Bishop holds harvest in a supermarket

The BBC reported today about the Bishop of Reading, conducting a Harvest Festival service in a supermarket:

Supermarket hosts harvest service

I got the impression that the reporter wasn’t himself overly impressed making some sarcastic comments, and I loved the comment from the boy who said “this has never happened to me before” (in all his 6 or so years!)

+Stephen talks about the church getting out of its buildings and going to where the people are, and I think this is a brilliant way for the church to engage with the community. A few weeks ago, the Bishop commented how people perceive  the Church of England to be the supermarket equivalent of Marks and Spencer, so great to see him frequenting Asda!

This may be more down to the BBC report, but it seemed to portray a “typical” view of church with traditional hymns. Of course, you can argue that people will recognise tunes like “We Plough the Fields and Scatter”, but I’m not sure if that is really the case. Whilst the older generations might, in this post-Christendom age where a significant proportion of people are “un-churched” rather than “de-churched”, this may have reinforced people’s stereotypes of the church.

Its encouraging to see a big national chain such as Asda up for involving the church. They must think it will be commercially viable for them to do it, and not going to upset their shoppers. Just a shame the BBC weren’t a bit more up-beat!

Thoughts anyone?