Contemporary Churches: a review

What attracted me to getting hold of this book and reading it was the prospectus that it would help '"to apply the insights of contemplative spirituality and spiritual direction to entire faith communities"

For me this is a really of the moment prospectus. Partly because for some time now I've been thinking that we should be discerning the way forward for churches by really listening to the vocations in formation of our members -a sort of corporate guidance exercise. And of course this means that we should be actually living our church lives, for want of a better way of describing it, contemplatively. Part of this is that I have been challenged in the past by the Quaker discernment process as a way of trying to take spiritual accompaniment to the next level which is corporate, congregational discernment. But I have also wanted to take seriously my Charismatic movement roots and the evangelical referencing to Scripture, not to mention taking seriously what we learn (positively and otherwise) from church history about how we do or don't discern good ways forward, or God's ways forward, in relation to our context and cultural milieu. So ... a few implicit expectations on this book; would it be as helpful, insightful and even exciting as I would hope? Was I going to find a book on my wavelength that pushed my thinking forward a bit or even a lot?

Well, yes to varying degrees. One of the unexpected things for me from this book was catching a glimpse of just how rapid and alarming is the decline of USAmerican institutional Christianity. However, this is good for reading in a British context as the stories of dealing with decline and institutional death are helpful. "At a time in Amerecan culture when more peolpe than ever are interested in spiritual practices and young people have a renewed interest in ussues of social justice, institutional religion is proving itself to be ill-equipped to respond." -quite so, it looks similar in Britain too.

In respect of decline and death, I found it particularly helpful to have a case-study of a church's good death and of the institutionally problematic but kingdom-serving resurrection. In relation to that case it was also helpful to have the author's (psychologically well -informed) psycho-spiritual reflection on the tasks ("stages") of grief and how these are important to be honoured in processes of reflection, church direction-setting and pastoral and missional work. It was good to see, too, the complexities of this named and recognised along with a basic strategy for approaching them. For example, "Some people are in denial, some are moving to acceptance; some are angry; others try to bargain for solutions. That is the state of the institutional church today." I particularly liked the way the tasks of grieving were seen also in Jesus' passion; "Even though he saw it coming, even though he spoke about it to his disciples, Jesus continued to wrestle with his fate and bargain for a different future in the garden of Gethsemane." I think that this is a very important permission-given thing to notice and draw into consideration. And a little further on, "Jesus himself worked through the denial, expressing anger at the religious authorities, bargaining in prayer for another way before accepting his fate." There is some useful reflection following that in how we do this corporately.

It was encouraging too to read of approaches to church life where a spiritual-accompaniment approach has been taken. Encouraging because this is what I think I'm finding myself increasingly drawn to. "Council meetings were transformed with the presence of a spiritual director whose function was to call the council together in prayer and reflect back on the process of the meeting from a spiritual perspective. Meetings became times of active discernment marked by the exploration of what it meant to live out the congregation's sense of mission."

And also to my liking, because it named where I've got to in my own reflections is this: "As Christians, it is the teachings of Jesus and the way of life he modeled for us that should be the center (sic) of our lives and not an institution. Churches are places where we gather, learn, share faith, and celebrate our way of life and beliefs. But the institution is not a substitute for the experience of leading a spiritual life which is primarily informed by the teachings of Jesus and the experience of God in our midst." And A few pages later we are helped o see the implications of this kind of approach for leadership: "In this model, the role of leadership is to equip people to respond in authentic ways to the stirrings of God's Spirit, to be always open to new possibilities and to use the resources of the church to translate the understanding of one's call into something tangible. To that end, leadership must be committed to ongoing prayer and discernment."

I also found helpful the insight about how communities of faith might approach things in our new spiritual context. "...communities of faith which are primarily spiritual centers don't limit spirituality to a program. Instead, spirituality, the experience of the Divine, the animation of the human spirit by the Divine Spirit, becomes the foundation upon with the church gathers ... the lesson of the sermon is put into practice more directly..." The kind of approach recommended is much like the principle that 'Sanctuary' in Bradford was constructed in the years of the early 2000s. Here there was a clear drive to build collective worship around responses in real time to the issues raised and discussed: acts of forgiveness, signing petitions, planning for actions. The founding insight in that case was seeing liturgy as repentance: a turning of ourselves to follow Christ -which meant embodying as best we could at that moment what it was we were sensing a call to. In both cases this involved "not viewing themselves as the hub or center of life in the community, members of post-modern congregations live out their faith and spiritual practice with others as equal partners to bring positive change in the world." In reading that I caught a resonance of the thinking in Raymond Fung's 'The Isaiah Vision' and Ann Morissey's 'Beyond the Good Samaritan'.

