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A few posts ago I alluded to the possibility of backing up my rather controversial claim that Darwin has too many religious leaders. I say controversial because everyone I’ve spoken to about this idea has had a slightly different opinion on the matter and, in a state of affairs that may be without precedent, only about half of them thought I was completely off my rocker. And when I say religious, for the time being I’m just talking about Christian Church leaders. I have no facts to hand on how many leaders other faith communities might have in the area.
The amount of difficulty I had getting my hands on the figures I do have is almost worth another post of its own down the track a bit, but for now I’m just a little perplexed at the stats in front of me.
According to my guy in the Darwin Christian Minsters’ Fraternal, Darwin has no fewer than 52 different church groups*. And even that list is not comprehensive as it leaves out a few Catholic parishes and small home groups who are off doing their own thing. And then there are inter-congregational organisations like Scripture Union, YWAM, Rhema FM and the Bible Society. In a movement which is, in general terms and with a few exceptions, struggling for membership locally, this strikes me as strange. Why do we need so many congregations?
But then I did some sums. They are only simple multiplications and fractions, but in my advanced state of number hating, it took me about half a day to compile them.
An average Australian church has an attendance of about 65 people*. That takes into account average-wreckers at both ends of the scale, like home churches with only half a dozen people and places like Hillsong with half a dozen thousand or so*. If you multiply those 65 people by the 52 congregations in Darwin, that gives you a local Church of about 3380. Despite my previous assertions, that doesn’t sound anything like enough. So now I find myself, asserting we have too many leaders, but not enough Christians. I haven’t yet made up my mind whether that’s complete nonsense or not.
Then there’s the national average church attendance rate of 11.7 percent of the population* to consider. If you run that percentage through the greater Darwin population of 120,000*, you get a weekly church attendance of about thirteen and a half thousand, give or take.
So where the bloody hell is everybody?
There are two possible explanations for this discrepancy in the figures, which are of course based on averages rather than role calls. The first is that my list of churches is even more uncomprehensive than I thought, and there are actually more like 200 congregations out there somewhere. Somehow that seems unlikely.
The more likely explanation is that the national averages don’t actually apply to Darwin, which is culturally an entirely different country (some might say planet). I suspect weekly attendance here might be well below the national average, given the transient nature of the population and high proportion of military personnel, who aren’t generally renowned for their religious piety. I also think on average, from what I’ve seen, our congregations do better than 65. I’m not sure why. Of course, I’ve only really been around the larger congregations. I guess we have little ones out there too.
So essentially I’m back where I started. I have no idea what percentage of Darwinites attends a Christian church. I have an incomplete, if surprisingly long list of local congregations, but no information on the attendance figures for them. And conspicuous by its absence is a record of the total number of local Christians. I’ve tried to get at that, but short of placing an enquiry with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (a pursuit that experience has taught me to avoid) that information doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. Somehow that bothers me, but I don't know why.
I still think we have too many churches and not enough members, but for now it doesn’t seem possible to prove it mathematically. At least not for this numerically disinclined stunt linguist. And therein lies an issue for another day.
And that’s the good news.
Garry with 2 Rs
*What? You weren’t actually expecting a reference, were you? What kind of legitimate researcher do you take me for?
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Yesterday, my employers booked a group of seven of us into a workshop with a motivational speaker. We weren’t really told what the sessions would entail or even what they were about. We were just told the program was called “Brilliant Attitude” and would be “unlike any other training we’d ever done before”.
The whole thing was run by a guy named Bob Allwright, whose business card describes him as a leader, mentor and inspiring speaker. He opened by showing photos of Richard Branson and other multi-millionaire entrepreneurs whose names I’ve already forgotten. It came with the usual questions about what made these people different from anyone else, and the questionable assertion that the difference between me and Richard is essentially nothing. It was suggested that all I would have to do to be as rich as Richard Branson is do exactly what he does, which I suspect is complete baloney.
According to Bob it all comes down to attitude. Essentially all we need to succeed in life is to believe that we can. The only reason we’re not all multi-millionaires is that most of us are held back by our own fears of failure or judgement. A simple examination of domestic economics renders this a questionable theorem, to say nothing of the global economy. Street kids in the slums of India aren’t going to become millionaires simply by believing they can. They have to go on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” like the rest of us.
