Crisis ends dream of early retirement

The Observer | Politics | Of more than passing interest to me, since at the moment I'm not on the Church Commissioners roll gaining years of service which counts towards my pension ... dangnabbit ... so I'm certinly considering that I may have to work past 65 anyway [assuming I live that long and am able-bodied]. The fact that like most western societies we are an aging population is something of a problem for personal and social planning.

It will also affect the church, other things being equal. In my last church we relied quite a bit on early-retired pople to exercise ministries such as administration, visiting and pastoral care and we tended to find tht they were often well-enough off not to want to ask for expenses. I don't see that this kind of condition can be sustained. Retiremnet ministries will be more constrained in future. On the other hand their may be more retired clergy around, but this may lead to a problem of reinforcing clericalism, perhaps. Though that being said, it would depend on how many churches are being used and how thinly other clergy are spread.

It just seems to me that the whole institutional church as we have known it is in long-term trouble at this rate. Having lived abroad and experienced expat chaplaincy-style church life, it seems to me that that is what we are headed for, in all probability. Except that we have this difficulty of loads of buildings an historical plant to think about so the economies of scale which mean that sharing and working with congregational units of reasonable sizes may not be possible.

I look at the churches I have seen in this area and I wonder what will happen in twenty years time when they have a dozen active members left ...