Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Finding the forgotten...

Isn't it wonderful when you find something you've forgotten about totally?

I have just rediscovered the Metro Blog list, which I submitted an entry to years ago and obviously they never used my email for anything else. So the tracker that I have threw up a link I'd never seen before and lead me here. Quite exciting really. I don't know how much the person who clicked on the link read, but at least they were drawn in enough to have a go, even if the description is a little out of date.

Talking of finding something exciting... I went back in time recently to rediscover the Soul Survivor church. I've been a couple of times, but normally for conferences or with young people. This time was for a new venture, a new congregation and because it was half term I had some time to take for myself.

It was a good evening... Mike Palivachi, one of the main pastors, spoke on the parable of the Prodigal Son and made some good points, all interesting, he does speak for a long time. The worship was good, lovely Ben Cantelon lead, but the band were in the center and everyone was around the outside. That made it very difficult for me to concentrate on God, because I was conscious of people looking at me... I love singing so much, but when people are looking at me I shrink. Eventually though I got used to it.

Soul Survivor is a good church and a good organisation. It's probably a little too far to go for a regular church service, but still, it's the sort of thing I would attend again.

The one shocking thing (though I suppose it shouldn't really be any more) is the ratio of men to women. At a guess the ratio was probably 4:1 or 3:1 (women to men) which is high, but not unusual. When I was younger I'm sure most events were 1:1 - boys and girls evenly matched in number and I can't understand where it went wrong. I don't know if Soul Survivor is unique in this, but as a person who is surrounded by weddings and relationships, I can't help but notice the inbalance (and it seemed that all the men there either has girlfriends or were married).

Anyone else noticed the same?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Our church is completely the opposite. There are no 20's/30's girls (ladies? women?) who are not married/permanently attached at the moment. There's one who is 20 but away at uni for most of the year.
We do have half a dozen unattached 20's/30's guys (in a church of 80ish).
Other than that it's a "family" church, so many couples (older and younger). There are a few mums that bring children (with dads that don't come to church), but we've got quite a good men's group who are all friends with the non-church dads anyway and so they come to social things, if not the Sunday church services.
Our youth mob is pretty well balanced boys:girls.