Why church?

Enjoying the sunshine after morning worship

Spending a part of Sunday in church is not the first choice of many in Great Britain today. According to statistics, weekly Church of England Sunday attendance fell below 1 million for the first time this year. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/church-of-england-attendance-falls-below-million-first-time

You can suggest anything with statistics, of course. Some have been quick to point out that this still represents more people gathering for a united purpose than at all sporting events combined across a typical weekend, for instance. And it is still the case that each week, additional thousands attend church for school related services, funerals or baptisms. https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats.aspx

One of the most frequently heard responses from people who talk to ministers about their church going habits (or lack of them) is "I do believe but I don't go to church". There's nothing designed to create more soul searching than that response, very typical of a large group of disaffiliated people who sometimes used to go, but for whatever reason do not go anymore. It always makes me think hard - because if literally everyone felt that way, the only person there on a Sunday morning would be.....me.

Can you be a Christian without going to church? On one level, yes. Not going on a Sunday probably won't shift your underlying conviction that God exists and even that Jesus is important (always a good starting point). Or possibly it will. 

But on another level, I don't think you can, easily. The bible doesn't know anything of private spirituality - the early believers held everything in common and met daily for fellowship, prayer, teaching and breaking of bread. They organised practical support for the poor in a society without a welfare state and took it as axiomatic that the proclamation of Jesus Christ was a public affair, affecting all aspects of life (e.g. Acts 2:42-7). So, though I rarely say it, my response might be: 'one sign that you love God, is that you want to be with the people of God...'

Obviously I have a vested interest in people going to church. The odd thing is that most people who say they believe but don't belong, would probably feel sad if the church disappeared. Even people who never go sometimes express a vague pleasure in the building being there, for funerals, weddings, carol concerts, school leavers services and any other number of things that need a large building with a holy feel to it. And property programmes invariably show the church spire on the horizon of that pretty place where today's couple want to settle down, if they can afford the right property (have you noticed that?)

So here are 7 reasons to go to church.

1) We're better together. Although the singer Jack Johnson got there first, it's a good slogan for church. Singing, praying, talking with others gives a sense of belonging to something greater and promotes wellbeing. Various studies have shown that religious people have higher life satisfaction and lower levels of anxiety than those with no religion.

2) You don't have to believe everything first. 

Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone in church has all their beliefs sorted. Encountering something living and powerful

comes first - you can work out the details later. This is generally how it went with the people who came across Jesus in the gospels.

3) Church is an antidote to individualism. 

Scientists have found a direct correlation between excessive individualism and levels of depression and anxiety in Western societies. And Britain tops the world leader board of individualism. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/6514956/Britains-me-culture-making-us-depressed.html 

Church literally means 'assembly' and carries the positive power of 'being in it together', with people across social and age divides, something very much against the flow culturally today.

4) To lay a foundation.

If you have kids, the window is quite small to lay down a foundation of Christian faith for them. Children will follow what their parents believe, up to a point, and after that will make up their own mind. Which is healthy. But if they haven't been exposed to a form of lived Christianity in the beginning, they won't really be free to make up their own mind - because they will have only experienced one lived option: non church going. All the evidence points to the fact that they will not find adopting faith half as easy in later life if a positive experience of church is largely absent from childhood.

5) The Church has longevity.

Most churches have been there for literally hundreds of years, outliving other public utilities such as local shops, pubs, halls and sometimes schools. If you're part of a school community, that's lovely for meeting people, making friends, getting involved and inevitably doing fundraising. But that phase will pass. Children get older and leave school. Secondary schools are not always places where similar strong personal connections can be made (they can be, but one hangs about in them less, inevitably). Once the University or leaving home stage comes, your community connections can weaken. There are now more people living alone than ever before and a lot of them are lonely. Belonging to a church can transcend all these stages, and what's more you can go to practically any country in the world and you will find a group of people meeting together as Church. And your spiritual connections go back through time as well. All in all, it's very connecting.

6) We have the stories.

In stained glass, in narrative, in enacting a meal and in

Stories in glass - St Oswald, Ravenstonedale

personal testimony, the Church invests in stories. To consider the notion of beginnings without Genesis; of freedom and law without the Ten Commandments; of dreams without Joseph and his amazing technicolour dream coat; to think about suffering without the man of sorrows, or new life without the idea of resurrection, is to be impoverished. And people who don't go to church do think about these things. In church we hand down and re-tell week by week the stories that give us identity and show us where we might be going. The good news is, we don't just tell stories: we live the story. And everyone's part of it.

7) It's about more than 'going'.

It's understandable that people who don't normally attend church do, however, appear on Sundays mornings occasionally, and for many different reasons. This is perhaps where going to church and being the church can seem in tension. Culturally, Christmas, Easter, Harvest (in rural churches at least), Remembrance, even baptism, can attract occasional worshippers. There's a feeling that they need an excuse to go. But most of the people that go every week are longing that the occasional worshippers get a glimpse somehow that church going is only the preliminary to church-being. 