One of the other things I found myself reflecting on in reading this book is how useful the role if interim ministers can be. I think that this book could also be usefully added to interim ministers' reading lists.

Link-Love: 
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. Website
Contemporary Churches on Amazon
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. on Facebook

Please tag #ContemporaryChurchesSpeakeasy

Disclaimer: yes I got my e-copy of this book as a freebie in return for a promise to write a review of it. But that's as far as the deal went: I am not obliged to post a favourable review or to pull any punches. But I tend to be a generous sort and my way of appreciating a book is usually to find things that I have enjoyed thinking about or at least that have provoked my thinking further. Only after some thinking do I tend to get negatively critical. 

Nones outnumber Christians -cause for concern?

Recent research told us of an ...

 acceleration in the numbers of people not only not practising their faith on a regular basis, but not even ticking the box   People of no religion outnumber Christians in England and Wales – study | World news | The Guardian:

This has been a couple or more generations coming but it has hit a significant-felling  point. This represents a continuing decline in the reality of the notion that 'cultural Christian' is a good thing. The article points out that there will need to be some further sociological reflection on what is actually happening. However, I will hazard a guess that basically people who used to tick the "CofE" box (or other poility equivalents) are increasingly likely to take stock of themselves as not going to church, not really believing much of what seems to be associated with church involvement and perhaps not even liking or respecting what they do understand about Christian faith. And then they are being honest and saying "Actually, I'm not. And so what?"


So this doesn't represent, in my view, a decrease in Christian faith so much as an increase in the correspondence between labels and reality on the ground. What is significant is what it probably says about identity markers in the wider population and in turn what that implied for the mission of God and the churches in Britain.

It's a further marked movement away from Christendom and so a further indicator of our need to get our heads out of 'come to us' mode and to recognise that 'fringe attraction' is increasingly a busted flush.


Another area that I am interested to see more information emerge on is whether there are particular reasons for this acceleration. Perhaps, I would hypothesise, it is about the mismatch between mores between the Churches and wider society where the churches are looking less compassionate and, well Christ-like, than many churches. Not only that but we aren't looking very 'spiritual' with the result that  people who develop a 'spiritual' outlook tend to look to Buddhism, Daoism etc. though without identifying with them.

All of which is to say that fairly different means and approaches to outreach are needed. As if we didn't already know this: but perhaps this will help to drive the point home.

Church Engagement and its discontents

I have to confess that in the past, enthralled by leadership teaching and church growth and management insights and still not having fully and properly co-ordinated the secular management insights with theological reflection, I recall having similar niggles to those mentioned in this insightful article:

 weary of such teaching as we realised that it didn’t really resonate with the picture we see in Jesus who would not only ‘lay down his life’ for his sheep but would willingly leave the ninety-nine in order to find the individual who had become lost.

 This was a propos of teaching about leaving behind those in a church who weren't buying into the leaders' vision. This, of course, comes out of reifying the vision into, in effect, the very word of the Lord. Yet what had always troubled me was the way the there was so little in Scripture about vision casting. About the only text is the Proverbs verse 'Where there is no vision the people perish' -which only works in the AV 'translation' and seems to actually yield very little backing for vision casting. in fact, the Pauline and Johanine exhortations to unity  would seem to count against 'leaving behind' or, in effect, excluding those who don't 'catch' the vision. And, of course. the parable of the lost sheep is rightly brought to the bar above.



What this piece does rather well is to pick up and explain in churchly terms the basic three stages of church engagement -drawn from observation of organisational life (and which I'm adding to my reflections on being part of a university which is morphing into a self-aware business). The suggestion is also that expecting an ever upward engagement is cutting against the grain of a natural human engagement entropy:

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpu

... there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person's engegement to a group, community or vision. ... a three-phase journey experienced within a community:

1) Enthusiastic

2)Realistic

3) Apathetic

In each of these phases there are not only normal and expected patterns and psychodynamics of engagement (all of which are perfectly recognisable and understandable from our own experiences) but also tend to be exploited or drawn on by leaders in certain ways. We can also see these phase at work when people buy new products -and we may be aware of how the company that supplies it is really keen to get us to give re-usable feedback in the first few days of ownership -when we're still enthusiastic about it and before 'reality' sets in in the form of us having found that it doesn't actually change our life as much for the better as we thought it might or its downsides start to become apparent and a certain disillusion sets in. And of course it may only be a matter of time before we become non-users -apathetic, looking for something better or at least simply instrumental about it. Similarly with churches -doubly so if they are 'marketed' with visions, missions and vibe. So people drop out or move on from one church to another.



