along and volunteer to take part in the worship that bypassed the differences in the backgrounds of the people in the church?
As for the bell-ringers, it sounds to me that much of what they did were social activities engaged in by people who happened to know each other from church. While I think that social activities are a good way to get to know each other and to build a community, socialising and church are not the same thing.
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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duchess
Ship's Blue Blooded Lady
# 2764
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Posted
I have to say while my faith is different than B2F's, we have the same mindset of not selling it to a particular group of people. We have different races (and some Russian families too ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ), married, single, divorced...etc. Old and young. The Gospel is preached from the Pulpit the same no matter who is attending. God's Spirit speaks to each person with Scripture, there is no need to water it down, or tweak it. The examples given to explain things may be American/Californian/Male since the elders are all male Californians however we have had visitors who live all over the world speak and they say the same type of things, just use different stories/examples to explain something.
I have a hard time with the American marketing approach which is why I left the Seeker-type churches. The ones I attended were so into making things comfortable and not stepping on toes that no accountability was given. There were programs to be had but little structure
[ 22. December 2005, 17:09: Message edited by: duchess ]
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♬♭ We're setting sail to the place on the map from which nobody has ever returned ♫♪♮
Ship of Fools-World Party
Posts: 11197 | From: Do you know the way? | Registered: May 2002
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PhilA:
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
I'm trying to avoid jumping to the conclusion that that is the mentality behind the concerns raised here, but I've asked and nobody has attempted to explain otherwise. Now PhilA's post very much conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.
Its based on 1 Corinthians 20:23 for a start, but also on plain common sense.
As it says in the OP, this is about 'attracting men'. Not just how the services are run on a regular basis. If some people on the thread are talking about how to run weekly services, and some are talking about outreach, and others that don't differentiate between the two, then we will never get close to talking to each other, let alone learning anything from what each other is saying.
As I said in my post you quoted it is not about changing the message for different groups of people, but it is about putting the message across in a way that is best understood by those listening to it so they can respond knowing what it is they are responding to.
I don't see thins as individualism at all. I see it as plain common sense.
I think I misunderstood your post because of a preconception I had in mind while reading it.
If we're talking about interacting with people in our day-to-day lives, and even in our preaching in church, then yes, it is common sense. Upon re-reading your post, it seems that that is precisely to what you were referring.
Because my reading of and posting to this thread had been in the context of worship, I misread you to be advocating tailoring the worship to individual or group preferences. I understand now that that isn't what you were saying and I apologise if I misrepresented your position.
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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Niënna
Ship's Lotus Blossom
# 4652
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Matrix:
Sitting with a friend drinking coffee, my heart sank as I heard another variation on what had become a familiar complaint; “Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus, it’s just the church I can’t stand. It’s not a place that I belong.”
I'm a girl. And your friend's complaint is exactly how I feel. It is annoying in this thread to be told, "Well you're female. So obvliously you like church and those lovey-dovey songs..." Not.
I think there's a lot more problems with the church then the absense of a testosterone-packed atmosphere.
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Young women are supposedly an easier sell.
? I just don't know what to say to this.
[ 22. December 2005, 17:29: Message edited by: Joyfulsoul ]
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[Nino points a gun at Chiki]
Nino: Now... tell me. Who started the war?
Chiki: [long pause] We did.
~No Man's Land
Posts: 2298 | From: Purgatory | Registered: Jun 2003
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ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PhilA:
a nice pink church with lots of candles and flowers with a 'Jesus wants to be your boyfriend' message
AAAGGGH!!! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) Barbie's Dream Church! ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
No, never encountered that at all, myself. Well, yes I have, but not any church, more the glurge department of the local religious bookshop.
I have to ask one possibly relevant question --
How do we know that the uneven numbers of men/women at church have to do with the church not attracting enough men? What if it's more a matter of the church attracting too many women for the wrong reasons?
