Meeting God Changes Lives?

Eileen has asked me to apply my forensic brain to the statistics she was quoting this morning. Dear readers, it always gladdens my heart to assist her in her ministerial struggles! I remember that every part of the body may have a purpose. And mine is not only to be stood up against the door to guard against draughts.

It seems to me that the situation in the survey that Eileen describes can best be described as a Venn diagram, thus:

Now the people who make some connection with God in church, and do something about it - that is those in the white portion of the right-hand set - they make sense. Of course if you meet with God something is going to change? Let us call them "Responders".

And the people in the white portion of the left-hand set - they also make sense. They have not met with God, and nothing has changed. Let us call them "Pew-fillers".

The people in the outer set but not the inner sets - they are people who have not met with God through churchgoing, but have changed their lives anyway. I will call them "Self-starters". Or they may be people who, through not meeting God in church, have decided it's about time they changed their lives by not going to church. I shall call those "Leavers".

But the people in the patterned intersection are the most interesting of all. They are people who, having met God in church, have not changed anyway. They've enjoyed the presence of the divine in a worship situation, and are going to do nothing about it.  I am going to call them "Consumers." Oddly enough, the Archdruid quite likes them. She says the Pew-fillers are always vaguely disappointed, and the Responders are too much trouble. The Self-Starters can be useful, as they will do helpful jobs without claiming any kind of divine mandate for anything. But Consumers are quiet, undemanding and won't change the world. As long as they keep putting money in, they're just the type she likes.

Giving Discipleship the Tebow

As if in divine response or validation, I read this morning's article in the Huffington Post - Churchgoing has no effect on 50% of Americans?. (That's 50% of those that go).

This is great news for believers everywhere, as next time the US decides to attack somewhere we can show that it's not Christianity that did it. And Christians in the UK can be assured that of Tony Blair's devoutness and David Cameron's uncertain piety, only one (ie 50%) affected policy. I'm going for Cameron on this one as it strikes me that between Blair's Anglican and Catholic phases, the only difference in his behaviour was that now he's moved from a local church to a multi-national, his megalomania has become international. Since that's just the kind of thing we'd expect of Tony Blair, clearly his affiliation has nothing to do with his behaviour.

Back to the article "three out of five church attenders said they could not recall an important new religious insight from their last church visit." And given that 50% couldn't remember walking away with a "significant new understanding", I'm left wondering whether a significant proportion could actually remember where they were on Sunday morning.

As I say, it's all a great boost to my theory that if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. But if you give a man a fishing-rod, he'll ask if you can nip off and catch a fish with it for him, only there's something on telly.

In another blow to US Religion, I note that Tim Tebow is out. That's a great shame, as i'd hoped he could go all the way. I suppose now either Mitt or Newt will win the nomination, but I really thought Tim was the one who could actually take on Obama.

A Year in Stats

Dear Readers, the Archdruid has noticed that other people are doing their annual stat-fests, and thought that this year we should do our own. And she indicated that there was nobody else she would entrust this sacred trust to than myself. Or, in her own words - "Burton, you're the saddest beggar round here. Do the stat-post."

There are so many interesting stats to be pulled out of here, Dear Readers. Such as the fact that Canadians spend three times more on the site per visit than the British. I suspect they are trying to work out what it's all about. However when I pointed out a few of these facts to Eileen, she hit me with a brush and told me to get a life.

And so, Dear Readers, here they are. Mined from the coal-face of Google Analytics, and sorted by my own diligent hands, the 2011 Beaker blog stats.

Nice people who sent the most traffic (either through links or side-bars):

1. Valle Adurni
2. Church Mouse (retd)
3. Guardian CiF Belief
4. Vernacular Curate (promoted to the Vernacular Vicar)
5. Revd Lesley (retd)
6. Echurch blog
7. Phil Ritchie
8. Clayboy (transferred)
9. Chairman Bill
10. The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Most-read posts (excluding "pages" in the top bar):
1. Richard Dawkins refuses to debate the Existence of God
2. De-frag your congregation
3. New Unwinese Bible
4. Riding the bow-wave of the Rapture
5. Rules of engagement for worship time
6. Quick pagan Solstice joke
7. Darwin was - more-or-less - right
8. KJV - the "Gove" preface
9. Liturgy of Voiles and Tea Lights
10. If men ran the church

Most popular search terms (excluding obvious variations on "Beaker Folk", "Husborne Crawley", "Eileen" etc)

1. beaker folk gnomes
2. Fr Egbert Twinkinson
3. summer solstice
4. unwinese
5. beaker doily press
6. gibbon moon
7. ordinariate
8. bishop of london's pastoral letter
9. stations of the cross
10. thomas hardy plot generator

Oddest / most worrying search terms
1. guinea pig cake
2. small garden ornaments
3. bertie bassett
4. tortoise pie
5. one of these is a vending machine
6. spare him not, devil
7. the legal authority shows its impotence precisely
8. when is gafcon going to start listening?
9. a brief history of jamaica's folk music
10. abba nativity play

Visitor browsers
1. Firefox (25%)
2. IE (24%)
3. Chrome (23%)
4. Safari (19%)
5. Mozilla Compatible (5%) [whatever that means]

Visitor locations
1. UK (30,200)
2. US (5,200)
3. Australia (1,100
4. Canada (760)
5. Ireland (310)

Christmas Service Stats - Unveiled

Dear Readers, every year the mainstream churches announce their Christmas service attendance. Now as you know I am no cynic. Buy my suspicion is that they are hiding a lot of the detail that people want to know.

So after much crunching of numbers from various groups over many years, I am glad to let you have this first glimpse of my research.

Satellite statistics

The Archdruid mentioned last night that there's a chance of a satellite falling on our heads. In Burton's absence (he was off counting the frequency of number plates containing the characters "DU11" or something), I took it upon myself to do some research, and it turns out that there's a 1 in 3200 chance that it'll fall on someone's head between now and the end of October.

I got to thinking: what if that someone is me? 1 in 3200 sounds small, but I've only got one me, and I'm rather fond of it. And what would the impact of my loss be on the Community? Apart from a ruddy great hole in the Moot House roof, obviously.

And then I thought some more. And did more calculations. And given that there are, by my reckoning, 51 days left, including today but excluding Sundays (I don't know much about theodicy, but would God allow such an accident on His Own day? Surely not), between now and the end of October, there's a 1 in 62 chance of my getting hit on any particular day. And that's about the same as the fatality rate I found on the Interweb  bring quoted for BASE jumping. Which, I think we can agree, is pretty scary.

I mentioned this to Mrs Hnaef, and, for some reason, she's currently trying to buy me a parachute on Amazon. If only I could get her to take these issues seriously.