Bulletin 274 – Floppy Disk Church – the way we were

A few months ago I had a clear out in my office and threw away a lot of ‘junk’. Included in this was a pile of floppy disks. Do you remember them? We used to use these to store computer information and put them into a slot on our PCs which would dutifully read them (slowly) and display the information on its screen. Wow – that was impressive! Question : why were they called floppy disks? Answer : because they were floppy – that is until someone decided they would be better housed in a more solid plastic case at which time they became known as diskettes.

Do you know that the earliest floppy disks had a capacity of 760k which to the layman means they could store 760 characters of information (roughly). However, today we don’t use floppy disks any more – we use memory sticks which do the same thing – they store computer information. The difference is that my 4 gigabyte memory stick can hold – wait for it – 1.3 million times more information than the earliest floppy disks. The floppy disk was 8 inches square – just imagine how big it would have to be to hold 4 gigabytes of information (I’ll leave you to do the maths)!

And yet we look back on floppy disks with a mixture of sentimental warmth, and amazement at how things have changed. Could the inventor of floppy disks have imagined the advances which would follow just 30 years later? Would they have invested so much effort and pride in their invention, knowing that it would be looked upon soon as a relic of the past? And yet – that’s the way we used to do things.

Just imagine for a moment a boy or girl walking past your church building. What thoughts would go through their mind? Would they think to themselves, ‘this is where grandma used to go and listen to long sermons - sing hymns I don’t understand any more – and read from a book which tells stories from centuries ago’? Would they think, ‘this is the way we used to do things’?

The reality is that many churches still do things the way grandma used to do church. That was her community. She worshipped Jesus. But for the younger generation, Facebook and Twitter put them in touch with their community. They worship One Direction or Justin Bieber. The way they communicate about life is not in 20 minute sermons or hymns any more. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have the same needs, the same hopes and dreams, the same fears and anxieties as grandma did in days gone by.

So – are we locked into ‘floppy disk church mentality’? Are we still clinging to old ways of doing things when the world has moved on? Is the church looked upon as a relic of the past because of its unwillingness or inability to get up to date? The church is struggling to come to terms with today’s issues. The new Archbishop of Canterbury in his first presidential address to the Church of England General Synod in July said this:

There is a revolution. Anyone who listened, as I did, to much of the Same Sex Marriage Bill Second Reading Debate in the House of Lords could not fail to be struck by the overwhelming change of cultural hinterland. Predictable attitudes were no longer there. The opposition to the Bill, which included me and many other bishops, was utterly overwhelmed, with amongst the largest attendance in the House and participation in the debate, and majority, since 1945. There was noticeable hostility to the view of the churches.

It is in this context that we face the challenge of presenting the message of Jesus as ‘good news’. We have to stop being ‘floppy disk church’ and get real with the challenges facing the world today. The challenge is ‘what we cling on to and what new things we need to embrace?’. We are challenged by the way society, rather than the church and Christian teaching is increasingly setting the moral guidelines.

I suspect that, just as floppy disks have been totally eclipsed by memory sticks in just 30 years, so the thinking behind what it means to ‘do and be church’ will change radically in the near future – that is, if we are up to the challenge. The way we evangelise needs a complete overhaul, not simply because people have stopped coming to church, but because the manner in which we present the gospel is out-dated. The ‘bad news’ is ever before us on our TV screens and the streets of the nation and yet the ‘good news’ is still wrapped up in old clothing which no one buys these days. Evangelism today is about authentic Christians living out dynamically different lives in a world that has lost its way. Our churches needs to be places which model this week by week – in word and deed.