Is the C of E a sinking ship?
Last calendar week I spoke with Pete Broadbent, Bishop of Willesden, on whether the C of E was drinking at last hazard saloon on a sinking transport. You can read a skillful write-up of it by Madeleine Davies at the Church building Times. Since I don't really drink, and have never been to a saloon, I focused on the metaphor of the sinking ship.
It was timely, since the previous weekend I had watched the Boat Race; the same two teams were in the final once once more. As we watched the smooth, confident powerful movements of the Oxford crew pulling abroad from Cambridge floundering in the head wind as they both left the Hammersmith Bridge, I turned to one of my children and said 'Yous know, one twelvemonth one of the boats sank.' They were incredulous—how could such an plain secure boat actually sink?
Many people feel the same kind of astonishment about the thought of the C of E as a sinking ship. How could an institution which such a history, so deeply embedded in the history and social structures of the country, possibly exist sinking? As a result, I have noticed five different responses.
1. OMG we are sinking!
For many in local churches and local church building leadership, the astonishment tin can quickly turn to a kind of low-primal despair. We are continuing to do the things we e'er did, yet in the past they brought results where at present they seem ineffective. Or, worse, we are working harder and it is producing less fruit. Particularly in rural ministry, there is a sense of existence stretched ever more thinly, 'like butter spread over too much bread' (said Bilbo in Lord of the Rings), and to no nifty result. In this context, the last matter clergy or congregations experience they need to hear is a sense of rebuke from bishops and other leaders for the state of affairs.
ii. OMG we are sinking!
This second response sounds like the first, but is used in a different fashion. I call back it was George Carey who coined the idea that 'the church is always one generation away from extinction'. This is intended as a kind of rallying cry, an invitation to buck up our ideas and gyre upward our sleeves—merely I am not sure it is very helpful. To accept an example from my former occupation, information technology is true to say that Mars Confectionery is simply one day away from bankruptcy, in that if from today no-one bought any more Mars Bars, then the company would go bust. But I am not certain that information technology is particularly helpful to recollect in these terms; information technology really gives few insights into either theology or practice.
3. You lot just need to row harder.
The commentary on the 1978 Gunkhole Race is comic besides as tragic: 'Cambridge are sinking…Cambridge are sinking…Cambridge accept sunk!' Only what is hit about the motion-picture show of the race, captured in the photograph above, is how long they continued to row when it was evidently futile. The stroke (at the back of the boat) is completely underwater—yet he is still trying to row, as if, by some herculean effort, the coiffure might exist able to drive the boat dorsum above the waves.
This is ane criticism of some the 'Reform and Renewal' reports, and in particular the 'Green' report on senior leadership. If but we are a bit smarter, if only we prefer the best business practices, then everything will come correct. I am in consummate agreement with Pete Broadbent that we demand to face reality and human action intelligently, but I don't concur with his judgement of a number of the papers. I don't quite sympathise why those involved in the process have been so immune to feedback. The Green report fails in its own terms, quite apart from declining in terms of what the church needs in reflection nearly leadership. It is just daft to advise that you lot invest in training people for jobs for which they are not appointed, and the idea of a cloak-and-dagger preferment group of people who in fact might or might ever be appointed to senior positions is unwise. Much amend (but less well known) is the FAOC report on leadership by Mike Higton and Loveday Alexander; it is this (not Green) which should really be guiding united states.
And the RME written report contains some good things—merely there is widespread rejection of the proposal to return to regionalised budgeting and provision, as I pointed out, as a number of university theologians have argued, and as Alister McGrath explained at length in the Church Times. Let's drop this unhelpful role, whilst welcoming what is good in the report.
Marker Hart has criticised the utilize of research within the strategy that is now being tabled, and I think we demand to have his criticism seriously. But I don't quite get with his conclusions, that the levers we take won't exist enough to halt decline. They are the but levers we have, and anecdotal evidence suggests that they are in fact constructive in making a departure.