Accordingly, we need to teach leadership skills not just to do the first phase stuff but to pastor through phases 2 and 3. Informally this already happens, of course, we all know churches that do phase 1 stuff really well but have open back doors as well as front doors. Many of us are also aware of churches which tend to 'receive' at least some of the refugees from phase 1 churches, and some of us know people who don't reconnect with church. I'm also aware of some people who don't connect with phase 1 churches at all because they at a subliminal level understand only too well the marketing dynamic of the vibe and vision thing and shy away from the 'machine' that threatens to eat them.



So the question is not only how do we train priests to be leaders for all three phases, but how do we disciple Christians to work through them maturely (and are 'sabbaticals' part of this)? And that latter question morphs into a question about how we build church life so as not to be using up the first-phasers?



The fact is, I suspect, that churches that do phase one stuff well are doing so parasitically on the rest of the body of Christ: using up people's enthusiasm and 'letting them go' when they realise that all is not as shiney as it first seemed: then other churches pick them up and sometimes help put them back together. Sometimes, of course, no church is trusted thereafter. We badly need phase-ecumenism in order to cope with this natural life staging under our current 'system' -but it would be hard for many leaders to do this as it would mean admitting a certain relativity or contingency to their self-perceptions of ministry, theology and mission. Meanwhile the mission of the whole church is compromised.



I hope I'm wrong, but I fear i'm not.

there
exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s engagement
to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I have seen
explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a picture of an
onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am not sure that
this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable. - See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

there
exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s engagement
to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I have seen
explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a picture of an
onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am not sure that
this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable. - See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest
that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s
engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I
have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a
picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am
not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic




- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

 The Three Phases of Church Engagement | Alan Molineaux | Red Letter Christians:

Volunteering may be good for us

Though we should note the caveat "the findings have yet to be confirmed in trials", taken with findings that cumulatively show that churchgoing seems to corelate with longer and healthier life, it is perhaps no surprise that:

Some observational evidence points to around a 20 per cent reduction in mortality among volunteers compared to non-volunteers in cohort studies. Volunteers also reported lower levels of depression, increased life satisfaction and enhanced well-being Go on, volunteer -- it could be good for you!

It may well be that this is capturing essentially the same thing as the church-going data is picking up: part of the ethos of church-going is about giving ones time and effort, without financial payment, for the common good. Of course there are other issues and some of these relate to the happiness and stress-reduction dimensions of life. And, most importantly, it is well to note a corelation, it is another thing to produce a convincing reason for it which seems to have explanatory power and is productive of testable hypotheses.

More research is needed to unpack the theoretical mechanisms by which volunteers may accrue different health benefits

And, of course; "Volunteer too much, and the habit can become a burden, bringing problems of its own." -as some of us who have been involved in church leadership are only too aware; sometimes people have to be protected from their own enthusiasm, guilt-drivers and indeed interpersonal difficulties with co-volunteers. Indeed, I'd like to see a study that helps to open out the issues related to guilt-driven volunteering as opposed to more freely-offered efforts, for example. I hove the sense that running a church or other organisation on guilt is bad for people all round in the longer term.

And part of the issue in volunteering is the type of people who typically do it: is the study actually measuring a population who would be better off even if they didn't volunteer, because of other factors?

... volunteering is associated with improvements in mental health, but more work is needed to establish whether volunteering is actually the cause. It is still unclear whether biological and cultural factors and social resources that are often associated with better health and survival are also associated with a willingness to volunteer in the first place. The challenge now is to encourage people from more diverse backgrounds to take up volunteering, and then to measure whether improvements arise for them.

My suspcion is that maybe church populations are more diverse and that if the church-going benefits are related to the volunteering benefits (as I suspect they are), then that may be evidence that it is to do with volunteering rather than pre-existing cultural or biological factors. But we'll see ...

