Last Thursday I went to a conference called “Evidence to Action” at Cutler’s Hall in Sheffield. The Church (TM) has recently published the report “From Anecdote to Evidence” having conducted some thorough research into church growth. I may write about some other aspects of the research and the conference but for now I will address a question I received on Facebook that was not addressed at the conference:
Have you had the “Parish system is dead speech” yet?
The perceived wisdom as passed from one practitioner to another is that the modern world has given us an upwardly mobile population who can and do travel to “consume” whatever they need. Supermarkets and shopping centres for example are outside of town and people are prepared to travel to get a loaf of bread or a TV. To extend this principle, they must surely be willing also to travel to get to worship.
There are two issues with this assertion:
Living on Bread Alone
People need bread.
Obvious isn’t it. Whilst people cannot live on bread alone, they can also pick up milk and potato waffles in the supermarket whilst they are there. Supermarkets are “selling” the things people need as well as the things they want – widescreen TVs and Spider-man toys… or is that just me?
The things people want and need are regularly advertised through massive national media campaigns. People are fickle and massive numbers of consumers change their loyalty based on branding. Coke is currently having a massive upswing in profits because “holidays are coming”. People are inspired to leave their sofa and get in their car and drive to Morrisons because a fat man in a red suit with a white beard told them that they need Coke. Here is the snag though, The Church ™ isn’t selling a product. The Church ™ is inviting people into a way of life. Hoping that people who don’t know that there is a God they don’t believe in to decide to leave their front room and go to a church five miles away is an unrealistic expectation. Mission is driven through relationships. Real relationships happen with the people you are with and that is the beauty of the local church – it is local.
Social Mobility
With the assertion that we should move away from the parish system there is an assumption that everyone is able to easily travel distance in order to be part of a dispersed community. Unfortunately, many of our communities are not as mobile as we would like to believe. In many Urban Priority Areas (UPA), few people have cars. These are the communities with the greatest proportion of the people Mary sang about in the Magnificat. Many UPAs have large numbers of people who are living with low income or health and mobility issues. These are the poor and the marginalized and the very people the Church of England should be there for, not just those who are able to shop around for a good experience within driving distance.
Commitment to Everyone
There are many models of church. There are great big megachurches that people are willing to travel perhaps a hundred miles to attend. There are cell churches, monastic communities, new monastic communities and online church communities. There are already many models of church to pick from.
I am an adult convert and I chose to be part of the Church of England because I believe in its parochial nature. As the website proudly declares, “The Church of England: a Christian presence in every community”. This is what I long to see: Anglicans making a real commitment to the principles of English Anglicanism. A church for England. A church that is dedicated to serving the people of the whole nation regardless of their affluence, mobility or class. This takes commitment, a real commitment. A commitment to prayer, service and mission to the whole nation. This commitment is not to building a small number of large congregations but instead building authentic Christian communities who are living and serving in each part of the country. This means a commitment to parishes – to areas of the country. A commitment to each and every person of the nation.
Can we commit to being prayerful people on the mission God is already doing in our estates, suburbs and villages across the whole country?
The necessity of being gods people in community is well made Robb.
However the parish boundries are not. They bisect communities, and should be abolished. My neighbour 2 doors away is in a different parish. Like 40 houses in a village of 400 the parish system expects them to travel 4 miles to their church rather than 500yds to the village church.
Parish boundaries don’t erect a forcefield, they denote responsibility. I’ve worshipped in the parish next door ten years ago. I will also be taking a funeral for someone outside of the geographic area because it is the church that they are part of the community with.
I suggest they take a look at where those boundaries lie if they are that out of whack.
I totally agree with you Rob, as a new curate in the Church of England and a person who has spent most of my life living on a council estate, I was drawn to the Church because of its commitment to being a presence in all communities. However over the past few years I have witnessed council estates in East Leeds being left with the option of going to a church nearby, which can often be a more middle class church, that they are less likely to want to attend or do without. One council estate I lived on had 5 churches and 7 members of clergy ten years ago, now it has the equivalent of two and a half clergy and three churches, and as they struggle to pay the parish share they could lose even more. Another estate I visit regularly has no facilities at all and their nearest church is the other side of a file carriageway, no good if children want to attend alone. Justin Welby is now talking about feeding the poor, which is fantastic, but council estates are at the bottom of the pile of priorities, will they ever be really ministered to and served well?
The Bassplayer and I were married in a church on an East Leeds council estate 16 years ago. Thats the church that taught me what it means to follow Christ in one of the poorest parts of the country. Disciples serving the community.
we had a very interesting discussion on this issue as part of the Solihull Deanery meeting as it appeared that the new diocesan investment strategy might discriminate against split parishes in rural areas on the edge of the diocese, where villages are shared between dioceses! The commitment to a presence in every community could be as compromised in such areas (which also experience or contain deprivation) as in inner cities, and I am totally in agreement that the parish framework provides an opportunity and an excuse (if one were needed, which in this age of suspicion and “health and safety/safeguarding/ privacy controls, it often may be), for a Parish priest to visit and do outreach, which is often denied to our Methodist and other Free church colleagues. (I write as a former child of the rectory, and a layman!).
