What the story of SS Uganda can teach us about what it means to be the church. Christchurch Parish News, July 2019
Back in the 1970s, my brother went on a school trip on a steamship called Uganda. The exotic name caught my young imagination and having heard how enjoyable his experience had been on board travelling around the Mediterranean, I couldn’t wait for it to be my turn.
There’s quite a history to Uganda. She was built in 1952 as a passenger liner for the British-India Steam Navigation Company. As its name suggests, its original destination was East Africa, calling en route at, amongst others, Naples, Port Said, and Mombassa. But with increasing air travel in the 1960s, demand for passenger sailings declined and in 1968, the ship was refitted as an educational cruise ship, primarily for school children. Rather than travel to East Africa, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean became Uganda’s new destinations.
That I was keen to go on such a sea trip was in some respects a surprise. At school I was never much interested in messing about on the water, preferring to stick to rugby and cricket. I found even ferry crossings boring—these were the days before the Channel Tunnel.
Years later, however, when I became a Christian, I was struck by the way the church nave was shaped like the inverted hull of a boat. This, of course, is because down the ages, the boat has been a metaphor for the church (our word nave shares the same lexical route as the word naval). This isn’t surprising as boats feature frequently throughout the Bible, from the story of Noah’s ark to that of Jesus stilling the storm as he and the disciples travel across the Sea of Galilee.
In our own time, it’s a metaphor that continues to be used in all sorts of ways. One of the more common versions of late is to liken the church to either a cruise ship or a battleship.
Whilst I’ve never been on one of the big cruise ships, I know many who have and absolutely love the experience, sharing stories about the places they’ve visited, the excellent food and drink they’ve enjoyed, and the sheer ease and relaxation they’ve felt whilst at sea.
But when the church is referred to as being like a cruise ship, it’s not meant as a compliment. The purpose of a cruise ship is entertainment and pleasure, a place where you sit back and are waited on hand and foot. In a way, that’s fair enough. If you’re on holiday, you shouldn’t be the one doing the running around. It’s the time to relax and let others do the work.
So when people negatively describe the church as being like a cruise ship, the implication is that that’s not what the church is meant to be like. Instead, it’s meant to be a place where everybody pulls their weight and gets involved to make the ship run.
And this is where the contrasting metaphor of the church as a battleship is often used. On a battleship, there are no passengers. Everybody has a role to play, each of which is critical to the mission.
Over the years, I’ve heard many people make use of this ‘church as a cruise ship or battleship’ comparison and I can understand why. It’s a vivid metaphor which addresses a key problem that besets any organisation or group—namely, that the majority of the work is done by a minority. In fact, there’s a specific name for this principle coined by the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. Underpinning this rule is the observation that in any given organisation, 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people (the rule even continues that amongst the 20% that are doing the work of the group and making it run, 80% is being done by only 20% of the 20%, and so on!).
But as soon as I hear the church being spoken of as a battleship, I find myself immediately thinking of it as being involved in a war—after all, the purpose of a battleship in maritime warfare was that of projecting military power and dominance.
I realise that that when people use this ‘church as a battleship’ metaphor, they’re not really thinking of worldly warfare, more spiritual warfare. Nonetheless, it’s still an image of coercive power.
This is where the history of Uganda offers us another, alternative image that conveys the key point that in church everyone’s involved but at the same time avoids the aggressive military connotations.
Uganda started life, as I mentioned above, as a passenger liner, but for commercial reasons it was converted into an educational cruise ship. The church, too, can be thought of as a kind of educational ship, a place where we learn what it means to be followers of Christ.
That said, even with the latest teaching methodologies, this metaphor of educational cruises still risks suggesting that the minority (the teachers) are doing the lion’s share of the work, with the majority (the students) taking the more passive role.
But the next stage in the life of Uganda is what really got me thinking. The year before it was my turn to set sail, the Falklands War broke out and Uganda was requisitioned for service and promptly sent to Gibraltar to be converted into a hospital ship. Her distinctive black funnel with two white bands was duly repainted white with a massive red cross on either side.
The refit completed, she set sail for the South Atlantic as part of the Falklands Task Force, where she served for the duration of the campaign, taking on board and ministering to both injured British soldiers and Argentine prisoners.
With this in mind, rather than holding out the contrast of cruise ship or battleship, what if instead we drew the comparison between cruise ship and hospital ship?
On board a hospital ship, lives are saved of those who have been torn apart in war. It doesn’t deny the reality of evil and the consequences we both experience and see around us, but the focus is on the task of salving the wounds and injuries of those who have been caught up in battle (remember that the word salvation has as its root, salvare — to heal).
In fact, Uganda’s call sign during the conflict was ‘Mother Hen’. As Christians, this resonates with Jesus talking about wanting to protect Jerusalem as a hen shields her chicks under her wings (Luke 13:34).
But what about the 80/20 rule? Doesn’t the hospital ship fall into the same trap as the cruise ship metaphor? Whilst the 80% are being ministered to by the 20% because they are wounded — rather than sipping cocktails — nonetheless it’s the 20% who are doing all the work.
If we extend the metaphor a little, however, then maybe we can address this. Imagine that you’ve been wounded and brought on board to get patched up. To begin with you are being ministered to, as you’re in no fit state to do anything else. As a church, when someone becomes a Christian and joins our community, similarly there’s bound to be some healing of wounds needed. And healing these wounds takes time.
But then, this is where the old history of Uganda as an educational cruise ship comes into its own. Once you’re on this hospital ship (church) and you’ve been patched up and are able to stand, then you too are taught how to become an agent of healing in your own right.
These two periods in the history of Uganda are then united in the metaphor of the church being a teaching hospital ship.
The church is the place where by God’s grace we heal those who have been damaged through conflict, as we all have been to some extent. But then over time, as patients on the way to recovery, we too learn to play our part, enabling the ship to take on board more of the injured.
The next time you’re sitting in the nave, looking at the vault above you shaped like the hull of a boat, perhaps think of the story of Uganda. If it helps, too, think of yourself as having become part of the crew of a teaching hospital ship that’s busy healing the sick, as we sail—all hands on deck—towards home.