Out of this world benefits at a discount in long-life world

Recently publish research from St Andrew's University seems to indicate that participation in organised religion in our society for significant numbers of people, rests on their assessment of the perceived cost/benefit ratio. And what used to be a deal-maker has fallen in the ranks of highly motivating factors: the afterlife question appears to be much less significant in religious participation than may once have been the case. Though this may become more important as people get older. The solution suggested by the researchers is to emphasise more the present-worldly benefits of participation such as friendship networks, better life-expectancy and other things that other research has shown up as the side-benefits of religious participation.

religious organisations need to do more to highlight the social and spiritual benefits of participation in religion in present day life if they are to increase congregation sizes and attract people of all ages, particularly young people.

At first I was a little unsure how I responded to this: the idea that we might 'sell' religion by reference to the fringe benefits. But then I thought that this is nothing new: it seems to me that the offer of finding forgiveness, salvation, satisfaction, fulfilment, joy, peace, heaven and probably a dozen other things have long been part of the 'offer' being made. So is it a problem that the offer being commended is more "material" or this worldly"? Well, perhaps: this comes to feeling a bit more like proselytism: the offer of extrinsic benefits (that is extrinsic to the nature of the main thing). However, I don't think that is quite what would necessarily be going on. These benefits are to a greater or lesser degree intrinsic to the offer being made: they are all part of or direct effects of 'salvation' (scare-quoted to alert us to the presence of a metaphor which may not be a 'master' metaphor). In fact, it might be argued that they are the way that salvation and the need for salvation show up in various lives. I think that companionship, etc are similar though they are not the exclusive property of an offer of salvation in Christian terms.

However, where I do think that there is a problem may be in the practicalities relating to the matter of obliquity. In this case it would mean that if one joined a church in order to find companionship that may not happen because companionship is something that comes 'obliquely' to us, as the result of other things being pursued.

The problem I could foresee is that (as I have seen in a few cases before) a person can be so caught up in trying to find friendship that the way they comport themselves actually gets in the way of it; their desperation becomes inimical (excuse the pun)to finding companionship; it puts people off. The apparent neediness is something that spooks others and makes them wary; they worry that they will not be in a friendship but in a vampiric relationship where their good-will may be sucked dry; a far cry from the mutuality of real companionship and friendship but rather an exploitation masquerading as friendship. In seeking to 'save their life' they lose it. Ironically then, the people most prone to this are the ones who most need to lose their fixation and focus instead of the main thing, relating to God, in order to be free enough to avail themselves of the fringe benefits, lest grasping at companionship (or longer life or whatever elso) fails and worse cuts them off from the true source of freedom to accept the very thing they seek.

150 friends at most…

If Robin Dunbar is right then this answers a question I've mused on in odd moments. For a number of years I've been familiar with the idea in church growth research/opinion that there is a church size threshhold at 150 or 175 or thereabouts. It has tended to be justified by the notion that around 150 is the maximum number of people we can really relate to. This would appear to be grounded in the kind of research Dunbar is in touch with. For example here: Robin Dunbar: We can only ever have 150 friends at most… | Technology | The Observer: "within the primates there is a general relationship between the size of the brain and the size of the social group. We fit in a pattern. There are social circles beyond it and layers within – but there is a natural grouping of 150. This is the number of people you can have a relationship with involving trust and obligation – there's some personal history, not just names and faces."
My question has been whether this figure is and absolute related to the individual or relative to any particular social context, iow whether an individual can have several networks of up to 150 people. Robin Dunbar seems to say it is the former.

This being so, it means that there is a problem with using the 150-relationships per individual as an explanation for a church size boundary. This is because an individual within the church 'comes' with a certain number of relationships already in place: family, extended family, friends, colleagues etc. Some of these, at least, will be significant relationships in terms of Dunbar's research. Therefore, any individual in church will have capacity for less, perhaps significantly less than 150.

Of course, it may be that something about the way that figures aggregate may still give 150, but I'm skeptical about that. (Anyone able to do the maths on that one?). So I think we need to look elsewhere to explain the 150 or 175 threshold.

Secular and Catholic France grows evangelicals

"From a postwar population of around 50,000, French evangelicals are now estimated to number between 450,000 and 500,000. According to the Evangelical Federation of France (FEF), the number of churches has risen from 800 in 1970 to over 2,200 today." That's quite a big change. It looks like a lot of the growth is in Pentecostal style churches but not all. The Guardian article has a kind of comment overview:
For secular and Catholic France, a shock to the system: the rise of the evangelicals | World news | The Guardian. However, if you're interested in a bit more detail on the way the figures look, and you read French, then the article in Le Figaro is better: Le protestantisme en pleine mutation (if your French is rudimentary, the Google translation kind of works but is very stilted). The occasion is the 500 anniversary of the birth of John Calvin (in France, recall).

