Quiet church

[FuzzyPuffling]

I'm currently attending a series of sessions at church about " Being quiet with God". It's starting some interesting discussions, but the focus is on one to one quiet time. Several people have expressed an interest in quiet services, but including music- our usual ones are very lively.

We've mentioned Taize.

My question is does your church do anything like this? And if so, what? I'd love to hear examples that I can bring to our church.

Oh I love this idea. We don't do much quiet at our church but I have often thought I would love once in a while to go to something quiet and contemplative. I'm interested in what responses people give on here.

Be still and know that I am God ...

Smiling here at the idea my church's corporate meeting/service could ever be quiet! Children chattering; babies crying; people coughing; rattling of sweetie papers, folk going to the loo; not unknown sound of snoring. 😂

It works in my home church meetings, but not as above.

I suppose I was thinking more of an special evening or weekday service, not telling, or expecting people to pipe down!

I recently read a book called "The Gift of Introversion in a Noisy Church" which was fabulously validating, but also got me thinking...one size does not fit all!

LOL at the 'pipe down'! 😂

I could not agree more that one size does not fit all. He made us uniquely ourselves for a reason; just as He has encouraged us to create different 'flavours' and expressions of 'doing church'.

Perhaps I am not good at expressing what I mean, but we are not mirror-image automatons and, to me, it is all about creating synergy. The more Christians are a variety of gifts and personalities the more unsaved we can reach in our daily lives? 🤔

As a very new (introvert) Christian within a then, a VERY lively church, it was something I learned very quickly - God loves me, for me. It helped, I guess, that I was given the gift of Faith the moment I was saved, and therefore received the inner confidence to not compare myself with the lively ones? 🤔

It was interesting to read a precis of the book you recommended and helped me to understand your thoughts.

That book sounds really interesting @FuzzyPuffling - I'm naturally an extravert but I feel like I've been developing my hidden introvert side since COVID began!

He has encouraged us to create different 'flavours' and expressions of 'doing church'.

I love that.

I'm an introvert, but over compensate so no one believes me! I am learning to express my real introverted self.

It's so valuable. My DH is a real introvert and I've really appreciated a lot about that over the years.

What a lovely thing to say!

Thank you ☺️

It's not quite the same thing but we do mid week prayer meetings on Zoom 3 times a week, and on one day of the 3 instead of the usual intercessions, we have a period of silence. I know we are all in our own homes but it is lovely, to be together but to have that silence for 5 minutes. We know we are all praying for each other.

I think that's lovely thedoorisalwaysopen and I can't see why a period of prayerful silence couldn't be incorporated into a physical church service too. Thank you.

I think in church (and maybe in life in general) we can perhaps be a bit afraid of silence! It's probably something we could all do with embracing. Interesting.

agree with you. They do it at the in person prayer meetings too. But not so much in the Eucharist. I personally would love it.

I suppose my church would maybe be called ‘quiet’. It’s definitely contemplative.

We’re informal about time and we do a fair bit of chatting, fellowship, before our worship / sharing time and again mid way through before the teaching / sharing time. We sit in a circle. It’s open to anyone to participate and contribute a word, or a song etc. We often have times without anyone speaking, but as we have babies / children it’s rarely actually silent. And there’s always plenty of craic and laughter.

Most of our songs are spontaneous, a cappella or accompanied by bodhráns, a tomtom and maybe an odd guitar or tin whistle.
People leave as they need to. Or pop in and out to the loo, or stretch their legs or play on the floor with the kids. Often there’s prayer ministry too so we can be there til well into the afternoon.

I love the idea of spontaneous singing 😊

We used to have a Taize service in an evening when there were more people coming to our church and the two ladies who led the service were free to lead it. It included prayers and Taize hymns(?) and a period of silence which was about 10 minutes long. I liked it.

Some people are very uncomfortable with a time of silence in a service, but I daresay they'd get used to it. Now and again I have left a silence between paragraphs in the intercession prayer. Mmm, there's a thought.