I have tried to put into words my journey, thoughts and observations. Despite all the inherent limitations and flaws of these, I suggest some starting points for discussion and response.  It is an effort to make sense: to look for God’s creative work in our motley collection of shells!

 

In our area I believe the conditions are right to start a journey of change. It is not about great ecumenical projects; it is not about changing structures.  Rather, it is about a gradual sea-change in attitudes and on-the-ground processes:   another place in the same land.  These start with the individual.

 

The personal end of the equation

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1. I am aware that some will see the archetype scenario of ‘competing supermarket churches’ as positive. It is about diversity and choice and may attract more ordinary people to attend church.  If churches fail then it can be argued that this is all part of God’s wider picture. Others may also disagree somewhat with my contention that small churches are moving into a terminal crisis.  Yet others may agree but feel there is nothing we can do to modify how we ’do church’.  My response is to ask for a realistic, but not pessimistic, prayerful evaluation without falling into the trap of ‘perceptive blindness’. It would be relatively easy to survey areas to test out my assertions about church membership.

 

2. There is already a wonderful move to pray.  Perhaps this should be supplemented by a call to lament?  Acknowledgement that things are not good enough has to precede improvement.  Prayer for ourselves and specific prayer for our communities is our start point.  But prayer is not an isolated mind exercise: it is a deep communication with the Lord, arising from desire. If that desire has any depth at all, it will naturally manifest itself in our ordinary attitudes and behaviours.

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Individual churches

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3. Individual churches and their leaders have a huge role in raising the profile of these personal dynamics. Perhaps we should set explicit and targeted goals in our prayer, teaching and training to ‘up-grade’ our membership in terms of their personal spirituality, active participation and engagement in mission. Perhaps we need to review the techniques we use to achieve this? With a larger focussed and engaged core membership things will happen if they are managed and directed appropriately. Implicit is the need to come to terms with people turning away, as they did with Jesus, when the going is tough or the demands become greater.  Jesus concentrated on the few.

 

4. Perhaps individual churches can make a conscious move away from the ‘my church syndrome’ by taking a critical look at their culture. Have they gradually slipped into a myopic condition in this respect?  Have they got enthusiastic practical programmes for mission which other local Christians could be invited in to join? Is their cultural expression of their faith too extreme to allow other Christians to feel comfortable working with them? Have they anything to learn from the student world and para-church organisations that ‘manage’ their peripheral theology and their culture to facilitate following Christ’s objectives in focussed unity?  Can they earn the right to be a genuine neighbourhood church?

 

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Individual churches working together in new ways

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1. In 80%+ of their activities, churches behave as though their neighbouring churches were on a different planet.  Try calculating objectively what degree of truth, if any, is in that statement in respect of your church!

 

2. There are enough churches in our area theologically more or less on the same page, for them to work together in small groups to start to sustain and help each other in their mission to their communities. We have to respond, under the Lord, to the demographic realities of these communities. Something has to change.  A new mindset: how can we maximise efficiency, effectiveness in localised outcomes by sharing what we already do?!

 

3. Already, some local Anglican churches are experimenting with a shared youth initiative. The biggest driver of this was probably survival but how much more powerful would it have been if this had been interdenominational and the larger churches had also joined in?

4. Churches could work together in specialist areas. For example: if 3, 4 or 5 churches each supplied one or two people to develop a bereavement team for the area that could support ministers with in-depth ministry tied into the church of that community ….. what potential!  With imagination we could develop shared but localised resources with the ability to make a real impact in key areas of need.  Similarly:  could we not have a single holiday club team doing a sort of roadshow mission at a series of different churches for a holiday club week or so culminating in something special for that area / small group of churches?  This could be an initiative much better resourced and effective than a single church could sustain.

 

5. It is also possible to share a focussed training programmes or even a residential.   CTOD has done similar things over Lent but if a small geographic group of churches suspended their home groups or whatever for six weeks and engaged in a shared mission directed training course, this could unlock some significant attitude and process changes.  In these ways and many other ways we could work to mitigate the problems of small church and manage appropriately specialist provisions that are currently unsustainable. In this the larger churches are potentially resource links for smaller churches in smaller communities.

 

6. Frequently church is about authority and control. These things are important but they are deeply vulnerable to the positive/negative continuum.   Do these elements stray into the negative becoming anti-task in Christ’s mission?  If churches begin to work together this is the first place where the rubber hits the road. However, by avoiding structural change and concentrating on step by step attitudes and processes, life is a lot easier.  Nevertheless, trust and mutual obedience to the Lord’s direction is crucial.   Giving out and letting go for large churches is obviously costly and hard.  However, the dynamics of receiving are subtle and equally tough. The processes of someone entering your space and helping you move on are probably much harder.

 

7. For small groups of churches, large and small, to have the courage to travel in the direction of shared ministries in mission requires a major attitude shift. This is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process.  Lay people and clergy need to ask questions to review our focus. From the outside looking in, what are our churches about as measured by what we actually do?  What is the community /network mix?   Are we about religious brands?  What are our dominant drivers: Jesus, personal need, finance, control or …..?  Whose church is it anyway?

 

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Where does this leave current church co-operation and shared initiatives? Surely a move to shared and focussed local community initiatives could be hugely invigorating and release new potentials in our existing collaborative ventures?  Modified attitudes could change all sorts of dynamics.  Dipping a toe here and there in a step by step process could gradually enable the dream of a sea-change in attitude and process.