The Great British Bake Off as a Model for Churches

Lessons from the tent

My friend Maggie and I planned to get together Friday evening, and on our list of “too much for text” topics was The Great British Bake Off. Snow disrupted that plan (as it’s disrupted lots of things around here since the calendar turned), but the Bake Off could wait no longer. Maggie kicked us off with lessons we can learn from the tent, and the more I think about it, the more I think those lessons could be valuable to faith communities.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what church is in 2025 for a small congregation like ours: why do people come? Why do they leave? How do people decide when to show up? What motivates someone to give time or money or energy? What words would any of us use to answer these questions for people who have no interest in church? I obsess about these questions. I probably obsess even more about what church might be in 2025. What is possible? Would would make the experience of church more meaningful —whether it drew more people in or not?

As I look at my texts with Maggie, I see some themes that help me get to that second question, ways in which I would love for churches to be more like the tent.

The tent is creative. The statistics on church attendance tell a clear story of decline. Instead of lamenting that, I wonder if we could lean into the strength of still showing up. Those of us who are regularly attending church, whatever our reasons, are engaged in a creative act. We’re trying to make something in our lives, in our spirits, in our communities. I wonder how we harness a creative spirit around that. The tent’s bakers are taking age-old flavors, methods, and ingredients and invigorating them with artistry, engineering, and cultural fusion. What’s the church version of a biscuit puppet show or an optical illusion cake? And how can we recognize and emphasize that everyone coming to church is on a creative journey—one that has individual and collective components? How can we support that creative journey?

The tent is active. The GBBO would be much less fun to watch if the bakers just presented their final creations. The charm of the show lives in the scramble to the freezer, the squats in front of the ovens, the fanning of a too-warm-to-glaze pastry. The tent feels frenetic, and it’s energizing, even when I’m watching a few minutes right before bedtime. My church is active all week long in that frenetic, energized way. There is a purposefulness at work Monday-Saturday, as toddlers learn shapes, recovery group members share stories, volunteers pass out bags of produce. Sunday mornings, especially the actually worship service, are pretty passive. In part, I’ve chosen a passive route. I attend the more traditional of two worship services. I like quiet, contemplative music and moments of stillness. Even so, I wonder what it would be like for a Sunday morning service to have more action. Could we better know each other and God if we were up completing tasks and engaging more of our senses together?

The tent builds deep friendships. The GBBO was a shock to my American-reality-tv-watching sensibilities when I first tuned in. No one in the tent says “I’m not here to make friends.” As Maggie pointed out in our text exchange, there’s not even a cash prize. The entire competition is about taking pride in a craft and developing relationships. It’s easy to see why friendships flourish in the tent: there’s a shared sense of purpose consistently practiced with rituals and a shared language. All the ingredients are there.

The ingredients should be there in churches, too. Somehow, often, those ingredients don’t bake into meaningful friendships at church. I’ll read any essay about this topic because friendship is the best answer I have for going to church. But making friends at church is hard. I asked about this once on Instagram and heard a ton of responses along the lines of “people are friendly at church, but they don’t become friends.”

My parents have always built meaningful friendships at church, and I’m so grateful for my church friendships. I notice that the building process is easiest with people who are very involved. Maggie and I have had a shared sense of purpose around the work of church for as long as we’ve known each other. We quickly hit it off as we planned family events, and now we’re on the board together. I see similar friendships among people who work side by side in church ministries. I just wonder if more participatory services could cultivate the sparks of friendships faster, so people feel included immediately, so they’ll be willing and excited to stick around and go deeper.

The tent is well-hosted. Noel and Allison do such a beautiful job of framing up the challenges and then holding a container for people to interpret those challenges: Here’s what you need to bake…now tell me about your grandma’s photo that you have here on your station. Here’s the signature challenge…what made you decide to add sumac? I’m wondering how to better set up frameworks for all of us to share our stories within a container for shared ideas and texts.

The hosts are also perfect keepers of the institution. Both Noel and Allison float among the bakers, building distinctive rapport with each person. They honor the rituals of the tent, using the same words over and over and infusing them with meaning (who doesn’t feel it when they say “I’ve got the horrible job this week of announcing who’s leaving us?”). They balance all of that ritual with just the right amount of irreverence and humor. Maggie and I were texting about how emotionally healthy the tent is. People are genuinely invested in what they’re doing, and sometimes they cry or get angry or need a walk. Still, they always seem to maintain perspective. I think Noel and Allison (and Sue, Mel, Matt, and Sandi in previous seasons) set that tone in a way we can learn from in churches.

The tent is discerning. Where do Paul and Prue fit in this thought exercise? I love the judges because they are exacting. They pull no punches. They care very much about the craft. They don’t want to see soggy bottoms, stodgy textures, icing that looks a bit of a mess. All of that feedback is given with kindness, even when it’s brutal. As much as they care about the craft, they care about the bakers.

There’s a lot here for those of us who attend churches, especially when we participate in making tough decisions. Hard conversations have to unfold in churches all the time. We can have them in the discerning but supportive way that Paul and Prue judge pastry. Even more than that, we can remember that the foundation for telling hard truths is established through praise. It’s amazing to see the lore that’s developed around receiving a handshake from Paul. So many people are working in churches to create meaningful experiences for others, often doing tasks that are entirely unseen. What does a Hollywood Handshake look like in honoring the people who prepare lessons, clean up after communion, and create schedules?

There are, of course, lots of places where the GBBO as a church metaphor falls apart. We don’t cast the people who might sit beside us in a pew. We don’t see when Noel and Allison get tired or a baker burns out. Sometimes I wish our church had the magic of television, to simply cut the moments when we’ve strayed from the narrative or culture we aspire to. Sometimes I wonder if the bonds built in the tent can only arise in really intense, time-limited experiences. Can anything be so special without also being so scarce? It is easy to romanticize the way the bakers might respond if real tragedy hit one of their colleagues, but we don’t know.

Church is asked to do and be so much more than the tent. Often people come to the door of the church not on a high of being chosen for their skills and talents, but because they feel exactly the opposite, because life is lonely and hard, because they are suffering. Maybe that’s the real reason that I keep showing up for church—because church keeps showing up despite the impossibility of the mission. When anyone is trying in the face of the deep challenges to faith communities—histories of rot and abuse, scandal, harm, exploitation, financial hardships, and the routine, enduring challenge of trying to do anything with other people who aren’t exactly like you—when anyone is trying, there’s something compelling in that. When anyone is trying, I want to try, too. And I hope that I can do my part to bring some of the tent’s magic to spaces that need it.