This is just a hypothesis, but it occurs to me that it's a tenable one. The assumption that what is needed most is to fill the most pews is perhaps false. Maybe there are indeed men (and women) who are called to be Christians and attend church who aren't doing so, but why might it not be women (and men) who are going to church for some cultural, non-religious reason? Say someone who otherwise might not bother with prayer and faith but loves being on committees and so on? In that case then making more groups to attract men for cultural reasons would be just the wrong thing to do. It might even be better if fewer people of either gender attended church, and reached out to the people most in need, rather than some elements of churchy culture which might really be the main factor at work.
And while we don't want to put a stumbling-block in anyone's way, in some ways Jesus Himself is a stumbling-block for people, and if His being loving and kind (there's a whole thread on God and gender here in Purg which I'm kind of fatigued by right now, myself, but going on) is considered too "feminine" then, well, maybe that's just something for those "macho" guys to get over -- or redefine their understanding of what manliness means -- as part of their Christian journey.
David
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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
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ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
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Posted
PS: Not that cultural things and faith are at all mutually exclusive; I am thinking of those people who might be going to church only because their family did, or who like committees, or for whom church is the place they have always socialized, but not with real faith.
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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
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ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
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Posted
Agh, edit post ran out before I could finish this addition:
Hmmm. I just asked myself why particularly women would like church committees all that much and immediately thought, "Well, some years ago, that was the only place they had any power or respect, wasn't it?" So perhaps that might be a factor, but again not one connected to finding ways of getting men to join church, unless one proposes disenfranchising men from political and economic power in the secular world so church becomes more attractive.
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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Our church council is pretty evenly split male-female, and our worship committee/quasi-diaconal team is moving in that direction after being mostly female. So gender equity is how we do things. And even when our worship committee was all female except for one layman and the pastor, I cannot think of any pink-and-girly worship modalities in our church.
I really must live in a sectarian ghetto, because I'm just not visualizing what the great problem is here.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
I was just told that I'm not a serious Christian because I don't 'temper my language' (i.e. I cussed).
I'm a girl, the person telling me this is a guy who used to be a Baptist preacher.
I'm going to have to say right now that I think his church was probably too girly for me.
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Looking for a simple solution to all life's problems? We are proud to present obstinate denial. Accept no substitute. Accept nothing.
--Night Vale Radio Twitter Account
Posts: 10281 | From: Beervana | Registered: Dec 2003
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
So perhaps that might be a factor, but again not one connected to finding ways of getting men to join church, unless one proposes disenfranchising men from political and economic power in the secular world so church becomes more attractive.
Hmmmm.....
Just kidding.
Hey, is this common? I just realised, yes, I know I've only been an Episcopalian for a whole three years, but I've seen three seperate parishes and four vestrys-- and in three of the four there was a female Senior Warden and a male Junior Warden.
Do I just pick the wierd parishes, or what?
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Looking for a simple solution to all life's problems? We are proud to present obstinate denial. Accept no substitute. Accept nothing.
--Night Vale Radio Twitter Account
Posts: 10281 | From: Beervana | Registered: Dec 2003
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The Lady of the Lake
Shipmate
# 4347
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Posted
Matrix's original post was v. good IMHO.
Personally I think duchess has a point: whingeing about gender stereotypes too much can be unhelpful - and I say that as a female who doesn't fit the psychological stereotypes in every sense (but in some ways I probably do). Most people do to a certain degree though, and therefore I think the stereotypes are helfpul in that they can attract the majority of people into a community. After all, Christianity is supposed to be a faith that is open to all people, right ?
I also think it's true that in terms of conversion, people might be more likely to be reached by someone of the same sex. Hence men are more likely to be reached by men.
If anybody here watched 'The Monastery', one of the interesting things about that was how these men were drawn closer to the Christian faith by being in an all-male community of monks. None of the single men there could get away with hoping that a woman would solve their life-problems and rescue them, or be a mother or a therapist to them. They had to reckon with other men. They weren't becoming interested in a commitment to Christianity in order to please women but because they realised the Christian faith had something to offer them. I'm sure there's a lesson there somewhere for churches.
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If I had a coat, I would get it.