People always say, if we didn't have buildings we'd still have the church. And essentially it's true. The first churches were in people's homes and only later did designated buildings start to go up. Personally I think God is non partisan about these things. We have buildings, we have people - let's rejoice in them both. 

So, church-going: we're better together; you don't have to have all the details sorted; it's an antidote to individualism; it lays a foundation; it has longevity and stories, and is about more than just going. Seven reasons to go to church. See you there.

Sensing Lent 22: The Indiscriminate Sun

The annual Mothering Sunday Service angst draws on apace. 

Tomorrow morning I'll be involved, tentatively, experientially, with the annual drawing together of the conflicting strands of spirituality, theology, psychology and liturgy which is the Church's attempt to straddle the ancient practice of returning to 'Mother Church' (with the attendant family gathering) and the modern supplanting of God, for mere blood ties - thanking mums 'for all they do for us' (which is, at worst, giving mum one day off the washing up, and at best, a large bunch of flowers with no work all day).

As mother and minister, the 'no work all day' thing isn't going to happen for me. Instead there'll be the slightly frazzled collision of priest and mum. The priestly/motherly 'me' will feel the need to portray God as a mother, the need to acknowledge others' sadness associated with perhaps having lost a mother, or not being a mother, or not being reconciled to or physically present with either one's mother or one's own children. 

And that's before we consider the sorrows sometimes associated with being a mother, like those experienced by Mary the mother of Jesus, referred to in at least one of the lectionary readings tomorrow ('sorrow, like a sword, will pierce your own soul'). Oh, great. Add to all that the generation for whom Mothering Sunday is nothing to do with mums, but all to do with Church, who would want to police the use of language thereabouts; and the spiritual atmosphere will be interesting, to say the least.

And then there's the cultural gap between those brought up in the church (like me) for whom Mothering Sunday wouldn't be complete without those posies handed to you by your children in church, and those who will be setting off early in the car to be with their mothers and wouldn't dream of interrupting the day by a visit inside a church building, especially on the morning the clocks go forward, losing you an hour in bed. I have some sympathy.

The warm sun today reminded me of the verse 'he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good'. God is quite frustrating like that - absolutely no respecter of persons. So for all those people for whom tomorrow is solely about mums and nothing to do with Christianity, there'll be as much blessing as for those who see the two as intimately connected. Just like those who do want a God-angle, those who don't 'feel the need' will enjoy the day sitting down to eat with family, giving flowers and perfume, celebrating love and soaking up sunshine. And it will all be gift; the Giver hidden. Which is cause for a certain humility. The Church no longer owns Mother's Day.

Prize leeks

3rd Sunday before Lent.

1 Corinthians 3:6

'I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth.'

It was a relief this morning to find a perfect excuse not to preach from the gospel , but go for the Epistle instead. I left Jesus' teaching on adultery and divorce for another, less contentious day, to embrace the somewhat easier (though only by a slim margin) topic of church growth.

This was in the light of reading the Church Growth research project, From Anecdote to Evidence, just published, which looked at factors which affect growth in church congregations. 

For visual learners, I added in a chance to compare two leeks - one grown in optimum conditions on our local, GM free, organic estate (the fat, juicy one) and the other grown in our back garden (the thin weedy one). 

The main verse from the Epistle was even written on the front cover of the report, so I knew I was onto something during my sermon preparation (some weeks I'm just so grateful for divine inspiration, as the time left to write these things often has a habit of trickling away to nothing).

I mainly have a love/hate relationship with findings on church growth, I think, because,

a) I'm worried that people in a large 'successful' churches with massive paid staff teams will tell me the perfect way to grow the church, which will of course not work in this situation, and then I will feel inadequate. 

And:

b) I nonetheless remain hopeful that they'll come up with some unique finding such as, 'if you're nice to people and smile a lot, your church will grow', and then I'll think, 'great, how hard is that going to be?'

Is growth only about numbers? 

The report, quite rightly, says numbers aren't the whole story, but researching growth in numbers is obviously a lot easier than researching growth in, say, holiness or prayerfulness, or generosity of heart. The paradox in church growth is surely the same in all Christian endeavour, even something as basic as prayer: what is the relationship between our effort and God's activity?

St Paul was quick to point out that although he might sow, and someone else water the seed, it is God who gives the growth, yet this apostle was hardly one to sit back and do nothing. When it comes to growth it would seem that we are to labour as though it all depended upon us, and trust for 'results' as though it all depended on God.

Finally, returning to leeks fat and thin - the report found 7 main factors positively correlated with church growth:

1.  Good leadership

2.  A clear mission and purpose

3.  Willingness to self-reflect, to change and adapt        according to context

4.   Involvement of lay members

5.   Being intentional in prioritising growth

6.   Being intentional in chosen style of worship

7.   Being intentional in nurturing disciples

Recalling the verse above, then, like a good gardener, it looks like we have to be intentional if we want to grow, while leaving the actual mystery of growth to God.