A photo from the vicarage office of the Urban Priority Area I minister in.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/themuffinman/8413085597/
Why not be radical and simplify: align PCC boundaries with those of the Parish Council boundary? In a time of (alleged) localism surely local action needs facilitiating not killing off…
I am really with you on the importance of the “local” and one of the main reasons that I followed my calling to licensed lay ministry (reader) was to serve the community that I grew up in. Which is very much a UPA. I see the church building as a place where people “may” come to, but I don’t expect them to … I think it is incumbent upon local church leaders to get out of the building dragging their congregations with them into their local communities to take Jesus to them. If we don’t sew, how can we expect to reap?
Robb, I know your focus is very much UPA but we have the same issues in Rural areas of your diocese. Many have no means of transport and no public transport exists so cross parish travel is impossible. We already encounter so many of the problems with multi-parish benefices and limited clergy so the communities are not served and where this happens church attendance declines. there are also instances where market towns and villages are bisected by parish, diocesan and community boundaries meaning there are no easy ports of call when difficulties arise. My district and county councils are in a different diocese. So the voice in this Dioceses has no say. I would not wish to see the parish system removed and would want to retain the local responsibilities but I do think that the entire national structure should be reviewed so that parish and diocesan boundaries become fit for the 21st Century rather than the current archaic organisation. We may even be able then to devolve more of the responsibility and authority to the local instead of using the local government model of the 1980’s and centralising.
There’s only so many times I can post a photo taken from out of the window in my office.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/themuffinman/8413085597/
Not all UPAs are Urban.
“Can we commit to being prayerful people on the mission God is already doing in our estates, suburbs and villages across the whole country?”
OK Robb I know I’ve seen it before but the hint to the reason for my response comes from the very phrase you used . UPA which as you recognise means URBAN PRIORITY AREA. So I commented on the RPA RURAL PRIORITY AREAS except no such area is formally recognised. whilst you are aware `I feel it needs to be spoken out as often as you post your photo.
I’m concerned that may decisions regarding expenditure in our area are taken by councils that, as the church, I have limited access to as they are in another Diocese, there is little or no cross diocesan working so the provision for homeless people is very poor and cannot be accessed locally because of the barriers to entry.
If the parish and diocesan systems could be more closely aligned to local government in rural aas well as urban contexts then we might be able to actually serve those whom we seek to serve.
I am here for anybody who wants the church though the boundaries only matter if it is legally necessary. We aren’t a club with members
As I said earlier, the boundaries don’t erect a forcefield, they denote responsibility.
The comparison with supermarkets is telling, because they are there for ‘consumers’ who, as you say have no loyalty, but just follow the brands. Historically this has led to local shops closing because they were undercut.
My concern about megachurches is the same process taking place: they can offfer something to appeal to ‘consumers’ and people flock to them. A few years ago I was a a christening service in a megachurch and found that many people had come from over 100km away and do so every week. This not only effectively filters out the less mobile it also creates the consumer mentality: “I’ll go, as long as it fulfills my needs” (As long as the music is to my liking, the preaching is entertaining, and no-one upsets me) which is a deeply un-biblical idea. The church, by the way, was in an industrial estate.
I’ve noticed many churches currently trying to use the same methods to reach people, with much the same results. We teach people to be consumers and in many cases, they consume and move on. And the church wring their hands and ask why people aren’t committing. It’s because they were taught to be consumers, what do you expect?
To keep this machinery going, there also needs to be a constant throughput of people with very specific skills. I’ve been told many times that because I’m not a musician I’m not really what the church wants.
Thankfully the other side to this is our local church which also manages to be a real local church just like the CofE churches in the UK, and this is why we came here. We have a core of people who care for each other and their community, older people and younger people who pray, encourage and fearlessly and gently love those around them. I’m part of a small group with people from our local town, who have many different cultural and church backgrounds where we know we will be loved and accepted for who we are, and all live within walking and cycling distance of the homes where we meet. It’s tough, but it’s real and it is effective.
I absolutely agree with you about incarnational ministry, and mission through rooted relationships. However the reason that I think that the national coverage parish system is dying is that we do not have the resources to do the job properly any more. There are just not enough of us. Given that reality, I would rather see resources focussed into specific areas, than to try and spread the resources thinner and thinner to prop up the illusion of the parish system, which is completely counter productive as the truth is that people spread that thinly aren’t effective in making relationships anywhere.