Posts: 1272 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Apr 2003
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
Coming late to this argument, I just read the article linked in the OP.
The author makes the point that, while mainline Protestant groups have higher-proportion female attendance, but other groups, such as synagogues and mosques, have higher-proportion male, and so don't have "the problem".
In other words, a "true" religious group (or, at least, one "without problems") is one with a preponderance of males.
I sense the same problem that exercised St. Paul- women who can be seen, or, even worse, women who might have an opinion!
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Evo1
Shipmate
# 10249
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Posted
one's who like to complete other people's sentences?
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Just think how horrid I would be if I didn't have a Personal Relationship with Jesus
Posts: 1058 | From: Hull, England | Registered: Aug 2005
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Well, that...and...
No...I must have hit the enter key too early. Now I've ruined the punchline. Nevermind. ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) Although maybe someone can start this over on the games forum and everyone can play "finish the sentence."
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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andrewschmidt
Shipmate
# 10822
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Posted
In my church we do a kids church/ kids sermons sometimes and try to help children learn to worship as adults, but at the same time to worship as kids right now. This is I suspect partially to help increase church attendance amongst younger people. No-one seems to be saying that that is bad.I am also faced with the statistical (sp?) reality that our diocese wishes for a 60/40 split, I am told it is closer to 70/30. We still have a larger number of men ordained than woman, but that is changing. My question is why (I am aware of some historcal factors) and far more importantly what should I be doing about it, if anything. p.s. the 70/30 split is not reflective of the demographic of the region.
Posts: 73 | From: SEQ Australia | Registered: Dec 2005
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
I'll be honest. My suspicion is that the focus is too heavily on the individual. I know that this is one of the main problems that I have with the way theology is worked in in many protestant traditions (and it is actually how the protestant tradition came about in the first place), but I didn't want to jump to the conclusion that this sort of individualism was what was causing this unease of certain groups in church without discussing it first.
Fr Alex, on another thread, noted the trend he has noticed of what he called the church of I - I want, &c.
I'm trying to avoid jumping to the conclusion that that is the mentality behind the concerns raised here, but I've asked and nobody has attempted to explain otherwise. Now PhilA's post very much conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.
If I'm wrong, then I apologise, but someone please tell me what the actual understanding of worship is from a protestant perspective, so that people like LutheranChik and me can understand why "masculine", "feminine", "old", "young", &c. preferences are so much depended on to make people feel that going and taking part in it is worthwhile.
I've gone back to this perceptive observation, because I think it contains the essence of the issue. I also want to avoid the classic proskuneo/latreo debates if at all possible, because in the context of this thread, they probably represent a digression.
Worship is for God. It may be offered communally, or individually, but it is essentially, a sacrifice of praise, not only with our lips but with our lives. It also contains the notions of encounter and invocation. Encounter in the sense expressed in Psalm 100 (metricised for effect)
"O enter then his gates with praise
Approach with joy his courts unto"
Invocation in the sense that God inhabits the praises of his people. A classical illustrative scripture would be 2 Chron 5 v 13-14.
This is the sense in which I understand worship as a sacrament (and it may not be precisely the same as LutheranChik's understanding). If worship is evangelistic, it is so incidentally. If worship degenerates into performance or entertainment it is at best a delusion and at worst a blasphemy.
A classic modern formation in the renewal movement is to say that worship is for an audience of One (that is the proskuneo understanding) and the correct posture is "face down". I think this meaning of worship has been rediscovered in the protestant renewal movement, but has often been distorted as well.
Within this understanding, the notions of catering for tastes, or gender distinctions, or musical preferences, get put into a proper perspective. The consumer approach to worship is not necessarily protestant, or catholic, or orthodox. It is the prevailing spirit of the age and it therefore affects the way we are together. Viewed correctly, worship is actually the complete opposite of self-satisfaction.
I do not claim this to be the prevailing protestant view. It is my best understanding, as a protestant, of a good view of worship.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
I'm not sure if this really belongs here or in the '72 virgins' thread, but I think it's probably more a purgatorial-style musing so I'll put it here...