I don’t want to be too judgemental about this. The idea of improving your life by starting with your own attitude is a valid one and it is, I’ll grant, an incredibly powerful thing to change your view of the world by changing your view of yourself.
But here is where it started to get weird.
The guy drew three rectangles on the board, and asked us what the drawing meant. My first thoughts were “They don’t mean anything, they’re just rectangles”. But Bob encouraged us all to look deeper, to find what the deeper symbolism of the rectangles might be and how we might apply it to our lives. After we all gave answers ranging in profundity from “a failed domino run” to “the fear of rejection in abusive relationships” we were given Bob’s interpretation. His answer was “They don’t mean anything. They’re just rectangles. Isn’t it amazing, the sort of deep meaning that our brains are able to give to completely meaningless things?”
At this point, I began to suspect that Bob might just be a complete wally.
Then he went on to give us the old post-modern chestnut about how nothing has any inherent meaning apart from the meaning we ourselves give it. His point was that the only person who can stop us from achieving and give us an attitude of failure is ourselves, and that’s all well and good. But since when was I charge of the rest of the universe? If it’s true that I’m the only person who can control me, then it’s also true that I’m the only person in the world that I’m in control of. So not only does that leave me with no more personal empowerment than I had in the first place, but it also leaves me with a rather disconcerting sensation that the entire world is hurtling toward anarchistic self-destruction. Personally, I think that’s of much greater consequence than the question of whose fault it is if I get angry while I’m driving a car, but for some reason Bob didn’t mention the more troubling implications of his philosophical statements. He was too busy telling us to give ourselves more success in life by looking at ourselves in the mirror and smiling.
Actually, from a Christian point of view, Bob got it half right. Unfortunately it’s the half he got wrong that has all the important implications. The Bible is quite clear that outside of God, nothing in the material universe is of any real cosmic significance. The things we fear, the things we trust in, the things we struggle against and the material things we worship don’t actually have any power over us apart from the power we give them in our own minds. The rectangles are just rectangles.
It’s Bob method for breaking free from those cosmic rectangles that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The idea was to break through the powers that bind us in our lives and keep us from achieving the things we want by believing in ourselves. To put it in religious terms, we can be saved from the troubles we have brought on ourselves by faith in … ourselves.
Now, my self-esteem is as healthy as the next guy, but I’m not for a moment convinced that putting faith in me is a good idea. Yes, I’m intelligent and ambitious, and spirited and deep and all the other things that make humans so brilliant, but I’m also arrogant, deceitful, envious and fearful and all the other things that make humans so full of crap. Furthermore, I’m also the one who got myself into this mess in the first place, remember? This, in my view, is where post-modern humanism falls into a pit of its own construction, and where the notion of an external creator, redeemer and sustainer begins to appear a more plausible explanation for the continued success of the human race.
Bob’s final demonstration was to get us all to write down the things that are holding us back on a piece of plywood, about 18mm thick. I wrote down a few things that have been troubling me lately, but honestly, by this stage I was done with taking Bob’s instructions seriously. On the other side we wrote down the life we wanted to lead, where those problems were gone and we could have the things we desired. Just to stick my point to Bob, I wrote down “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD (Zechariah 4:6).
Bob told us we were going to break through the problems and reach our dreams by breaking through the plywood with our hands. Honestly, looking at the thickness of the wood, I doubted if I would be able to punch through it. Bob told us that the secret was to look past the board, believe in ourselves and know that we had the power to reach our goals.
Actually, the secret was to place the board between two chairs, kneel on one of the chairs and bring our full weight down on the plywood. I probably couldn’t have broken the board with the strength of my arm. I sure as hell couldn’t have broken it with the power of my mind (sorry Bob). But no plywood board is going to withstand 90 kilograms coming down on it through the two square inches at the base of my hand.
So there you have it. I may not have the brilliant attitude Bob was looking for, but at least I came away with the knowledge that, while I may not be able to turn myself into a billionaire by believing I can, at least I have the ability to spot four hours worth of philosophical hokum when I’m force fed it. That, and a broken piece of plywood.
And that’s the way it was.
Garry with 2 Rs
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I’ve been doing some critical introspection just recently; re-evaluating who I am and what direction my life is taking. It all came to a head the other night as I was …
The next phrase is supposed to be something like ‘glancing over some old photos from college’ or ‘speaking to an old friend who has just returned from a soul-cleansing pilgrimage to South America’ or ‘reading from the book of Jeremiah’, but it isn’t. Sorry for the confusion.
