Eight impossible things the C of E will never do

Disclaimer: I don't mean any of these literally - and, contrariwise - I know several of them are well underway in some churches. Some have been happening for years - just not necessarily round here. Others are almost inconceivable.

To be clear: this is just a personal tirade. Each of these suggestions is merely meant to point to some aspect of the challenge I think we face. I don't propose to put them into practice (not all of them, anyway). 

1. Walk out of church Sunday

This is especially for those with listed buildings but everyone can play.  Simply leave. (Having, of course, done a good dust and spring clean and checked all electrical appliances are unplugged).

The PCC can resign en mass (leaving a couple of people as residual trustees of any money) and ask the Archdeacon to take over responsibility for the church (copy to the Bishop).

Send a polite letter to the Second Church Estates Commissioner suggesting that the State should take responsibility for the building and telling her which flowerpot the keys are hidden under.

Don't forget, tell the neighbours you'll be away for a while.  And remember to tell the congregation a minimum of one week before it happens. Otherwise people won't know whether they're still supposed to be on the stewarding rota.

2. No congregation should ever own a church

Then hire a meeting place. Find somewhere with decent parking, comfortable seats and above all a cosy feel. Check that coffee and cake are available and that the toilets are clean and comfortable.

If your numbers dwindle move somewhere smaller. When they grow, move somewhere bigger.

In this way you can always be the right size group. You can move to where people are. Leaders can give almost all their attention to the people, the worship and deepening faith - and not to the building. God can be worshipped with minimal distraction. Members can decide what's important and not be overwhelmed by the demands of drains and guttering.

3. Listen to people

I think God listens to each of us. I think the church should too.

At the moment the Church of England pays almost no regard to almost all the laity. The words people use in worship are all scripted. Individuals' experience, priorities, delights and anxieties have no place in such prescribed services.

This relationship is symbolised and realised in the sermon: one person speaks and the rest remain passive. There is no mutuality.

It's not just that the audience have no voice - I would guess it's very rare for a sermoniser even to check what people have heard. The odd hints I occasionally get suggest there can be a considerable and sometimes entertaining gap between what I think I said and what someone else thinks they heard.

And f the church doesn't listen to its members how on earth can it expect to listen to people outside it?

4. Give lay people a full part in the government of the Church

At a larger scale the structure of church government deliberately marginalises the laity. Lay members vote for Deanery Synod Representatives. Deanery Synod Representatives vote for Diocesan and General Synod Representatives. Consequently no-one is accountable to members.

I think it's high time that all members had a vote and a voice. I think representatives should then account to their electorate. It should be easier as there are fewer and fewer of us.

5. and no more processions

Processions embody hierarchy, status and power. They literally set each person in their rank and degree, They mark who's in and who's not. Those who do not process do not count.

I can see some justifications for processions - but not a Christian one (Aquinas notwithstanding).

More significantly, processions are archaic: relics of a social ordering increasingly destroyed by digitisation.

6. Throw out the clutter

Church vestries are renowned for the clutter they accumulate. No-one's quite sure who put the stone gargoyle in the corner, or whether the books belong to the vicar, or whether you need a faculty to throw away unused and mildewed cassocks, or who promised to repair the torn linen. So it all just silts up.

Throw it away (having, of course, first found out about the faculty bit). Throw out the remaining pews, redundant hymn books, nineteenth century robes and ideas. Make space in the vestry and in prayer, give God a bit of room and, when Jesus comes round for a coffee, make sure the place is bright, warm and comfortable.

And, while we're about it, don't be half hearted with legislative reform. Piecemeal tinkering will only end up with pieces all over the floor. Decide the key principles that church governance must and should enact. Throw away everything else.

7. Account for the right things

I know we need to count numbers and money. They are important in themselves (though always, of course, with lots of caveats).

But I think we also need to count what a church gives away. Faith is not something we have but something to be given away. God does not bless us so that we can hoard it, but so that we can be a blessing to others. Jesus did not tell his disciples to guard his teachings carefully - he sent them out to share with all and sundry.

I think counting what a church gives - money, time, energy, facilities - may also be a measure of its compassion and faithfulness.

8. and no more talking heads videos

This is not the way to reform or renew anything:

 Let's have a bit of life, imagination, passion, dynamism, colour, indignation, vision, vitality. This is just dull.

Are we all doomed?

In the words of private Frazer:



Several people have looked at the decline in attendance in the Church of England and projected forward to the date of extinction:

Church Growth Modelling gives around 2040 for the death of The Church in Wales, The Scottish Episcopal Church and The Episcopal Church in the US. The Church of England, starting at a higher numerical base, dies beyond the edge of the graph, sometime around 2100 perhaps.

