Thinking Anglicans: Celebrating fallibility: "Within living memory, each parish had its own clergyman, and Stansted also had usually two curates, so eighteen full-time clerics for sixteen parishes. These days, for the same same number of parishes with increasing populations."
Just so. A big part of the problem though, is that we kind of recognize this and yet do not really change what we do. It's a difficult situation to manage: who wants to manage decline? Especially as at the same time we're supposed to be encouraging and jolly people along, all the time hoping that the cavalry will turn up and rescue us. I still think that we need to engage seriously with the issue in the way that Mike Riddell proposes in Threshold of the Future: Reforming the...">"Threshold of the Future": we need to recognize that death of the church in our culture [indeed the death of a culture in which it was set], mourn and rebuild in the reality that we now find. It's the denial that is really doing for us; it's sapping energy and creativity; it's driving maintainance-led decisions rather than missionary strategies and it's not making contact with the real spiritual revival that is taking place.
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