Posts Tagged ‘church growth’

Sowing seeds, heedless of where they will fall

July 15, 2023

Pentecost 7 – 2023 (Thoughts)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Marian Free

In the name of God who brought all things from nothing. Amen.

A fear that has accompanied (but not dominated) me for most of my faith life is that the church is going to die. It is going to die because we (the churchgoers) do not do enough. To be explicit: apparently we don’t make worship attractive enough, we don’t sing the right hymns, we don’t offer morning tea, we don’t have enough entry points (craft groups, sports associations etc), or we don’t have a drum kit – the list is endless. From my mid-teens on, I have been party to discussions as to what has caused people to leave the church in droves and what it is that we who remain can do to make the church grow.

People of my generation and upwards are worried about church growth (or lack of it) in part because we have come from a place of complacency and privilege, a place in which church was a part of the social fabric of people’s lives. In the 1950’s and 60’s e7uuen those who were not regular attenders had some sort of connection to the church. They were baptised, married, and buried from a church. They were members of the Guild, took part in working bees, made cakes or cooked sausages for fetes and they sent their children to Sunday School. The wider community upheld a belief in the sacredness of Sundays which meant that there was no competition for people’s time on a Sunday morning.

A lot has changed and, tempted as I am to rehearse all those changes, I will leave it to you to revise all the arguments that have been made on the subject during the last 50 years.

Whatever the reason, we cannot argue with the fact that once full churches are sadly depleted. Churches have been closed, some can only afford part-time priests and some parishes have no priest at all but have combined with a neighbouring parish for priestly oversight.

As our numbers have declined, so our obsession with the situation has grown. Yet, for all our navel gazing and problem solving nothing has substantially changed. If anything, the situation has got worse and, with fewer people in our churches, there are fewer people to address the problem – at least if there is a problem.

By that I mean, that what to us is an issue, might not be an issue at all, that our worry might be misplaced and that our time could be better spent. I say this because it occurs to me that our collective response to decreasing congregations says a great deal about us and what it says is not good. Indeed, our anxiety about the state of the church reveals a deep-seated anxiety that without structures and institutions, God’s ability to act in the lives of those around us is impeded and that without churches to proclaim the gospel there will be no way for people to encounter the living God.

In other words, our fixation with the survival of the church exposes a belief that we feel that we are responsible for God’s presence in the world that we have come to think that without us (without the Church), God will somehow sink into oblivion. How could we be so arrogant, so self-assured, to have convinced ourselves that God’s survival depends on us! What an extraordinary idea! Over the centuries we have come to believe that the Church represents God’s presence in the world and therefore, without the Church God’s efficacy will be severely hampered. Somehow, we have come to the conclusion that God needs our help to exist, that God relies on us to such an extent that our keeping the Church alive (in its present state) is an absolute imperative?

I believe that the parable of the Sower speaks to this situation, relieves us of our sense of responsibility and helps to place things in perspective. Often, when we read the parable (and its explanation) we focus on the fate of the seed and worry about the way in which the word is received according to where the seed falls. However, if we focus on the Sower (whom we take to be God), we can see that the parable asks us to place our trust where it belongs – in God and not in ourselves. In the parable the Sower tosses the precious seed with wild abandon heedless of where it will fall. This Sower is not concerned where the seed will land or whether or not it will take root. The Sower is not troubled by such things as permanency, nor is the Sower trying to build something that will last for millennia. The Sower is simply anxious to spread the seed as widely and generously and possible – confident that what does take root will bear fruit.

In all this the Sower does not ask for help – in the sowing, the nurturing or the harvesting. The Sower does not seem to be concerned about locking in a fixed and unchanging future, but rather is confident that something will happen and relaxed as to how it will happen.

I wonder what would happen if we were able to let go of the burden of maintaining our churches – physical and otherwise – open ourselves to God’s careless abandon, and to see in what new ways God is being revealed in the world today.

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Life and death are one

April 20, 2019

Good Friday – 2019

On Death
Kahlil Gibran
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

The poet recognises, as we sometimes do not, that death is a part of life. Death is a daily reality, albeit one that more often than not we tend to ignore. Because we ignore our ultimate death, we fail to recognise that death is all around us – in the negativity that eats away at us and through us eats away at the world, in the caution that limits our growth and restricts our experience, in the self-centredness that holds us apart from others and makes us seek what is not our own, in the griefs that bind us to the past and in the gradual deterioration of our physical bodies.