Recently an edition of 'le point' came out in France called 'Christ et Mahomet: le grand affrontement' (Christ and Mohammed: the great confrontration) which I decided to read just to find out what it was about
There was a very interesting article in there by a Muslim guy explaining why he considers Islam superior and more appealing religion to Christianity. His main reason is that he considers Islam to be a more manly and virile religion. The things emphasised in Christianity are all things that he said Islam considers a bit effeminate - serving, letting your enemy slap you back etc.
Mohammed on the other hand (in this guy's description) was a proper manly type of chap who had wives, permitted holy war and the like, unlike Jesus who ended up with the ultimate disgrace of being crucified
Not sure quite what my point is here, but certainly in this guy's PoV, Christianity as a whole is a bit woosy and real manly men become Muslims ...
Red x
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
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Nightlamp
Shipmate
# 266
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
Regarding the servers and Rosary group, these examples don't work. I'm guessing that they weren't a bunch of people, all from one particular grouping,
Of course they were, they were people who liked a particular kind of ritual and not unlike a mens group that liked curries or the mothers Union. It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference. Just groups that get together as part of the church some organised and some not but all involved in some way in the mission of the church.
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
who had come to the church because their grouping was targetted.
I thought 'Father' asked us to become servers.
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
At my church, we aren't a large community. Our Sunday attendance can vary between 8 and 30, although there are a few other people associated with the parish. We have Russians, Greeks and Ukrainians. Now as Orthodox churches are hardly to be found on every street corner, I can hardly use that as evidence in the point I'm making.
It is evidence of small church dynamics I have seen it in a small pentecostal church on an estate.
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I don't know what you are talking about so it couldn't have been that important- Nightlamp
Posts: 8442 | From: Midlands | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nightlamp:
Of course they were, they were people who liked a particular kind of ritual and not unlike a mens group that liked curries or the mothers Union.
I want to join the men's group that likes the mothers Union. Are they still accepting applications?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nightlamp:
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
Regarding the servers and Rosary group, these examples don't work. I'm guessing that they weren't a bunch of people, all from one particular grouping,
Of course they were, they were people who liked a particular kind of ritual and not unlike a mens group that liked curries or the mothers Union.
I'm not sure I made clear the point I trying to make. These people who became servers were already part of the church, no doubt. I'm guessing the church in question didn't specially tailor the worship for people who like a certain type of ceremonial so as to target that group of servers. They became servers after they were already in the church, as part of exercising their ministry within it. It wasn't used as some gimmick to attract them.
quote:
It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference.
I'm sorry, Nightlamp, but I'm not sure I see what you're trying to say here.
I'm drawing a distinction between what we're talking about on this thread, which is tailoring church to particular people's (specifically, men's) tastes, and some of the situations you cited, which were not examples of this, but were rather examples of people who wwre already in the church just exercising their ministries and spirituality. As I saw it, those examples were a red herring.
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
who had come to the church because their grouping was targetted.
I thought 'Father' asked us to become servers.
Some people are asked to perform a particular ministry within church; others volunteer. I've never been asked, and I was a server for years. That wasn't a hobby - it was a part of the worship of the church for which people were required, and I was able and willing to do it, so I did. I still don't see what any of this has to do with changing what church is about to cater for people's tastes.
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
At my church, we aren't a large community. Our Sunday attendance can vary between 8 and 30, although there are a few other people associated with the parish. We have Russians, Greeks and Ukrainians. Now as Orthodox churches are hardly to be found on every street corner, I can hardly use that as evidence in the point I'm making.
It is evidence of small church dynamics I have seen it in a small pentecostal church on an estate.
I don't have enough experience of small church communities to comment, but it's interesting to know and bear in mind for my future visits to other parishes. Thank you.