… watching Doctor Who. I was watching David Tennant regenerate into Matt Smith and reflecting on the unfair advantages the Doctor has.
If I want to reinvent myself, I have to have money and a new job and some way of keeping myself afloat while I readjust. It’s not enough to just say “I want to be an opthamologist now" and go do it. There’s always some stupid practical consideration in the way, usually in the form of dollar signs or obstinate people. It would be so much easier if I could just stand in the middle of my spaceship, strike a dramatic pose and wait for my head to catch on fire.
If I were a newly regenerated Time Lord, I think this would be the part of the episode where I double over, grab my stomach, wince, cough up some sparkly orange light and say “Oh no… my regeneration… it’s… going wrong,” before passing out to let the other characters squirm for a while, returning to full health at the last minute to save the day with a quick flick of the sonic screwdriver.
When I got back from Europe all full of vision and enthusiasm, I had huge ideas about finally having the stable base of operations I would need to do all the things left on my to-do list that had been taking second place to “travel through Europe.” But then I bunged up my car, discovered that my job was less than salubrious, came face to face with the harsh reality of how much credit cards suck and failed miserably to assign myself to a worship band. I’ve been home in Darwin since November, but I haven’t played a single Sunday morning service since leaving Adelaide. That might sound like a petty or self important complaint, but given that “worship musician” is one of the only terms by which I ever feel comfortable defining my own personality, it’s clear that somewhere in the last seven months or so something has gone horribly wrong.
So I’ve decided it’s time to start doing things a little differently. Tonight I’m joining some church friends in a battle of the bands at Palmerston markets. It’s time to let the old rock star version of Garry out of the cage again, not to mention giving Samantha a chance to cut loose. I’ve also auditioned for a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. God only knows what will happen if I get to be in that. I have plans to co-write and possibly appear in a short film to be shot in July and a renewed enthusiasm for finally getting my first novel finished.
And at Woodroffe oval last Tuesday, for the first time in recorded history, I batted for a full 15 minutes in the nets and didn’t get bowled once. I have a thumping great bruise on my stomach to show for it, and another one on the back of my leg. Things are looking up, as long as I don’t take my shirt off.
Actually, I could probably just take that last sentence and assign it to a folder marked ‘general wisdom’.
I’m going to be travelling to remote communities with work again for the next couple of weeks, so the next post might be a while coming. But it will totally be worth the wait.
That’s all folks.
Garry with 2 Rs
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It’s now about as late as late May gets without drifting into June. This is the time Territorians call the Dry Season; imaginatively named to contrast it with the Wet Season. Basically they’re the same except one of them is humid and rainy and the other one isn’t.
Or isn’t it? In the most meteorologically unseasonable display for some time, Darwin’s skies are still full of grey cumulo-nimbus clouds, and the daytime routine refuses to settle into the more familiar 31 degrees, 40% humidity and see you in September. Apparently it’s been the hottest May since the seventies. However, local news teams assure us that the climate will be resuming regular services from Monday onwards. And about time too.
There are other indications that a change in season is on the way.
I really don’t know how, but I got a part in the Midsummer Night’s Dream production I auditioned for on a whim a few weeks back. I’m playing a mechanical flute, or something like that. I don’t know, it’s all a bit modern and bizarre for me. Shakespeare, eh?
And I’m now appearing semi-regularly in the worship band for a local church. I was on keys and vocals this morning, despite not having heard any of the songs before. As is ever my way, I’m not sure I’d ever call this congregation home, but it’s serving as a perfectly functional metaphorical portable tabernacle for the moment.
Tonight I managed to do laundry and cook a reasonably palatable insta-parmy at the same time. Even six months ago, there’s no way I would ever have even contemplated cooking and doing anything else at the same time.
Yes… I know. Shut up. It’s an achievement, okay?
I once again managed not get clean bowled at my cricket game today. True, I spooned a long-hop back to the bowler for a duck, but that’s beside the point. As with so many other facets of my life, I am now finding new and creative ways to go about my day-to-day and week-to-week operations. Next weekend, I plan to experiment with LBW.
Oh yeah, and for some reason I seem to have a beard at the moment. As far as portents that something weird is up go, that's got to count for something, right?