If we fail to understand that life and death are one, we will resist the transformative deaths that are part of our every day existence  – the little deaths that lead to growth – the death of self that leads to an openness to others and to the world, the sloughing off of the baggage (resentment, sorrow, anger) that we have carried for too long, the death of longing that leads to dissatisfaction, the death of ambition that causes us to compare ourselves with those around us and the signs of ageing that urge us to slow down and to become more contemplative, more aware of the world around us. All these little deaths prepare us for that final death which frees us from all the restraints of our human condition so that we might live forever.

When we fail to recognise that life and death are one, we separate death from life and we give to death the power to terrify, enthral and enslave us.

Life and death are one.
Jesus defied death’s power and challenged death’s powerful grip over life. Jesus’ victory over death is our victory over death. When death no longer has a hold on us we can accept, even welcome, our daily deaths knowing that they set us free to really live and that they prepare us for a life that endures forever.

Life giving God, when life seems bleak and empty
Let us trust that you will make all things right.

Liberating God, breathe your love and goodness into a world of death and destruction, terror and desperation, aggression and greed. Give hope to the hopeless, courage to the fearful and comfort to those who despair. Help us to build a world in which peace and justice reign, in which all have enough to eat, access to adequate health care and education and freedom to achieve their true potential.

Living God, pour out your blessing on your church throughout the world, especially in such places where her existence is threatened and in which the safety of worshipers cannot be assured.

God of love, be with all those who are marginalized by virtue of their race, their gender or their sexuality, all those who are made or feel that they do not belong because they do not fit what we define as the norm.

God who shared our human existence, stand with the sick and the suffering that they may find assurance in your presence and trust you with their future.

Jesus who conquered the power of death, help us to find life in death and death in life and through all our little deaths to be transformed into your image and worthy of your eternal kingdom.

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Is it all too hard?

August 22, 2015

Pentecost 13 – 2015

John 6:56-69 (loosely) – Is it all too hard?

Marian Free

 In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-463R6_Xbw

We are told that 3m people in the UK say they would come to church if invited.They are not inclined to gate-crash someone else’s private club & so far nobody ever has invited themThe film clip suggests that in the USA 80% of first time church-goers have come because they have responded to an invitation.

Someone I know watches “Family Feud” so I’ve been initiated into that television programme. If you don’t know it, two families compete to guess the most popular answers to a variety of questions such as: “What is the most popular kitchen implement?” Apparently programme organizers have asked a selection of people that question and ranked the answers according to popularity. A member of each family in turn, has to guess the most popular answer. If they guess the highest- ranking answer they get more points than if they guess those at the bottom.

We are going to something like that this morning, but we are only going to have one question: “Why don’t church-goers invite other people to church?” Instead of having two families, we are going to invite you to write down what you think would be the top 5 responses to that question, for each “correct” answer you will score five points.

Here are some of the excuses people offer for not inviting others to church.

  • It might damage my friendship
  • The congregation will think my friend is not ‘our’ type of person
  • My friends are not the right type of people for our church
  • The church is pretty full already – where would they sit?
  • I’m shy so I would find it difficult
  • Faith is a private thing
  • I don’t want to be seen as strange – a Bible basher
  • I wouldn’t know what to say if they asked me hard theological Qs
  • They might ask me why I go to church
  • I suffer in my church services and so would others
  • Our services are unpredictable – I don’t really trust them
  • Our church is boring – it would put my friend off
  • My friend would not want to go
  • I don’t want to be rejected
  • We have no non-churchgoing friends
  • It’s the leaders’ job to fill the church – not mine
  • My friend said ‘no’ when I asked them last year

This list was drawn up by the team behind the programme: “Leading your Church into Growth” – the theme of the latest Clergy Conference.

Did you get more than five? More than 10?

Did you come up with an answer that is not here?

