The Big Old Tokyo Cult of TUC

After a reasonably nice but vaguely expensive lunch of lamb (ok) and cous cous (less than inspiring) with Mary, somehow I found myself being taken back to church for the monthly Evening Praise Service (or EPS for those on the "inside"). Normally, you understand, I would NEVER actually stay around to go to a *contemporary* worship service, but Mary seemed quite keen and as she is a woman of uncommonly good sense, I thought I may as well try it. Well, we started off with the requisite 6 praise songs I had never heard before (oh, alright, I knew one of them!)- each sung 20 times until everyone was sick of them, conveniently displayed on the wall courtesy of PowerPoint so that no one had an excuse for not clapping. The "Worship Band" which consists of 8 singers a guitarist and a pianist led us through what seemed like an interminable agony of cheesy arm raising and closed-eye swaying. I have to say that most of the while, I was simply trying hard, not to grimace. And then the long awaited for "message"- this week to be delivered by our church sexton, or caretaker for those not familiar with made-up church jargon. Now up until this point, I had considered him to be fairly sensible and conventional, I was interested to hear a "message" from a Japanese member of the congregation too, since I often wonder how the Japanese really perceive Christianity. He started out well with an anecdote about how he wanted to help more people within the community etc etc, and then moved on to his secret recipe for happiness in life; namely the three Ps... Partner, Prosperity and Peace, well I imagined he would be talking about God as a partner and spiritual prosperity (couldn't we all do with some of that?) leading to peace. How wrong I was. It kind of turned into a sermon on how to attract a nice bloke at church. I am not going to actually rant here as I'm sure you can imagine what I have to say about that anyway... As if that weren't sinister enough, the "leader" of our illustrious third service then "invited" us all to get up from our seats, move around the church until we were all in a circle and then HOLD HANDS. Shades of "Bind us together" at St. Mary Mag happening here but thank the Lord we didn't have to actually sing at that point. He just prayed. For a long time. And then we were free to sit back down and enjoy the next round of never-ending praise songs. Now you understand that I am not opposed to praise and worship music per se, I just object to having to sing everything 6 times. Twice, preferably once, would be enough. It's all so stage-managed that it seems more than slightly fake, too. But even then, if it's done well, it's almost enjoyable. The real problem with the EPS is that it isn't done particularly well. The fact that the Worship Band almost outumber the congregation is pretty sad in itself but that there are seven female singers and one bloke is silly. It is completely unbalanced, why don't they have a rotation system? Also despite the fact that they only have to do it once a month, they are disorganized and under rehearsed. Yes, yes I know, it's not about rehearsal, it's about God etc etc but the fact is that if they ran the 11 and the 8.30 services like that, no one would go. What further bothered me about the EPS is that there was absolutely NO Scriptural input whatsoever. Which might be why it all seems like a jumbled mess, perhaps they need to be more focused on say, a theme. But above all that, what REALLY spooked me was the EPS cult-like chant they do. Periodically one of them says "God is good!" and then everyone shouts back "All the time!" and then the first one goes "And all the time!" and everyone yells "God is good!" Now there is obvious truth in that but really... It seems to me that the EPS would be better off repeating the morning services but replacing the hymns with contemporary music, I bet people would go then.