[code]
[ 23. December 2005, 18:41: Message edited by: Back-to-Front ]
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Worship is for God. It may be offered communally, or individually, but it is essentially, a sacrifice of praise, not only with our lips but with our lives. It also contains the notions of encounter and invocation. Encounter in the sense expressed in Psalm 100 (metricised for effect)
"O enter then his gates with praise
Approach with joy his courts unto"
Invocation in the sense that God inhabits the praises of his people. A classical illustrative scripture would be 2 Chron 5 v 13-14.
This is the sense in which I understand worship as a sacrament (and it may not be precisely the same as LutheranChik's understanding). If worship is evangelistic, it is so incidentally. If worship degenerates into performance or entertainment it is at best a delusion and at worst a blasphemy.
Thank you, Barnabas62. I agree with you entirely. I especially like this line:
quote:
If worship is evangelistic, it is so incidentally.
quote:
A classic modern formation in the renewal movement is to say that worship is for an audience of One (that is the proskuneo understanding) and the correct posture is "face down". I think this meaning of worship has been rediscovered in the protestant renewal movement, but has often been distorted as well.
Within this understanding, the notions of catering for tastes, or gender distinctions, or musical preferences, get put into a proper perspective. The consumer approach to worship is not necessarily protestant, or catholic, or orthodox. It is the prevailing spirit of the age and it therefore affects the way we are together. Viewed correctly, worship is actually the complete opposite of self-satisfaction.
I do not claim this to be the prevailing protestant view. It is my best understanding, as a protestant, of a good view of worship.
Having read what you've said, I think you're right. My assumption that worship=individualosed/entertainment was a protestant phenomenon was mainly because of the context of this thread from a protestant perspective, and its marked difference between what was being discussed and my own (non-protestant) experience. Having now thought about it some more, I think you're quite right in that there are elements of it elsewhere.
This is one of my main objections to Mass "in the round" or with the priest gazing at the people across the altar. The main focus ceases to be God and, unwittingly, becomes the priest and the gathered community.
"We're all going to gather together in our little circle, because we're the Christian community and God is in our midst. Therefore, we have to see everything that's going on at the altar otherwise we'll feel excluded, and we don't like it when the priest says those private prayers because we can't hear it, and, after all, it is really all about us, isn't it?"
This is, of course, an exaggeration and many a priest will be able to sensitively perform the liturgy so as not to create this image. However, this is what comes across to me a lot of the time, and it becomes all the more apparent when one regularly worships in a largely eastward-facing context and then goes back to westward-facing and notices the difference in emphasis throughout. I can't help but feel that it's very much a part of the same "us" mentality, existing in Catholic circles perhaps as much as elsewhere.
PhilA earlier made me realise the significant difference between the appropriateness of tailoring evangelism to individuals' needs and the inappropriateness of tailoring worship to individuals' wants, and we need to find a right balance, especially in places where a sermon is customarily used as a break from worship time.
I really do think it's a much bigger issue than what men and women prefer in church.
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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FreeJack
Shipmate
# 10612
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Posted
I think there is much that is good and much that is bad in all this.
A protestant church is usually seen as a mixture of a missionary church, a pastoral chapel and a worshipping body. So this would be the view of a church existing for its non-members, with the primary example being the sight of how its members love each other.
If I understand the more catholic/orthodox view here it is that the role of the church as a worshipping body is sometimes neglected [in protestant churches], or appears to be neglected from the perspective of outsiders, compared to the other two. This is the case in some protestant churches, but I don't think it is necessarily the case.
There is more of a culture in protestant churches of shopping round for a church that suits me, though there are plenty of RCs who travel out of parish too. That does not have to be about the individualistic materialism that gives me a thrill or control, but the best place for an individual to serve. I am sure it often degenerates into selfishness but that is because the individuals are selfish rather than the church promoting it.
[eta]
[ 23. December 2005, 18:58: Message edited by: Jonathan the Free ]
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jonathan the Free:
I am sure it often degenerates into selfishness but that is because the individuals are selfish rather than the church promoting it.
This is helpful in the overall context of this thread. It is not wrong for any church community to look critically at what it does, taking into account both continuity and accessibility. But I dont reckon much to pandering, to the selfish or anyone else. What does it profit any of us to "gain the world" at the cost of our collective "soul"?