Lent for Extroverts 38: Recommended: Church

I'm not in the habit of going to church on a Thursday evening; a couple of times on Sundays is normally enough for me. Unless of course it's Maundy Thursday.

But I do like church. Whether I was bored or not in church as a child, I don't recall. I do recall singing hymns, which I honestly think forms the faith in you from an early age. 

There was a Welsh gentleman, Cadwaladr, in our church, who sang as all male Welsh hymn singers should: loudly and lustily. In those days we had 'Amen' at the end of the last verse, and he would end in a flourish of harmony. It would be a plagal cadence (also know as the 'Amen Cadence') - the fourth to the home note, but sometimes our organist would push the boat out and take the fourth chord into a minor key briefly, before returning to the home note, and Cadwaladr would oblige with a majestic semi tonal sixth, to the note below, and down to the fifth, where he would linger for a second longer than anyone else, beefing out the chord with all his passionate Welshness. It was my equivalent of a spiritual high, standing in front of that voice. It's one of the wonderful things about church; everyone singing together. It reminds us of what we hold dear, even before you count the known physiological and psychological benefits.

And I like 'The Peace', that bit in an Anglican Eucharist where you go around shaking people's hands. Nowadays as a priest I don't go in for kissing - that's best left to those lay people who want to wade into the difficult waters of 'to kiss or not to kiss'; generally it's much safer not to I find. But by eye contact, and hand contact we remember we are one body. The vertical relationship with God is never enough - he's given us other people too. Much harder. I led a service in a different church recently where I'd been told they 'don't do' The Peace. I remembered just in time.

You hear a lot these days about people going off religion but liking 'the spiritual'. People forget that 'religio' is to bind back. We're too separated from each other. We're separated from the God who made us. Did Jesus, on contemplating the Last Supper, say to himself, 'I think I'll stay in and do some meditation instead'? He earnestly desired to observe Passover with his friends, to break bread, share the cup, pray and sing a hymn with them. That was religion. But it was also a radical reshaping of something known into something new. A King washed his disciples' feet. He took bread and wine and poured his whole broken self into it.

Whilst I'm all for loving God, I also love the church. Of course the church is people, but I love the places too. You can't spend as much time as I have in them, drawing near to God and others; being caught up in the rhythm of prayer; singing hymns; hearing the Word and breaking bread, and not love the church.

The funny head-nodding, small-bowing, paper rustling, draughty, lofty, stained glass, ancient, candle smelling, clapping, smiling, silent, symbolic, seasonal, gently dysfunctional, forgiving, singing, praying church.

Remembrance

Of all the services I have presided over and preached at, Remembrance Sunday filled me with the most disquiet. Something to do, perhaps, with being young (ish) (who am I kidding, but it's all relative...); being female (?) and having come from a long line of Wesleyan pacifists. 

Then I was conscious that Remembrance is one of those unique confluences of civic, religious and local life which, if done well can bless many and enhance the gospel; and if not...Well, we prepared for possibly 50 attending the local War Memorial - perched precariously on a hill which is also the busy main road between two village settlements. Cars ground to a halt and all around, people could be seen walking down the hill and up the hill to converge at the Cross. We ran out of service sheets and still they came. In this tenth anniversary of Afghanistan, perhaps we were even more conscious of the need to honour those who are dying there every week, as well as those lost in the two World Wars. 

The theological and liturgical challenge was to be a Minister presiding over a community-owned Act of Remembrance, whilst also being a Minister of the Gospel. Not all decisions about war can be uncritically baptised by anyone wearing a cassock and surplice. But pacifism and politics aside, people clearly still wish to honour the memory of the fallen, and 'it is meet and right so to do'. And so we made the most of this annual propitious mingling of church and state; gospel and harsh reality of war.

X Factor - love it or loathe it?

It happens every year - I swear I am not going to watch it, then one of the children switches it on and over the weeks I get hooked. So how many other Anglican clergy watch X Factor and what do they think of it? Do Christians talk about it after morning worship? How often does it feature in a sermon? Love it or loathe it, you can't ignore it. Why? Firstly it's about people and stories - preferably an 'underdog made good' story, with tears. This can be moving or mawkish. Then it's about gift, dreams and delusion - some can really sing but don't know it - others really can't but embarrassingly think otherwise. At its worst it's the modern day freak show, like the Victorians with their Elephant Man or Bearded Lady. And it's about mentoring, the judges passing on their expertise to the less experienced who want to grow and need someone to believe in them.

Does all this have anything to say about how we do church? Church is people and if we don't hear each other's stories we're like strangers to each other. It's also about gift - discovering yours and putting it to work. It's about believing, hoping, dreaming, celebrating. So in true X Factor speak, I want to follow my (God given) dream; 'nail it' and put 110% into this thing called church.