Hillsong

DISCLAIMER: I am a Christian. I am trying my very best to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul and mind and also am trying my very best to love everyone else as much as I love myself. However I think it is not unloving to poke fun at people, in the following blog post I will be poking fun at Hillsongs Church and if you think you might be offended by that or tempted to excommunicate me from the body of Christ then maybe you should stop reading now. I hope that people read this blog in the spirit it is intended which is harmless fun and a bit of poking fun and is not intended to harm anyone.

So, with that out of the way, I want to tell the story of how whilst in London with Mark, we almost went to Hillsongs. Three Sundays ago now (whoa how much time flies past!!!) I went with Mark in the morning to his church, which is the Clubhouse (where he works and I had my placement) community church. It was pretty good. Fairly normal Sunday morning service, quite nice, felt like a good community feel and people were friendly. A guy called Simon preached/spoke/or whatever is the cool or acceptable way to say that and he was pretty good, he spoke about pride which I think is a subject which bothers us all (whether we are insecure or not) and is not spoken about much or challenged and considering Augustine said it was the mother of all sins (meaning every sin goes back to being about pride) I thought it was a good subject.

Anyway, we then went round a guy called Phil’s for lunch, Phil works with Mark and I affectionately would refer to him as Beard Phil or Phil Beard because of his very mighty beard! After a really nice Spag Bol, me and Mark went a found a pub which was showing the Liverpool vs. Everton game and whilst there we debated on going to Church that evening and where we would go.

Our options that we ended with that were fairly close to the pub we were at were; somewhere called the Metropolitan Tabernacle which I personally hadn’t heard of but Mark told me it was Charles Spurgeon’s (not related to Zoe but famous 19th century theologian/evangelist type) church and he joked that they unfortunately think that he is still alive (in that it is very old school) and is like ultra-reformed super evangelical type church. The other option was Hillsongs.

And forgive me Father (that’s Yahweh not Brian, although Brian can forgive me too) for I have sinned because we decided we would go to Hillsongs and I’m sorry but the reasoning was, “cos it’ll be a laugh”

So, we wandered down to Hillsongs which was about a fifteen minute walk away on Tottenham Court Road. On the way we discussed why we wanted to go to Hillsongs. We wanted to see if the rumours are true. We wanted to find out if it really is more like a show than a service. If it is only “beautiful” people on stage. If they really do “pogo” for the Lord. If they do really take a collection at every possible moment. If they all do shout out “YOU” with pointing a lot during singing. And the rumour me and Mark really wanted to find out if it was true, is that they assign you your seat as you come in according to how “beautiful” you are! I wanted to know if they would make me and Mark sit in different places or stick is both in a quiet dark corner so that no one else noticed the two “normals” there!

Unfortunately, for me, you and perhaps for them. We didn’t get in. Was it because we weren’t good looking enough? No. Although that would be funny. It was because me and Mark perhaps naively thought that evening services at Church were at half six…why? Because they are that everywhere else! Hillsongs starts at five so we missed it.

Bum. So after all that excitement and wondering if I was fit and healthy enough to pogo and find out what Hillsongs was really like and if it was just like Tom said it would be (and I trust him and advise you very strongly to read his blog on Hillsong and in general actually), we didn’t even go!

Instead, we wandered down to the road to go to the cinema…which I will talk about in my next blog entry!

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 Uncategorized

9 Comments to Hillsong

whoa you guys sure aren’t in the mood for commenting

Gareth on April 20th, 2008

Awww…ok i’ll comment for the sake of commenting.
Why do they always have a choir as well as 10 backing singers…and why are there no such things as microphone stands?!
Some friends moved 2 australia and started to go to Hillsong in sydney and apparently what they do is have 5 new songs and at the end of the month one song drops off and a new song joins on and so they’ve got a weird system of songs so everyone knows them and stuff. And also all the band have ear pieces for the techy people to tell them where to go in the song like “repeat chorus” and stuff…what happened to simplicity?

Beth on April 21st, 2008

Awww…ok i’ll comment for the sake of commenting.
Why do they always have a choir as well as 10 backing singers…and why are there no such things as microphone stands?!
Some friends moved 2 australia and started to go to Hillsong in sydney and apparently what they do is have 5 new songs and at the end of the month one song drops off and a new song joins on and so they’ve got a weird system of songs so everyone knows them and stuff. And also all the band have ear pieces for the techy people to tell them where to go in the song like “repeat chorus” and stuff…what happened to simplicity?