In today’s gospel we hear that a number of Jesus’ disciples turned back and stopped following him it is all too hard, Jesus says to those who remain: “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter’s response is: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Sharing the gospel can be difficult. We can’t always explain what our faith means to us, or answer complex questions but that does not mean that we turn away. Instead of assuming that our friends and families do not want to come to church, why don’t we begin to imagine that they are simply waiting for our invitation. What’s the worst that can happen if we do? What might happen if we don’t?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lsVsXaOsRTQ

We claim to be follows of the one who gives life in the present AND for eternity. Do we really want to keep that to ourselves

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Feeding on Christ

August 15, 2015

Pentecost 12 – 2015

John 6:51-58

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who gives us life in abundance and desires that we share that life with the world. Amen. 

Most of you will have gathered by now that I experience a degree of frustration with regard to the focus on church growth and in particular the time spent in worrying why congregations are declining and the time and money spent on programmes designed to turn the decline around. My concern is that the navel-gazing of the past fifty years has achieved little and has caused us to become inward-looking rather than outward-focussed and that we are more anxious about the survival of the institution of the church than we are with the transmission of the gospel.

I am confident that God will survive with or without the church and will find new ways to make Godself known with or without our assistance. That said, thriving faith communities would ensure that for generations to come, that there will be a place or at least a group to whom people can come to hear the good news, to find spiritual refreshment and to be restored and made whole.

It was interesting therefore to attend the Arnott lecture two weeks ago and to be reminded by Bishop Stephen Cottrell that there are people in the wider community who are yearning for some spiritual connection, who have spiritual thirst that they are longing quench, a hunger they are desperate to satisfy and who are searching for answers in a world that can be isolating, confusing and even hostile.

Last week’s Clergy Conference focussed on Church Growth, but while its proponents did at times seem to be promoting growth for the sake of growth, they too expressed the belief that there are many non-church-goers who are seeking nourishment for their souls, an experience of life that is more satisfying than the material and superficial and a relationship with the utterly other.

The church as a community of faith is in an ideal position to satisfy this longing for meaning, search for depth and hunger for spiritual connection. So why is it that we are in decline? Why is it that those who are seeking turn to other faiths, explore other paths or simply give up the search? Is it because those who are looking for a connection with the sacred do not find it in the church? Is it because it is no longer evident that the church is the place in which spirituality is fed and nurtured? Is it because we have become so comfortable in our faith that we no longer make the effort to work on and to strengthen our relationship with God?

One of the speakers at the Clergy Conference challenged us to ask this question of ourselves and of our congregations: “Where are you with God?” “Where are you with God?” By this he means, “How is your relationship with God?” Are you conscious of the presence of God in your life? Do you nurture your relationship with God through regular prayer, reading God’s word or practicing some form of spiritual discipline? Is your spiritual life sufficiently full and rich that it spills over to enrich and enhance the lives of those around you? In other words are we feeding our own spiritual lives such that we have plenty with which to feed others?

In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds his listeners that he is the bread of life and he challenges them to feed on him, to so take him into themselves, into their lives, that they become a part of him and they of him.

If we really want to turn the church around perhaps we should stop looking for external reasons for the decline in numbers and begin looking at ourselves and the way we practice of our faith. We will have to stop looking back to the golden era of our past, stop believing that the faith is somehow passed on by osmosis or hoping that the right programme, the right youth leader or the ideal priest will turn things around.

The health of the church as a whole is the responsibility of every member of the church. That means that each of us needs to ask ourselves what we are doing about our own spiritual health; to question whether we are really feeding on the bread of life, continually re-fuelling our faith, allowing our relationship with Jesus to be constantly re-energised and enlivened and remind ourselves on a regular basis not only of what we believe, but of the benefits of being in a relationship with the living God.

Are we day by day allowing ourselves to abide in Jesus and allowing Jesus to abide in us?

I believe that the church will grow because we are energised by our faith, because the joy we experience is palpable, because we demonstrate in our own lives God’s unconditional love and because our experience of Jesus as the bread of life fills our longing for meaning and inspires us to share that meaning with those in our community who hunger and thirst for something more.

As you come to the altar this morning, as you take into your very selves the life-giving presence of Jesus, allow yourselves to be changed and transformed by the bread of life, let the Spirit of God burn within you and the creative energy of God inspire you. May our lives overflow with the knowledge and love of God – the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier – such that we cannot help but bring healing to those who are broken, provide direction to those who have lost their way and be a beacon of hope in a world that sometimes seems devoid of meaning.

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How does your garden grow?

June 13, 2015

Pentecost 3 – 2015

Mark 4:26-34

Marian Free

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen. 