4. We should be sinking.
Some have argued that actually, in terms of the decline in attendance, that we actually should be sinking—this is a sign that we are living the cruciform life. It shows how much we are immersed in our context and committed to incarnational ministry. Giles Fraser put it like this at Easter: 'Christianity, when properly understood, is a faith of losers… A church that successfully proclaims the message of the cantankerous–decease first, and then resurrection–is probable to be empty and not full'. Fraser has no time for those churches which appear to be growing.
The worst of them judge their success in entirely worldly terms, by counting their followers. Their websites evidence images of happy, uncomplicated people doing good improving stuff in the large community. But if I am right most the significant of Christ'south passion [and Fraser is in no incertitude that he is!] and so a church is at its best when it fails.
In other words, non only is an interest in numbers misguided, it represents a complete failure to sympathise the central message of Christianity—and is a contradiction of it. My favourite response to this came in a comment from the earlier blog post—from someone who is quite happily in the 'liberal' theological camp:
What is it with "liberal" clergy (the theological label ill-fits Fraser, a dyed-in-the-reddish socialist who loathes political liberalism as so much costless marketplace excess, only it's the all-time we have) who take a perverse joy in failure? Some nihilistic streak? A coping machinery? Whatever, it'south self-defeating to the point of farce.
The whole indicate of Christianity is the triumph over expiry and despair through Christ. Evangelicals tend to be a lot better at articulating this. If the evangelical perma-smile is unhealthy, surely the liberal perma-frown is worse.
v. There isn't really such a matter as sinking
This appears to be the approached of Linda Woodhead and her sociological arguments near the future of the church. There is no difference between things inside and outside the boat; to suggest that the boat has sides which form a boundary betwixt 'inside' and 'outside' is to create a sect, and turn ordained leaders into chaplains to the sect. Water is not such a bad thing anyway; who are we to suggest that beingness on the inside of the boat is in any way better than being on the exterior? As long as we take a cox, no need for rowers; 'if there were no congregations, ninety% of what the Church does would proceed.'
This view is, I think, sadly ignorant of the history of the Church, as another sociologist, Rodney Stark, has demonstrated. And information technology runs the risk of being seriously ignorant of theology. If we are baptising people, but this is not into whatever sort of distinctive customs, field of study or way of life, what is baptism actually doing? And it ignores the central issue of discipleship, which in one form or another is a key thought in the New Testament, equally well as within the understanding of the Church and the ordinal.
In all these discussions, one important gene appears to be missing: God. The Centre for Church Growth Research takes equally its motto 1 Cor 3.6: 'Paul sowed, Apollos watered but God gave the growth.' In a give-and-take recently, someone suggested to me that this meant at that place was cipher for usa to practise; we but accept to wait to see if God volition do anything. But this is mistaken on 2 counts. Outset, at that place is plenty for us to practice in terms of planting and watering. If Paul had not planted, and Apollos had not watered, it would take been very hard for God to give the growth! There reason there was a crop of xxx, 60 or 100-fold was because the sower had gone out to sow. In discussing my previous article on whether numbers thing, Giles Fraser commented on Twitter:
The purpose of Christianity is to say thank you – and alive in the light of that thanksgiving. That is all we do.
And yet from the NT it is clear that when you are grateful for the harvest, you express that thank you by sowing and watering then that there will be another harvest for others. Just about every time that Jesus heals someone in the gospels, they go away and tell others nearly it, so that they can also know the grace of God for themselves. Not to act is not to be thankful.
But Paul's comment claims something else too, something we need to take with equal seriousness. When seed is sowed and it is watered, God volition give the growth. With God, nothing is impossible—that is, when God is present, it is impossible that nothing volition happen. Growth will come—perhaps non in the means nosotros ever expect, and not at the time we want, but it volition come.
Mayhap the inter-relation betwixt our action and God'south is best expressed not by rowing, but by sailing. Their is work involved in setting the rig, in preparing the boat and hoisting the sails. The boat volition not motion unless the current of air blows—but the air current cannot accident the gunkhole along unless the sailors have made the boat fix.
So we demand both a sense of ruthless cocky-awareness and commitment for the chore of sowing and watering. But we also demand a sense of confident expectation of what God volition practice.
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