Communion over cappuccino? Christian worship amid the phat beats of Fatboy Slim? At the risk of causing uproar among religious conservatives, the Church of England's parliament will next week discuss plans to draw on bar culture as inspiration for new ways of worshipping.
The General Synod will debate a series of initiatives designed to broaden the Church's appeal in a secular, consumer-driven society. Top of the list - outlined in Mission Shaped Church , a new book endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury - is backing for a series of 'café churches', where people talk about their faith over food and nibbles. The venues are often community centres, youth clubs or pub rooms. The Bishop of Maidstone, the Right Rev Graham Cray, who chaired the working group which wrote the book, said that café church 'is an approach that originates in New Zealand. It's particularly aimed at young adults who might want to explore their spirituality in a welcoming environment. It's much more about dialogue.'
Cray highlighted the success of initiatives such as the Rubik's Cube project in Bristol, which encourages Christian worship through music and which was recently rated by a national DJ magazine as being 'on the cutting edge of the drum-and-bass scene'.
Jonathan Bartley, director of the religious think-tank Ekklesia, hailed the rise of café church. 'It's about rediscovering the place of food and drink in church life. In the Bible, Jesus is linked to food and drink on a number of occasions. It's rediscovering the idea of "table fellowship" - that by sharing food and drink a community can express its faith in new ways. It goes back to the earliest days of the Church when Christians used to meet in each other's houses and worship over meals.'
Other initiatives include 'Seeker' churches, which use the arts to communicate their message, and 'Base Ecclesiastical Communities': churches targeting the urban working class. The proposals reflect a growing feeling within the Church that it must modernise if it is to continue to have an influence in a 'post-Christendom' society.
'The Church has got to realise its missionary responsibilities,' the book notes. 'We live in a society which is now basically second, or even third-generation, pagan; we cannot simply work on the premise that all we have to do to bring people to Christ is to ask them to remember their long-held but dormant faith.'
More than 40 per cent of people have had no involvement with the Church at all throughout their lives, and the percentage of children attending Sunday school has dropped from 55 per cent in 1900 to 4 per cent today. Attendance among adult worshippers on Sunday now stands at 835,000, a 4 per cent drop on last year.
But the synod's decision to debate the initiatives will also raise concerns that the Church should not repeat past mistakes.
'There were experiments in the Seventies which didn't go down well. There were also problems with the "9 o'clock Service" in Sheffield,' said Bartley, referring to the infamous service in the Nineties that attracted lurid headlines amid allegations of orgies and brainwashing.
The issue is expected to divide attendees at General Synod as financial backing for the plans would come from funds currently allocated to bishops.
'Bishops are on £33,000, not a lot of cash when you're at the top of your profession,' Bartley said. 'So you can see why they might treat this cautiously. But they have to recognise that the Church needs to change or die.'