I always love going up each year to preach to the lads at Merchiston Castle School here in Edinburgh. Happily I’m going on a free transfer from here up to there for one night only tomorrow. And probably for the last time for a while.
To me there is always a very different feel about a boys’ school service when compared to my day and daily co-ed preaching experience. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is (probably the testosterone-fuelled singing is a big part of it). But in other ways it is different at Merchiston too.
Not only do the students wear casual clothes for their evening service, but the whole event has a remarkably relaxed feel about it. The Headmaster, in my experience, always lurks at the back of the Memorial Hall rather than sit at the front. The choir is a fine mixture of tenors and basses, of course, not an alto or soprano to be heard.
Preaching in these schools is always a challenge, however, and I do think it requires particular abilities in the art of communication which not everyone tends to have about them. So, just in case you are ever asked to darken the door of such a place as this, or any other, here are ten of Campbell’s handy tips:
- Long-windedness, in this context, as perhaps everywhere, is invariably a disaster.
- Knowing what you want to say and going for it without anything written down is usually best.
- Eye contact is everything.
- Having just one central theological point and reinforcing it with a cheerful or challenging illustration always makes sense.
- Humour is grand, but never for the sake of it – the troops remember the jokes and not the underlying message.
- Using too many biblical or even classical allusions is rarely successful – the troops just don’t know them and get it.
- Christian clichés such as ‘salvation’ and ‘redemption’ or other advanced technical terms are also best avoided in such a short homily.
- So is trying to be something that you are not – and so is patronising.
- If you’re middle-aged and greying (as I happily am now) please don’t pretend to be cool and trendy – it is, as the kids say, “awkward” or worse than this in the scale of teenage crimes, “cringe.”
- Be sincere.
So, now that I have reminded myself of all these pertinent points, I can finally get on and actually get down to thinking of something apposite to say to the assembled Merchistonian masses.
Fettes College destroyed my Christian faith, and it took years for me to get any back. Being forced to attend religious services against our will, being given hypocritical sermons by teachers who never practiced genuine Christian principles, that wretched war-mongering and state worship which masquerades as Remembrance Day… All of these disgust me.
Why the hell were we singing Jerusalem in a Scottish school?! Do they still do that? I love William Blake, he’s the most misunderstood of poets (and in reality would have been against almost everything Fettes stands for), but it seems to be the paean of English jingoism, and is nothing to do with Scotland.
I thank God that I have a faith once more, but it’s in spite of Fettes, not because of it. I spent the best part of a decade as an agnostic, because of the empty religion of the place. Maybe I should forgive, it’s a Christian principle, but it’s kind of hard to do.
Well ‘Anon’, I think you’ll find that things have changed somewhat from your day. My children are happy and taught well at Fettes. They are Scottish and respected as such. We all know that the words of Jerusalem can be interpreted any number of ways and date back to the days when ‘England’ was generally the accepted term for Great Britain……how interesting that you feel you can speak for Blake. Remembrance Day is not an English tradition, the Scots have a proud military past and we should remember the fallen…..your attitude to it is disgusting. Your bitter tales are not welcome here especially as Dr Campbell is a true Christian who accepts everyone as they are and is a joy to listen to in Chapel.