In this context, I liked ladyinred's post, particular this gem. quote:
The things emphasised in Christianity are all things that he said Islam considers a bit effeminate - serving, letting your enemy slap you back etc.
Mohammed on the other hand (in this guy's description) was a proper manly type of chap who had wives, permitted holy war and the like, unlike Jesus who ended up with the ultimate disgrace of being crucified
Bring it on! I'm very happy to proclaim to the warlike, in season and out of season, the "folly and loss" of Christ crucified. We're talking "Prince of Peace" here, not "Prince of War". (It also gives me a chance to say what real folly I think the crusades were.)
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
quote:
There was a very interesting article in there by a Muslim guy explaining why he considers Islam superior and more appealing religion to Christianity. His main reason is that he considers Islam to be a more manly and virile religion. The things emphasised in Christianity are all things that he said Islam considers a bit effeminate - serving, letting your enemy slap you back etc.
I guess our loss is their gain, then.
Maybe he can convert some of the whining Protestant he-men who can't bear "peace, love and understanding" either. Line forms on the right. 'Bye! ![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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duchess
Ship's Blue Blooded Lady
# 2764
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Posted
[tangent] When my step-aunt died (a Shiite Muslim), I had the horrible experience of going through the whole Muslim death viewing-burial-memorial thang.
IT SUCKED.
Not only did I have to deal with her death, my step-mom's intense pain, seeing her smallest kidlets asking my step-sister to "be my mommy since my mommy is dead" but I had to deal with quaint Muslim customs. I will list them here:
1) Seeing my aunt's body, her face twisted towards Mecca. Beautiful lady, that was her spaceship, not her as I remember her.
2) Being forced to move since I was in the way of Mecca on the grass during burial at Islamic gravesite (not making this shit up)
3) My step-mom not being allowed to participate in the symbolic act of throwing dirt on her coffin since she is woman, but AH she did not step aside and definantly went up there (me and my sister-in-law started cheering way in the back and clapping)
4)Being forced to hear the Koran song (they sing it LOUDLY) for hours
5)The Iman told us "we believe just like you Jews and Christians, no different. Jesus was a prophet, a man."
5)Last but not least, my favorite, being ostracized for going up after the memorial was over and helping myself to food. Why? Because I am a woman! I am supposed to "wait until the men serve themselves first, then the women can go up".
No, again, I am not making this shit up. [/tangent]
[eta: My sister-in-law, a bleeding-edge-Liberal was even pushed over the edge. To make her feel better, I suggested alcoholic drinks at the Elephant Bar & pork sandwiches. It was very theraputic.]
[ 23. December 2005, 21:52: Message edited by: duchess ]
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♬♭ We're setting sail to the place on the map from which nobody has ever returned ♫♪♮
Ship of Fools-World Party
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
What is any of that stunning display of cultural bigotry supposed to prove, duchess?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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duchess
Ship's Blue Blooded Lady
# 2764
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
What is any of that stunning display of cultural bigotry supposed to prove, duchess?
What I have seen of Islam is for more demeaning to women than anything I have seen from other religions and I find it a macho religion. [Sorry for hellish tangent, RuthW, in purgatory.]
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♬♭ We're setting sail to the place on the map from which nobody has ever returned ♫♪♮
Ship of Fools-World Party
Posts: 11197 | From: Do you know the way? | Registered: May 2002
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Niënna
Ship's Lotus Blossom
# 4652
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
This is, of course, an exaggeration and many a priest will be able to sensitively perform the liturgy so as not to create this image. However, this is what comes across to me a lot of the time, and it becomes all the more apparent when one regularly worships in a largely eastward-facing context and then goes back to westward-facing and notices the difference in emphasis throughout. I can't help but feel that it's very much a part of the same "us" mentality, existing in Catholic circles perhaps as much as elsewhere.
PhilA earlier made me realise the significant difference between the appropriateness of tailoring evangelism to individuals' needs and the inappropriateness of tailoring worship to individuals' wants, and we need to find a right balance, especially in places where a sermon is customarily used as a break from worship time.
