4thought Response: Stephen Mangan

“You can’t take your top off and run around the church after you’ve taken communion. They don’t like that”.

Thus, Actor Stephen Mangan adds his thoughts to a recent series of thought provoking two minute programmes on channel four. 4thought.tv features individuals from all walks of life and belief systems and gives them a couple of minutes to speak on a particular issue in regard to religion, morality and ethics.

Last week, each episode has been centred around sport. Stephen’s episode can be watched here. In it, the Actor and atheist (and I’m sure many other things), posits the idea that the Church must be jealous of football;

“Being part of a football crowd on a Saturday afternoon is to experience great joy and frustration, and anger and despair, and hope and triumph, with a lot of other people. Where else do you get to do that? I can’t think of anywhere else you get to do that. The rush of emotion and communal hysteria and joy is something, I think, religion would love to have a piece of. They’d love to be able to inspire that in people.”

I watched this episode just today and it particularly struck me. In the last week we have taken a large number of our young people away to Soul Survivor, a Christian summer festival. Whilst we were there, much of our church were praying for each of them by name. We returned on Saturday and shared with the congregation on Sunday that thirteen young people in our church became Christians that week. As we worshipped together we shared our hope and joy in the triumph of Jesus in saving us, and in the happiness of welcoming thirteen new brothers and sisters (plus another person that evening) into our family. The church was bouncing on Sunday evening. True Joy.

We’ve also experienced much sadness in the past year; facing illness, death, broken families, joblessness, and so much more. We’ve shared in the grief of these situations, facing despair, feeling anger and frustration – longing for release and resolution.

This is in keeping with the picture of the Church given in the Bible:

If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.

1 Corinthians 12:26

So how has Stephen Mangan missed this in the church, thinking that we should be jealous of what we see on the terraces each weekend? I think the answer lies in his closing description of his experience of the Church:

“You’re not involved. You’re not needed in the same way that you’re needed at a football match.”

Perhaps I read too much into his inflection, but there seemed to be a sadness whilst saying these words. Perhaps not. Either way, it highlights the problem that for many people in many churches, attendance is the benchmark for involvement. This is not the plan for the Church given in the Bible. In the same passage quoted earlier, Paul describes the Church as a body, with each individual forming a crucial, though not superior or independent part of it.  Christians are not merely to ‘attend church’, they are the Church. Each Christian has a role and function. Each Christian works for the good of the body, and the honour of Jesus. Each of us needs the other.

We are brothers and sisters, we are deeply connected and we aim to share in everything; joy, frustration, anger, despair, hope, triumph and more.