Has your organist left you in the lurch again? Could your Sunday sermons use a little extra pizzazz? Are you looking for eye-catching fashion to brighten up the pulpit? If you are, you need look no further than the travelling bazaar dubbed the “ideal church show”, which arrives at Ingliston showground near Edinburgh on Thursday. All the remedies are here, from a karaoke hymn machine to preaching puppets, multicolour vestments to non-alcoholic communion wines, everything you could possibly want from an ecclesiastical supermarket.
Organisers of the three-day Scottish Christian Resources Exhibition expect more than 3,000 visitors in Edinburgh this week, when hundreds of stallholders attempt to roll back the tide of unbelief with some ethereal blue-sky thinking.
Among the contenders for a coveted My Church Needs One of Those (“McNoot”) awards are a solar-powered talking Bible, a set of low-cost hand bells, Glory Golf Balls emblazoned with scripture, and a Monopoly-style board game called Salvation Challenge in which players compete to give away their money. “The whole point is you can’t find these things in an average shop,” explains Stephen Goddard, promoter of the exhibition at the cavernous Royal Highland Centre.
“You don’t normally get a vestment maker on every street corner, but here ministers can measure up for a new chasuble, then go down another aisle and find everything from stained glass to computer software.”
Not to mention Jesus Junkie T-shirts, customised Bible covers and make-up for Christian clowns. The gathering, last held in Scotland three years ago, is entitled The Emerging Church — an encouragement for clergy and congregations to think outside the pew.
“The emerging church means anything that isn’t 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning or being preached at by a minister wearing a long nightie,” says Goddard. “It’s about the church learning to speak to consumers where they are rather than dragging them to a given venue at a given time — particularly young people, who have no habit of going to church.”
One of the bulkiest innovations quite literally takes the church to the people. Bibleworld SBS Studios is an articulated lorry kitted out as a multimedia classroom by the Scottish Bible Society in an attempt to inject what it calls the “wow factor” back into schoolchildren’s experience of scripture. Intended for use as part of the national curriculum, the expandable trailer features a mock film studio and a simulated flight over parts of the world where Christianity is on the increase.
Just to make sure Scotland’s unchurched youth is listening, the vehicle will be unveiled and sent on its national tour by Cameron Stout, the famously celibate 2003 winner of Big Brother.
“Some aspects of the technology stretched me a bit,” admitted the 34-year-old last week. “But young people will be in their element. I’ve often said that a lot of churches are their own worst enemies when it comes to attracting members. But something like this shows folk that the Bible can still be relevant today. We’re living in a very searching generation, so the church has to make itself more accessible.”
Whether inquisitive youths will be as enthusiastic about the range of fashion on show at the exhibition remains to be seen. One retailer will be offering religious T-shirts mimicking well-known brands — JCUK: The Jesus Connection and a Nike-inspired Just Pray It — while Holy Socks hopes to entice buyers to adorn their feet with biblical scenes at £5.65 a pair.
“The best sellers are still the crook and sheep and Daniel in the lions’ den,” said Margaret Wyllie, who has run the company from her home in Newton Stewart for 10 years. “But the burning bush sells doubly well in Scotland. We had an order from Mongolia for the camel and star design and last week I sent three pairs of socks to India.”
She expects this year’s hit to be her Glory Golf Balls, already “big in America” and emblazoned with apposite scriptures (“Lift up your eyes on high and see that not one is missing” — Isaiah 40:26). Biblical brollies meanwhile provide a handy accompaniment in the Scottish climate (“For He sends rain on the just and the unjust”). Who knows what Damascene conversions might result for unchurched golfers combing the rough for a lost ball and discovering the words: “Those who seek me find me”? Wyllie thinks it’s possible but unlikely. The real attraction of the product is a more universal one.
“It makes people laugh,” says the 51-year-old mother of two, who first hit on the idea for Holy Socks while admiring a friend’s Wallace & Gromit design. “You don’t have to lose your sense of humour to be a Christian.”
Somewhat more evangelistic in outlook is a device dubbed the GodPod, a solar-powered talking Bible designed for the developing world, enabling even illiterate villagers with no electricity supply to listen to the scripture in their language. Meanwhile the karaoke-style Digital Hymnal, a snip at £1,499, enables musically challenged congregations to sing along to up to 2,350 tunes at the touch of a remote control. There’s even an “Amen” button to round off a particularly rousing chorus.
Behind it all, of course, lies the more serious story of church decline, as dwindling congregations find it increasingly difficult to muster a competent organist.
The Church of Scotland has lost 60% of its membership since 1960, while numbers attending Catholic mass dropped from 250,000 to 195,000 between 1994 and 2003. In seminars running alongside the exhibition, the haemorrhaging of faith will be addressed by speakers ranging from Rev Dr John Drane, author of The McDonaldisation of the Church, to the Most Rev Mario Conti, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, who will urge all denominations to work together. Despite the soul searching, the mood will be determinedly upbeat, insist the organisers, with not a hint of desperation in the eyebrow-raising range of gadgets and ideas on offer.
“The church is beaten by two ends of the same stick,” says Goddard. “If it’s dull and predictable it’s beaten for that, if it’s innovative and colourful it’s beaten for being too worldly.
“Obviously there’s an irony about Christian board games, holy socks and glory golf balls. But that’s the character of the church these days, learning to be self-deprecating, to go with postmodern culture and work within it rather than try to defeat it. People outside think we’re humourless and po-faced, but we aren’t. There’s been quite a sea change.”
The Christian Resources Exhibition is at the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston from Oct 13-15, 10am-5pm (Saturday 10am- 4pm). Entrance is free. For more information phone 01844 271476 or try www.creonline.co.uk.