I really do think it's a much bigger issue than what men and women prefer in church.
BtF and Barnabas62,
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[Nino points a gun at Chiki]
Nino: Now... tell me. Who started the war?
Chiki: [long pause] We did.
~No Man's Land
Posts: 2298 | From: Purgatory | Registered: Jun 2003
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by duchess:
What I have seen of Islam is for more demeaning to women than anything I have seen from other religions and I find it a macho religion.
And how much of what you saw can you be sure stemmed from religion and how much from culture?
This is not altogether irrelevant to the main thrust of the thread, either, as I continue to think that what we're talking about are cultural things, not religious or spiritual things.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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duchess
Ship's Blue Blooded Lady
# 2764
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by duchess:
What I have seen of Islam is for more demeaning to women than anything I have seen from other religions and I find it a macho religion.
And how much of what you saw can you be sure stemmed from religion and how much from culture?
This is not altogether irrelevant to the main thrust of the thread, either, as I continue to think that what we're talking about are cultural things, not religious or spiritual things.
I do not know how much honestly is culture or religion...or cultural interpetation of religion. That is a question I have thought about before.
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♬♭ We're setting sail to the place on the map from which nobody has ever returned ♫♪♮
Ship of Fools-World Party
Posts: 11197 | From: Do you know the way? | Registered: May 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
RuthW
I suppose when "stunning displays of cultural bigotry" occur, they will invariably wound some. of them. Woundings which occur in this way always remind me of some lines from "The Boxer". We carry the reminders of every glove that laid us low, or cut us, and we cry out, in our anger and our pain. I feel a real sorrow for duchess and her sister-in-law.
Deep in our roots, there is an understanding of repaying evil with good. By extension, I guess one can apply it to these sorts of insensitivities. The alcohol and pork sandwiches offer might not have been exactly "good" in any conventional sense but I have a suspicion that it probably did duchess's sister-in-law some good.
If I may throw in an analogy, not 1000 miles away from the point of the OP, a good friend of ours was discussing recently the effect of unconsciously sexist language in a church service to which she had taken a non-churchgoing friend from work. Her friend, used to a a fairly typical PC work environment, read into the words a whole load of Neanderthal attitudes to women which were actually not typical of that church at all. They had a very long conversation about it all afterwards.
Cultural sensitivies cut both ways. In considering the meaning of the things we do, there can be a very thin line between "making accessible" and "pandering". The one thing which was very clear from duchess's painful story was the extent to which her presence as a mourner, and her unfamiliarity with what was going on, were NOT taken into account by those who were responsible for the rite of passage. I've seen that fault demonstrated on a few occasions at Christian funerals.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Ps - omitted to delete "of them" and just noticed. No mystery, just crap editing.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
Headmaster Richard A. Hawley believes that when a society's concepts of manly and womanly have gone awry, a society will obsess over those issues just as miners will obsess over their breathing when the air has gone bad.
That this thread has burgeoned to three pages in less than two days might be Exhibit A.'
I'd suggest as Exhibit B: a search of these pages, as well as of the article provoking the OP, for the word "boy" turns up only the irrelevant equivocation "boyfriend."
Churchmen begin life as boys. Dirty word.
For centuries, boychoirs were the rule in the church. They were the original youth movement. The structure of a scout troop descends from the antiphony between cantoris and decani. They were customary, too, throughout the U.S. in the days (yes, they existed) when it appeared that the Episcopal Church would sweep all before her.
But then she lost her nerve. In the 1960s and later, minutes of the meetings of any organization in ECUSA mentioning boychoirs would probably be considering them not as groups of young people exemplary in their dedication to the glory of God, but as a problem of some kind: how do we get rid of them?
A parish in my locale succeeded, after a lengthy campaign (I know one of the former choirmasters) in killing off its choir of men and boys almost on the morrow of its 100-year anniversary. A few years later, the beloved, long-tenured rector died of cancer. In the search for his successor, the parish profile bemoaned not only the state to which the music had fallen, but the lack of a youth program. What has happened? The new rector must address these problems.
