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Other sundries
As it’s Sunday (ahem) here’s a little piece from the Guardian, albeit from a week ago:
How to get the punters in the pews.
(There’s a part of me that keeps on wanting it to be ‘into’ the pews as ‘getting them in the pews’ sounds a little unkind, but that’s an aside.)
So, is extemporary prayer and clergy in jumpers the way to go?
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posted on Sunday, June 12th, 2005 at 11:15 pm. Click here to read all of the latest posts.
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It’s a very one sided article, where the pastor seems to just be describing his own church and putting it forward as the right way to go. I far prefer people like Bob Jackson, whose book “Hope for the Church” outlines much more intelligent ways at looking at the statistics. It is referring largely to the anglican church, but it draws on the efforts made by other denominations to reverse decline and observes their stats also. For example I assumed that the only churches that would have grown in the last decade were those evangelical ones, but I was wrong. All traditions were pretty much equal, with things like process evangelism being done on all sides of the spectrum.
I don’t think what clergy wear matters a huge amount, it is what they say and what sort of person they are that matters. Did you know that the majority of a church will be of an age within 10 years of the pastor? I think that if I were to be commenting on which churches were growing, I would say those churches which employed a keen eye for human resources, and put a lot of money and effort into supporting their pastors, far more than I would comment on their attire.
Sorry, church strategy is a hobby of mine!
I was thinking along the same sort of lines Tiffer, I have to say. There is an element within the Evangelical church which likes to push the idea that Evangelical churches are growing whilst others aren’t, whereas as you say this really isn’t the case. Though to be fair this article is only saying so by implication – there are a number of bloggers for instance who argue the point rather less kindly.
I might contact the author and see if he’d like to respond.
As an aside, I’d like to comment on this sentence:
“it draws on the efforts made by other denominations to reverse decline and observes their stats also”.
You leave me confused at your comment on my beautifully constructed piece of English Grammar. Raa.
Yes I agree, the guy writing this article is more tactful that some. He uses words like “usually” and “probably” which always avoid offense. My rector has a habit of saying “don’t we” or “shouldn’t we” after he has made some sweeping statement about us as a church, or community. I tried it once or twice during preaching but I just come across as a bit of a pansy, he does it much better.
The book in question talks about how well the Baptist (with a big B) churches have done with changing their ways of doing things to match the culture recently, but also how bad the methodists are doing. So the anglican church is at least ahead of someone!
The point about the use of the Bible is also an interesting one. The non-evangelical church I attended until a month or two ago would certainly see the Bible as ‘something that needs to be engaged with, not simply read and then left’. But the emphases and the conclusions reached might be rather different to those one might find in the sort of church the writer of this article has in mind. If anything I have sometimes found the Bible was taken more seriously in non-Evangelical churches as the hard questions were tackled rather than being passed by as being unimportant. But once again, generalisations.
I have now e-mailed the author – hopefully he might pop in and make a response.
[My point about 'also' at the end of the sentence is... well, I'm not really sure. I'm trying to stir up a debate on what I believe is one of the contentious issues of our day. I thought I'd point out your concluding 'also' as an example of the phenomenon 'in the wild'.]
On this side of the big water… well, on the far northern part of this side of the big water… hockey is “The Game”.
A few of us in the congregation with whom I serve have been heading over to the ice rink early on Sunday morning. The town gave us permission to use one of the empty rooms for worship – so we offer a few half-hour services, before we head to the church to get ready for Sunday worship there.
Now I’m thinking about talking with the local golf club to see if they’d let us do the same thing.
Your blog is great!