Back To Church Sunday

I don't think I owned up to it but I do confess I was a little skeptical about Back to Church Sunday. But I eat my thoughts following my reading of this article: Start The Week: Back To Church Sunday: The salient figure is here: "Research by the Diocese of Lichfield after last year’s Back to Church Sunday suggested that 6,000 people came back to church on that day and that, six months later, between 700 and 900 (12-15 per cent) had become regular members. About a further 3,000 are still in touch with their inviting churches and may have come at Christmas or to a social event."
I think I was skeptical because I underestimated in my own knee-jerk response how many people were church-leavers but not hostile leavers.

Church leavers give their reasons ...

There are a great many ex-churchgoers out there. When I was in parish ministry and even in chaplaincy, I kept being surprised by how many people I met who seemed to have some kind of Christian faith but simply could not abide church as they had experienced it. I also went through a period myself where I could well understand how that could be. Here's what the research said.

One in three said that their loss of faith was a key reason for leaving. Other reasons given were:
• Excluded by cliques (about half)
• Churchgoing was part of growing up (two out of five)
• Moving to a new area and family commitments (main reason for one in three)
• Tensions with work (one in four)
• Church was too feminine for some men, and too difficult for those sexually active outside marriage
• Inadequate return for time and money (two out of five)
• Disillusionment
• Hurt by pastoral failure (14 per cent)
• Church irrelevant (high proportion)
• Disliked change, e.g. of hymns (one in five)
• Worship too formal/informal and teaching too high/low (one third)
• Church leader was too authoritarian (RCs) or too unclear (Anglicans) (one in four)
• Church was too conservative (one fifth to one third)
• Lack of boundaries between the Church and the world (one in four)

Of course some of those things are contradictory, so there is no one 'answer'. Some are things that could be dealt with by existing churches 'raising their game' (in relation to people moving and having family commitments for example). I'm interested that in a time when a number of conservative churches are growing, that up to a third of leavers cited that as a reason for leaving. Now, there's a whole other discussion to be had about that, but I'm wondering about it more and more. Most importantly is the high proportion of leavers who reckoned that church was irrelevant. This we kind of already know. Isn't it about time we addressed it? Do we know what that means, though? Irrelevant in what way? Is it the same 'irrelevancy' for all the leavers or are there different kinds of irrelevancy?
I'd be interested in any ideas readers might have about what constitutes irrelevancy.
More than ever I find myself haunted by a Mike Yaconelli phrase; he used to say he was involved in a church for people who didn't like church. I thought, and still think; "yeah".

Evangelical Drop-Outs

An interesting resume of a study here from the USA: Evangelical Drop-Outs | Out of Ur | Following God's Call in a New World | Conversations hosted by the editors of Leadership journal:

"Among the 7 in 10 who dropped out of the church a diversity of reasons were discovered:
• Wanted a break from church: 27%
• Found church members judgmental or hypocritical: 26%
• Moved to college: 25%
• Tied up with work: 23%
• Moved too far away from home church: 22%
• Too busy: 22%
• Felt disconnected to people at church: 20%
• Disagreed with church's stance on political/social issues: 18%
• Spent more time with friends outside church: 17%
• Only went before to please others: 17%"

It looks to me like a lot of this is about churches not being communities that create a real sense of belonging or a sense of the importance of corporate expressions of faith.... ?

Church of England launches campaign to counter steep decline in baptisms

This article in the Daily Mail is a bit of a showpiece in journalistic misunderstanding or misleading (take your pick and consider how charitable you feel). Towards the end we are told: "The drop in baptisms mirrors a long-term decline in church attendance overall. The CofE saw its figures for Sunday attendance drop below the million mark at around the turn of the millennium. Roman Catholic churches in much of the country have also seen a fall. However large-scale immigration from Eastern Europe has meant some Catholic churches in London are overflowing on a Sunday."
Now let's just look a bit more at some of that. Actually the drop in baptisms is following a different pattern in some respects especially as recently attendance figures have levelled out and even increased slightly. Note how the article talks about the turn of the millennium rather than the last couple of years which would count against their point. And why pick out RC churches in London? Because to do a similar exercise with Anglican churches would again give the lie to the reporting: Anglican churches in London are very healthy, thank you, because of migration from Africa.
I suspect the real story here, at one level, is one of newspaper journos and editors still running in their minds the old stereotypes about churches, particularly the CofE and finding it hard to come to terms with some new facts. Here they wrote the story they were expecting: the truth is, as Hook says in the film, far more interesting.
Have a look at the comments.
Church of England launches campaign to counter steep decline in baptisms | the Daily Mail:

Cathedrals see a steady rise in congregations

While we're on the subject of churchgoing in Britain, here's the surprise.