One thinks of the proverbial deliquent who has killed his parents and then commends himself to the mercy of the court on the grounds that he is an orphan.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
An interesting thought, Alogon. Church choirs certainly increased the numbers of boys in churches, but so - arguably - did boys' brigades (I don't know enough about them to know if they are still going).
Interestingly, for the ten years that I've been attending my present church, the youth group has almost entirely been made up of teenage boys. And a large majority of the youth group are also choir members. There is some sort of loyalty to the church which appeals to boys going on here and which needs to be carefully nurtured into the future.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nightlamp
Shipmate
# 266
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
quote:
It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference.
I'm sorry, Nightlamp, but I'm not sure I see what you're trying to say here.
I'm drawing a distinction between what we're talking about on this thread, which is tailoring church to particular people's (specifically, men's) tastes, and some of the situations you cited, which were not examples of this, but were rather examples of people who wwre already in the church just exercising their ministries and spirituality.
Sorry if it is unclear you seem to be saying that,
Good groups are; Servers (people who like ritual) choirs (people who like to sing) Mothers unions and a Rosary group and Bell ringers.
Bad groups are for instance, men's discussion groups, women’s prayer breakfasts, support group for the depressed.
I struggle to see any difference between them for they all providing something for sub-groups within the church and each one is tailored to differing people's interests. The only conclusion is that you feel the church should not provide for certain sub-groups which seems a little weird.
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I don't know what you are talking about so it couldn't have been that important- Nightlamp
Posts: 8442 | From: Midlands | Registered: May 2001
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nightlamp:
quote:
Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
quote:
It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference.
I'm sorry, Nightlamp, but I'm not sure I see what you're trying to say here.
I'm drawing a distinction between what we're talking about on this thread, which is tailoring church to particular people's (specifically, men's) tastes, and some of the situations you cited, which were not examples of this, but were rather examples of people who wwre already in the church just exercising their ministries and spirituality.
Sorry if it is unclear you seem to be saying that,
Good groups are; Servers (people who like ritual) choirs (people who like to sing) Mothers unions and a Rosary group and Bell ringers.
Bad groups are for instance, men's discussion groups, women’s prayer breakfasts, support group for the depressed.
I struggle to see any difference between them for they all providing something for sub-groups within the church and each one is tailored to differing people's interests. The only conclusion is that you feel the church should not provide for certain sub-groups which seems a little weird.
Thanks for clarifying, Nightlamp.
All I can say is that my intention isn't to distinguish between "good" groups and "bad" groups. In fact, that distinction isn't part of what my argument is about at all.
If a group of men from church wanted to start a social group where they met up every fortnight to go to the pub or play the football or something of the sort, I would see that as nothing but a good thing. The point I'm making is that that is simply a social activity which stems from, and perhaps contributes to, having a healthy community, of any sort, church or otherwise. Their forming such a group would not be an example of what I am arguing against, which is amending the worship of the church to pander to people who say it's too "girly".
Altar servers, on the other hand, is a whole other kettle of fish. They aren't a social group of people who meet because they like ritual. They are individuals who exercise a particular ministry within the worship of the church. The worship isn't amended to pander to their preferences as a group. Rather, thay are individuals who are taking part in the worship of the whole in a particular way.
This good group/bad group distinction that you have perceived really doesn't feature at all in anything that I'm saying here. I honestly don't see how you've got that impression. If I've said something to inadvertently imply that, I apologise.
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
The trouble with Alogon's fantasy about the Good Old Days and nice choirs of little boys is that there have been more women than men in churches in this country since the days when the only places that had choirs were a few cathedrals and posh chapels.
And in other countries in Europe as well. Including ones the Reformation never got to. It seems pretty universal.
Maybe women are just more Christian than men.
And I still think the idea that there are such things as "masculine" or "feminine" spirituality is <words I get told off for swriting in this forum>
[ 26. December 2005, 00:33: Message edited by: ken ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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