School Speech Night Revisited

I've been trying to work out why school Presentation Nights just don't do it for me.

It's not that I have traumatic memories of missing out on prizes, or that I see them as irrelevant. I used to have my fair share of prizes, including Dux of the School. I also remember the events being intensely boring, except for the thirty seconds I was up on stage receiving my prize and the adulation of the assembled multitudes :-)

But describing the event now makes me see what the problem is with School Speech Nights.

Our culture has changed over the last 100 years. Our values, our ways of expression, our ways of learning- all of that stuff has changed.

But the essential format of Speech Night hasn't.

As a pastor who is trying to engage our culture, I have watched churches wrestle with the issue, and I continue to wrestle with it myself. Most churches have changed their ways of expressing their faith, their community, their worship to reflect what it is like to be a christian in 21st Century Western culture.

School Speech Nights remain basically stuck in the mould of 19th Century English elite school culture. It's really odd because the culture of schools has changed radically even in the last 30 years.

The one stage of the evening when I actually felt engaged with what was happening was right at the end when there was shown a fairly basic presentation of photos from the highlights of the year. I found myself, along with the rest of the group actually straining to see what was happening.

If I was organising a school presentation night, I think I would want to start with something like that, but longer. I would still want to honour those who achieve good things, but I would want to do it in a different format and in a way that is authentic- I'm not sure about what that means but I find things that jar me about the way the awards are handed out. I think ways of expressing the heart of the community of the school need to be found.

And all of this equally applies to our church. It's so easy to get stuck into a rut and not think about why we do things the way we do them.

Blessings

Keith