Park Road is one of those churches where everything usually goes according to the service sheet etc. etc…but tonight it didn’t…firstly one song we had no words for cos the guy who programmed in the computer words put the wrong song in and the other wasn’t in the database, and two we had a guy come in who (I think) was drunk, but was very Christian (in the rawest use of the word) in his drunkenness and requested ‘How Great Thou Art’, so the service finished with a spontaneous song requested by a member of a congregation…in my opinion this made church way more church-like than usual.

I think in church it’s easy to have a service plan and stick to it, a song list and play them however when things go wrong, when spontanousness sets in I think is when God really comes down because God seems to work well in messy situations and situations when we don’t know what will happen next.

I think spontaneous church is the way forward! (to an extent)

I was also pondering on this drunk guy who evidentially new the Christian message, he sung a couple of songs during the prayer time and seemed genuinely happy to be at church and had no inhibitions…probably because he was slightly worse for wear but never-the-less I found it inspiring, I think too often we go to church out of duty, we do the things everyone else does, always too proud to do what we feel deep down we want to do to praise God, too often we make Christianity a religion rather than a relationship.