Okay, I’m not good with cricket bats or with omens, and I have an infamous proficiency for missing things that are right in front of me. But I can’t shake the feeling that a cool change is coming. I just don’t know what it is.
Give me your hands if we be friends
And Robin shall restore amends
Garry with 2 Rs
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If there’s one thing single guys hate more than having unsolicited baby seats installed in their cars, it’s having people ask whether or not we have our eyes on any particular young lady. I mean, it’s alright when it’s someone you haven’t spoken to for years, and they’re legitimately updating all the information they have about you. But when it’s people you catch up with all the time, either in three dimensions or in cyber space, such as family or close friends, it just seems like such a stupid query to have to respond to, mainly because there are only a few possible responses, each as dumb as the last.
1) No. I’m still all alone. Thanks for asking.
2) Yes. I’ve been engaged for six weeks now. You just didn’t notice, you useless unobservant jerk.
3) Yes. Target acquired, and I’m figuring out the best angle of approach (this objectifies women far less than it seems. Guys just like to use military or sporting terms of reference because they are more familiar, precise and less terrifying than emotional ones) and what I really need is for you to try to help me, spread the information around and generally make things more difficult.
Obviously none of those answers ever result in anything other than an awkward silence. As a counter measure, experienced single guys such as myself have developed cunning if unsophisticated ways of responding to the query without actually answering it. It involves answering questions far more literally than is usually a good idea in a social setting, but it can be a great experiment to see how far you get before your friend swears at you and gives up.
Mate: So… any girls on the radar?
Gw2Rs: The radar?
Mate: You know what I mean.
Gw2Rs: I don’t have a radar.
Mate: I mean are there any girls on the horizon?
Gw2Rs: How would I know?
Mate: No, I mean, are there any special ladies in your life?
Gw2Rs: There are lots of special ladies in my life.
Mate: Yeah, but any really special?
Gw2Rs: Everyone is special. I don’t go around assigning people a specialness quotient to record in some book somewhere. What kind of sociopath do you take me for?
Mate: Are you currently interested in someone?
Gw2Rs: I’m interested in a lot of things; cricket, music, quantum physics, linguistics, ending world poverty, chess, relig…
Mate: God damn it, Garry, you’re impossible.
Yes, yes I am. My married and pregnant friends are constantly looking at me sideways, trying to figure out why I’m so stubbornly opposed to the whole romance phenomenon.
Actually I’m not opposed to it at all. Up until now I’ve just I’ve made a habit of never staying in any one place long enough. And I’ve coupled this with a complete disinclination towards the stupid games people expect single men to play. First dates, appropriate phone call etiquette, the ability to retain an air of masculinity whilst dressing like a freaking fairy; it’s complete rubbish. I am firmly of the opinion that ‘dating’ in the sense in which we interpret it through American sitcoms and blogs written by empowered and modern (yet still, notably, single) women is a stupid idea, and I have a fairly low opinion of the media through which society (not to mention well intentioned Christian pop-literature) tells me I’m supposed to communicate affection.
But to Hell with it. If playing Hollywood style games is what it takes to keep my dearest and best satisfied, then bring it on. I quite like games. I have an international chess rating of 1305 and I can kick my friends’ butts at Risk. But don’t go thinking I’m going to just start playing fleeting-yet-knowing glance chicken with the woman across from me on the train. If I’m going to play, I’m joining the premier league (Palmerston Cricket club can shove it). No soft targets for me. Here goes…
1: d4
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I, Garry with 2 Rs, address the universal and sub-spatial powers of Ironic Karma under the terms of the Shadow Proclamation. In the presence of God and this… internet and being of sound mind and body (well…) I do hereby affront you with the following assertions.
1) There is no such thing as romantic love – it’s all just a bunch of emotional nonsense and
2) There’s no way it could happen to me.
3) What could possibly go wrong?
4) You won’t get me, because you can’t, because
5) I’m too smart and too tough.
Love from Garry
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Your move, Universe.
I’ll keep you posted on the results, so please don’t feel like you need to come and ask me about it. And yes, on reflection that was more BBC than Hollywood, but the point still stands.
So until next week, and then again too, I imagine, this is me, David McGahn, reminding you that the world really is a David McGahn’s world. Sort of.
Garry with 2 Rs