For at least the last forty-five years I have been involved in discussions about the future of the church. In particular, I have observed and been party to a lot of navel gazing in relation to declining attendance on Sundays and a variety of suggestions as to how we might halt that decline. Numerous reasons have been offered for this parlous state of affairs – women returning to the workforce, television, Sunday sport and Sunday trading – to mention a just a few. The liturgy has also been blamed for a downturn in attendance. In particular, there are those who express a concern that our form of worship doesn’t appeal to young people. As a consequence there have been a variety of attempts to address this problem, ranging from Folk Masses in the 60’s to Twitter Masses in the last decade.

Focus on the liturgy has not been the only response to this perceived crisis in the life of the church. Programme after programme has been rolled out, each with a degree of optimism that suggests that this time we have the right formula and one that will bring people back to the church. Sadly, over time, these programmes fall into disuse and distant memory as they fail to live up to their promise. Church attendance remains at best static and worse continues to decline.

The cynic in me wonders whether our concern with church attendance has more to do with maintaining the institution of the church than it does with spreading the gospel message, more to do with us and less to do with God. At the very least it implies that without our help God will simply fade into insignificance, that without the church there will be no God!

A perusal of the Gospels reveals that, unlike us, Jesus was not concerned with the religious practice of the people – how often they went to the Temple, or whether or not they attended the synagogue on a regular basis. Jesus seems to be more concerned that the crowds understand the liberating power of the gospel. The Gospels record that Jesus set people free from their diseases and infirmities; he released them from the power of evil spirits and he liberated them from a false understanding of the scriptures and from the misleading teaching of the leaders of the church. Above all, Jesus was concerned that the people fully understood the nature of the Kingdom of God (or heaven).

Jesus himself proclaimed that the Kingdom of God had come near (Mark 1:15) and when Jesus sent out the disciples, he gave them authority over unclean spirits. The disciples proclaimed repentance, cast out demons and anointed and cured the sick (Mk 6:6-13). They did not concern themselves with filling church (synagogue) pews.

Jesus’ primary concern was the Kingdom of God and most of the parables relate to this theme. These parables begin: “The Kingdom of God is like – a sower, a seed, a woman, a shepherd ..”. From all of these images, his listeners were able to build a picture of the kingdom of God in which the lost are sought and found, growth is secret and more abundant than expected, weeds will grow together with the wheat, debts are forgiven and the first will be last. Moreover, the kingdom will be worth more than everything that we own and we will give all that we have to possess it.

The parables do not say or even imply that the Kingdom of God will consist of full churches or of dioceses that are financially secure. The signs of the Kingdom are much more subtle and unexpected. More than that the Kingdom, according to Jesus, is not ours to build, but always God’s. It is the Kingdom of God, not the kingdom of the church and of church-goers. We seem to have convinced ourselves that the Kingdom is entirely dependent on the existence of the church and lost sight of whose Kingdom it is and that we expend far too much time concerned with the survival of the institution of the church and far too little time announcing the kingdom of God as an alternative to the kingdom of this world.

This morning’s parables are particularly challenging in a climate that is focused on church growth. The first, the parable of the sower, is a stark reminder that the growth of the Kingdom is entirely determined by God and not by human effort (‘the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how’). The second, the parable of the mustard seed, confronts us with the idea that to an untrained eye the Kingdom might look like an insignificant herb or weed – nothing like the images that “Kingdom” usually calls to mind. In other words, whatever the Kingdom is, it will not be as we expect.

In the light of these parables, perhaps it is time that we, the church, stopped looking inwards, trying to tweak what we do on a Sunday morning so that it becomes more attractive to more people; time that we moved out from our beautiful buildings into the communities around us; time that, instead of trying to persuade people to come to us that, we found ways to set people free from the chains of individualism, consumerism, ambition, from oppression, injustice and violence.

Above all it is time to take a deep breath and to remember that it is God (not us) who will cause the Kingdom of God to grow and that in ways that we may not see or understand. It is time to recall that the Kingdom that will be unlike any other Kingdom that has preceded it. If we cannot imagine it, we certainly cannot build it. In other words, perhaps it is time to relax, to stop struggling for survival; to let go and let God and then to watch in amazement to see what God will do and then to go wherever God may take us.

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