OK, let’s start with a confession, I’m a bit of a Kanye fan.
I don’t want to be and I’ve tried not to be. I don’t align myself with his politics, he’s arrogant, self-centred and probably the biggest egotist on the face of the planet, but I just can’t help myself.
I even liked his Glastonbury set. I’m the only person I know that did.
So back in January of this year when Kim K announced the birth of the ‘Sunday Service’ I was intrigued. Could this be the start of something beautiful? Something that married up my passion of Yeezus and Jesus and how did I get myself into the sanctuary?
I was excited but then I had so many questions. And I’m not the only one.
Apart from a few videos on social media and an appearance at Coachella, Kanye’s new venture into the spiritual is secretive – attendees to the event must sign a non-disclosure agreement.
I’m not sure if what Kanye is doing could be called a church. But there are some similarities.
There’s worship music that’s for sure, although many of the songs are re-purposed from well-known pop songs. This isn’t a new thing, I know a clerical colleague who rewrote ‘Is this the road to Amarillo?’ for Sunday use.
There was also another occasion where someone added words to the Match of the Day theme tune so that it begins, ‘Why don’t you put your trust in Jesus?’.
The music at Kanye’s Sunday Service is sung by a choir, wearing identical coloured clothing. To most that might sound a bit ‘culty’ but it’s nothing you wouldn’t see in a lot of parish churches most weeks.
Then there’s the children, chiefly Kim and Kanye’s daughter North, dancing at the front with her friends showing the grown-ups how it’s done. This scene is played out again in lots of churches I know.
It’s also what lots of churches I know would love, being as they are usually filled with an older demographic.
While the exact details of Sunday Service are sketchy, Kim has gone on record saying there’s no sermon. We can’t know if there’s a theme or a Bible reading, but for me it must be more than a string of musical hits otherwise it’s not really a service, it’s a concert.
However, I have been to churches like that, too. Churches where the band is polished and the music perfect, the lyrics sounding more like a love song than a hymn. My daughter calls these ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ churches.
No sermon and no liturgy doesn’t mean it isn’t a church.
Kanye himself isn’t the perfect priest; as well as the massive ego, his past actions have often courted controversy. In this, too, he isn’t that different to clergy I’ve known and — although I hesitate to admit it — even myself at times.
While no cleric would want it to be all about them or to be as headline hitting as Yeezy, I think most of us would be lying if we denied that there is something of the showman about us all. Perfection and priestliness have never gone together.
The thing is, Sunday Service isn’t a church.
For me, where Kayne’s Sunday Service ceases to be a church is in its exclusiveness. The music might be spiritual, the message reflective of gospel values, they might even share communion in the form of the pre-service low fat low carb brunch, but the minute it limits who can be there, that’s when it can’t possibly be a church.
God knows the Church throughout the centuries, to its great shame, has got it spectacularly wrong.
The Windrush generation can attest to a lack of welcome they received when they first tried attend their local parish churches, as can the LGBQT community. But to be a church it must at least try and welcome all comers.
When a church works best it isn’t a palace for the perfect but a hospital for the sick and broken and its doors should always be metaphorically — if not literally — open.
Churches run homeless shelters, soup kitchens and food banks. Churches do coffee mornings for the recently bereaved and toddler groups.
More Trending
Churches organise home visiting teams for the housebound and are one of the biggest providers of social care after the government.
I wish Kanye all the best with his spiritual journey and with this venture, I’ll even pray for him, hoping that he might pray for me too. But until he and the rest of his congregation have organised Doris to be driven to bingo, buttered bread for the luncheon club or helped with the school nativity play, he isn’t a priest and Sunday Service isn’t a church.
Kate Bottley is a priest based in Nottinghamshire. She is passionate about bringing stories of faith and belief to the widest audience possible.
MORE: Kanye West debuts new song Water at Coachella Sunday Service as fans finally get church invite
MORE: Kim Kardashian could ‘hardly sit’ in corset for Met Gala and couldn’t pee for four hours
MORE: Khloe Kardashian slams troll who claims she ‘can’t go anywhere without True’s nanny’
