U2's music used in Christian church service
U2 tonight helped followers find what they were looking for at the country’s first Christian service based on the band’s music.
Teenagers and adults alike flocked to the small Anglican St George and St Thomas’s Church in Dublin’s city centre to hear the word of God according to Bono.
The famously egocentric front man quipped earlier in the week, as he accepted an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, that people could call him a demi-God or Lord of lords.
But perhaps even he couldn’t have prophesied the Sort of Homecoming laid on for the American-originated concept which sees the ’U2charist’ service set to his often biblical lyrics.
Organiser Greg Fromholz, who runs Christian youth group 3Rock in the Irish capital, said the church’s rector Rev Katharine Poulton first stumbled upon the idea.
“She phoned me up and asked had I heard of the U2charist. I had and she said ’I want you to run it, can you help out?’ And whenever the church asks me to do youth work I always say ’yes’,” he said.
After organising a choir he transformed the church, off the city’s main thoroughfare O’Connell Street, into a virtual concert venue with lighting, sound rigs and large video screens for the lyrics.
The Gospel music-inspired I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For opened the hour and a half long celebration which had the young congregation singing in the aisles.
Other blessed numbers which helped elevate the faithful included Peace on Earth, Windows in the Sky, Yahweh, 40, Hallelujah (Here She Comes) before a grand finale of One.
US-born Fromholz insisted the Irish version, complete with dry ice machines and attended by up to 150 people, wasn’t as “fanatical” as similar services on the other side of the Atlantic.
“I think at times they have pushed it a bit too far, using images of the band. We’re not doing that at all, we’re just using the songs as a soundtrack to searching,” he said.
“You constantly expect teenagers just to come to church. They walk into a cold building to experience a service that has nothing to do with their culture.
“What we are doing here tonight is saying: ’I’ll tell you what, we’re going to meet you half-way. We’re using music you understand, gospel style singing you enjoy, music projections that link with all your senses’.
“We’re reaching out to the youth instead of expecting them to come to where we are.”
Fromholz said U2 was an obvious choice to help draw young followers back to the Republic’s historically dwindling congregation.
“There’s a deep Christian message in U2’s music. Beyond that they are always searching. Always on the look out, always looking for something beyond themselves,” he said.
“I think all of us are looking for that intimacy. They are writing songs that accentuate that and they’re very easy to sing along to.”