The Spectator is more pessimistic (which may not surprise anyone). Damian Thompson projects that 2067 will be the date on the Church's tombstone.  He says:

That is the year in which the Christians who have inherited the faith of their British ancestors will become statistically invisible. Parish churches everywhere will have been adapted for secular use, demolished or abandoned. 

... Christianity is dying out among the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain. The Gospel that Augustine and his 30 monks brought to England when they landed at Ebbsfleet in ad 597 is now being decisively rejected.

Of course, projections are not predictions. No-one knows what will happen between now and then. Will the effect of Reform and Renewal lift the leading edge of the graph and send it upwards? Will the impact of discussion about deep change lead to depression and hasten decline? Or will none of it make any difference?

Maybe the decline won't be steady at all. Implicit in the larger scale statistics is a picture of support ebbing away like a receding tide (it's gone a long way out from Dover Beach by now). 

But actually, for the most part, we belong to and worship in small semi-discrete units: parish churches. Here I suspect the pattern of decline is more or less steady until there comes a tipping point - where members' time, money and energy is no longer sufficient to sustain the building, services and clergy. One congregation I knew gave up when there were four people left, another had eight.

In other words, the long downhill slope ends suddenly as we fall over the cliff, like this (entirely imaginary) graph.

On this scenario projections from earlier data could even look somewhat optimistic.

Death (and resurrection?)

We do not have to accept less of the same, and may not be able to.

Perhaps 1: in the face of apparently inevitable obliteration, those who remain refuse to accept it. Maybe this will force a radical revision of the Church - it's shape, structure, role and mission. This in turn may tear the church apart if its current divisions are stronger that what holds it together.

Or 2: (I think more probably) minorities may be torn away, leaving a smaller continuing core.

However it happens, and whoever claims legitimate succession, in effect a new church (or churches) will be born from the ashes of the old.

Or 3: even more pessimistically, perhaps at some point in this century the Church of England will simply implode. Perhaps its internal divisions will prevent adequate revision. It might collapse like a burst balloon, as one too many parish church closures triggers an unstoppable cascade of others. At which point those who remain may say to themselves 'that's it. God has abandoned us.'

Or 4: they may say: 'time for a new start'.

Heading downhill

Statistics can be very depressing.

The blog Church Growth Modelling is written by John Hayward, a mathematician committed to the revival of the Church. It has lots of downward curves.

I find this one particularly interesting: 

In essence, roughly since the end of the First World War (or the Second, in Wales) Anglican Church affiliation in the West has headed south.

Second, the percentage of the population was not that great in the twentieth century, even at peak membership -  just over 10% for the CofE in the 1910s. And membership of the CofE was never the same as regular attendance. As Haywood says: "Churches in the West have never been as popular as they have perceived themselves to be."

And, third, through this century the population has grown significantly. This itself has helped buoy up absolute numbers while disguising the rate of decline.

Statistics are always retrospective. The question is whether, given the background rate of decline in affiliation Christianity, any one Church - or even all of them acting together - can do anything effective to counter a cultural shift.

Strawberry Fête

 

St Hilda's Summer
Strawberry Fête

Saturday 25 July

1.30pm to 3.30pm

Entry £2 - everyone invited 

(Tickets available beforehand and on the door)

Stalls - cakes, jams and jewellery

Raffles and tombola

and, of course,

delicious Strawberry Teas

Doing things differently

Calvert Navvy Mission Sunday School on an outing
in Buckinghamshire. c. 1897 Page 

Christians have never been solely locked into their churches, Some have always been inspired to go out to where people are.

Sometimes this means going to where people physically are. The Navvy Mission, for example, sent missionaries out to the gangs of men building canals across Britain. Admittedly they only really got  going at the end of the canal building boom but they quickly adapted to serving those building the railways.

The mobile chapel of the
South African Railway Mission

And in South Africa, in the early 20th century, distances were great and missionaries few. So the South Africa Railway Mission fitted out a railway wagon as a chapel and took it to whichever towns and villages the railway reached.

A modern mobile Chapel

Transport for Christ is a modern expression of the impulse behind the Navvy and  Railway Missions. On the basis that Christian Truckers can't get to church regularly, they take church to them with mobile chapels and chaplains. Guardian Article.

This missionary instinct to go to where people also applies to those seeking to engage people where they are emotionally, culturally, intellectually. It was what got Shleiermacher into such trouble with On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799).

The Haven-London launched 

in celebration of the creative industries

The Diocese of London has set up Capital Vision 2020: a strategy for the Diocese in the coming decade. One part of which is to engage with the creative industries in the city. It has launched the Haven-London intended to "offer a physical space within London for contemplation, connection and inspiration, where those of faith and those working within the creative industries can engage together."

Christian adherence may be falling  in the UK, not least in the Church of England, but it retains both vitality and an irrepressible optimism. The Church of England may not be in good health but reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.