Church as an alien culture

Have you ever gone into a place where you'd never been before and found yourself uneasy with the surroundings? Felt like you just didn't really fit in and worse still, didn't quite understand what to do or why others were doing it?

Well I've had that insight today when I arrived early at the crematorium and met someone who recognised me from a place they'd visited (I was visiting too) and thought they might explain some of their problems in the hope I might shed some light on the proceedings and their discomfort with what they saw, heard and felt.

This is (roughly) what they told me:

"I came because a friend had told me that they having some sort of celebration and they asked if I'd come. I hadn't been into the place before and so took the booklet I was offered and wondered where I should sit (so I sat near the back). I sat there for about fifteen minutes (during which time no one spoke to me) and then music started playing (but nothing seemed to be happening and I just sat there whilst people milled around). 

Then a chap in a white overall came and said something and we sang what was on the front page whilst a choir and other people walked around behind a man with a cross on a stick and a couple of people with candles. Then we all sat down and someone read a poem (it was a prayer actually) from a sheet. Then someone read another poem from a brass eagle thing after which someone else read something and then one of the people started telling us about their week and how it fitted into one of the things that had just been read (it didn't!).

Then we sang another song (during which I was asked for money) and then the person at the front held the money up in the air whilst everyone else read something from the sheet and then the people all moved around a bit and shook hands (one woman kissed me) with everyone and then sat down again.

A new person read some prayers (I knew they were prayers because they ended with 'hear my prayer') and then we sang something. Well I didn't because I didn't know the tune (it was probably a setting to the Gloria as . . ) and then I was asked to go up to the front, which I didn't want to, so I was told I could take my booklet with me, but I stayed put until the end when I saw my friend, said 'congratulations' and left. I don't think I'll do it again because it was a bit creepy everyone reading the verses in a sort of Dalek voice. Not only that but I just knew I wouldn't fit in!"

Now I'm not making this stuff up (I wish I was) but looking at the service from their eyes I am troubled as to exactly what a communion service of the sort mentioned here must look like to those who haven't been to church before? After all, the service being referred to was one that would have been regarded as pretty bog standard had you walked into any Anglican church building in the late sixties or early seventies (not Common Worship but not uncommon worship).

The mechanical actions of elevating the money (and presumably the elements too, can't remember) must all seem a bit odd (like the person with the 'cross on a stick') and the Bible readings (did the visitor stand for the Gospel reading?) and responses (which let's be fair, often only the choir know anyway - or so it seems when I've visited a place).

The transition from outside to inside of a church building is not as easy as one thinks, nor as easy perhaps as it might be,  for we stand, sit, kneel (remember when we all knelt?), sing stuff, listen to poetry (which we call 'The Bible') and make responses that we perhaps at that time neither understand nor believe. After all, when it came to the Creed it was obvious that this person neither believed nor understood much of what was going on or required.

What shocked me most was the 'Dalek' voices bit. Do we really sound that menacing when we do church?