In 2000, when weekly attendance figures were first collected, the number of regular worshippers at the 43 cathedrals was 14,300, compared with 24,800 last year. Seasonal attendance has also increased: 130,000 people attending services over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 2006, compared with 94,300 in 2000. Attendance at Easter Eve and Easter Sunday services has risen to 52,400 last year from 47,900 in 2000.

So what's going on here? I confess I don't know but my guesses lead me to ask the following questions, which, if I get the chance I will try to answer. My questions are whether the increased attendances at cathedrals have connections with decreased attendances elsewhere; in other words are we seeing transfer growth here? Particularly with the decline in local churches meaning that the whole traditional robed choir thing is harder to maintain. I'm also wondering how far this may have a relation to a desire to attend without further involvement? The reason possibly shares a driver with the last question: the decline of local church-going may have entered a negative loop which exacerbates the features of decline, that is the disheartening aspects of decline actually further promote decline as people find it harder to be resilient in the face of decline and 'bail' to something that buoys them up and may give them rest from their small church labours.

So we could be witnessing a squeeze of the smaller local church as on one hand the traditionalists bail out to cathedrals and cathedral-like churches, and on the other the radicals bail out into informal 'emerging' set-ups and the 'revivalists' (for want of a better description) bail into large MOR front-led praise-band set-ups.

Of course the knock-on effects are pressure on clergy and active lay people in the declining set-ups which issues in depression and turns the screw of the negative feed-back loop one more twist. It's a 'those who do not have, even what little they have will be taken away' situation.


Church Times - Cathedrals see a steady rise in congregations

Three million worshippers ‘wait to be asked

Worth pondering; the results of a recent survey on churchgoing or not in the UK today. Here's a salient quote.

The survey of 7000 adults questioned those who did and did not currently attend church. The research concluded that an estimated 7.6 million people (one in seven) attended church each month, and 12.6 million attended at least once a year. Although 53 per cent of respondents described themselves as Christian, nearly two-thirds had nothing to do with a church. Most of these — an estimated 29.3 million — were regarded as unreceptive and “closed to attending church”.

My questions are about identifying the minority waiting to be asked since there are clearly many more who will say 'no', and my experience is that your average outgoing church after a few years has pretty much exhausted its fringe contacts. I'm also concerned about what they find if they do go; my experience as a peripatetic service leader over the last few years makes me concerned in some cases. I don't think we realise how remote from contact with everyday life and concerns our churches have become. Even, and in some ways, especially those that are 'lively'. By God's grace, of course, some of this can be overcome. But let's not make God's grace an excuse for not taking the issue seriously: that is tantamount to putting God to the test.


Church Times - Three million worshippers ‘wait to be asked’



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Christianity will be eclipsed by spirituality in 30 years

It's not at all surprising and it points to what I've been occasionally saying: that we need to be aware of what this is saying to the churches. I just don't think that many well-churched people realise just how irrelevant or even positively unhelpful the church appears to people who are attracted by 'spirituality' and 'mysticism'.

Note this: "Kendal mirrors the national statistics with eerie precision: 2,207 people in the town — 7.9 per cent of the population — attend church on Sunday while 600 — 1.6 per cent of the population of the town and environs — take part in some kind of holistic activity.
During the 1990s, when the town’s population grew by 11.4 per cent, participation in the “new spirituality” grew by 300 per cent. Woodhead and Heelas contend that “mini revolutions” have already taken place, and point out that in Kendal the holistic milieu now outnumbers every single major denomination apart from Anglican."

My response is that I am hoping shortly [probably in the new year] to open up some 'spirituality' activities in the city centre -basic meditation, 'khi qi' and perhaps a kind of spiritual direction based on tarot cards [see Drane et all 'Beyond Prediciton']


PS Further thoughts a few posts on.