Talking About Jesus - Would It Be Better If We Didn't?

Talking Jesus this week published a survey of just over 2500 'normal' people and 1500 Christians. The findings are going to General Synod later this month.

Here are the questions the research was trying to get at:
What do people in this nation know and believe about Jesus? What do they really think of us, his followers? Are we talking about Jesus enough? And when we are, are we drawing people closer towards him, or further away?

The work was a joint project between the CofE, Evangelical Alliance, and other Christian agencies. Some of the findings:
 - 40% of the general population believe the Bible is God's word
 - 60% think Jesus really existed, 25% of under-35s think he is a fictional character
 - 21% think he was God, the majority believe Jesus was a spiritual leader/normal human being
 - just over 40% think Jesus was raised from the dead

A key focus of the survey was evangelism, how Christians are seen and how we share (or don't share) our faith:
- 2/3 of people know a 'practising Christian', and 60% of them enjoy that persons company. That means 40% don't/didn't know
- When asked to describe their Christian friend/acquaintance, positive characterstics scored much higher than negative ones (hooray!) - caring, friendly, generous, good-humoured were all about 5x more common than hypocritical, narrow minded, uptight and foolish.

Here's the really worrying bit: the majority of Christians feel comfortable to some degree in talking to others about Jesus, look for opportunities to do so, and have done so in the last month. But as for the fruits.....
 More than half of English non-Christians who know a Christian (58%) have had a conversation with them about Jesus. Younger adults 18 to 34 (61%) are somewhat more likely than adults over 35 (54%) to report having had such a conversation. Two out of every five non-Christians say evangelism made them glad not to be a Christian (42%). Another two in five don’t know how they felt about it (42%), while only 16 per cent felt sad, after the conversation about Jesus, that they did not share the Christian’s faith. 

 When Christians talk about Jesus, the response is mixed. One in five non-Christians say they, after such a conversation, felt open to an experience or encounter with Jesus. But almost half say they were not open to such an experience (49%) and six in 10 didn’t want to know more about Jesus (59%). One in five did want to know more (19%); 16 per cent felt sad that they did not share the Christian’s faith; nearly one-quarter felt more positive about Jesus (23%) or felt closer to the Christian with whom they had the conversation (26%).

Whilst Christians who share their faith feel positive about having done so, the clear majority of those on the receiving end are turned off Christian faith, and the one telling them about it, by the experience. Christians think that the effects of their talking about Jesus is positive, but that's not what most of their hearers think. 

The recommendations from the survey don't reflect any of this. They pick up on some of the positives (that there are millions who believe Jesus was real, was God and rose from the dead, but haven't joined the dots, that Christians are generally seen in a positive light), but there is nothing that addresses our inability to share our faith in a helpful way in the majority of cases. Though the full report mentions a goal of (enabling) Christians to have millions more sensitive, positive, culturally-relevant conversations about Jesus that could be deeply effective in evangelism, I don't actually see anything that explores what sensitivity and cultural relevance look like. 

For many Christians, talking with a friend about their faith and about Jesus is a key part of their journey into faith. Sadly it sounds like for many non-Christians, such a conversation could also be a key part of their journeying away from faith. The solution is not to stop talking about Jesus, but to find out how to do it well, in a sensitive and relevant way.

There are many encouraging findings in the report, but I wish that there was a bit more engagement with the discouraging ones. I'm with Andrew Brown - there's no point encouraging more of us to talk about Jesus if we're not doing it very well. It's very helpful research, and the powerpoint summaries are really useful, but there's no point doing the research if we ignore one of the key findings. 

The Spirituality Spectrum: 21st century believing

The University of Exeter published some research earlier this week on evolving attitudes among those born in 1970. Here's the analysis of their views on religion and faith, with analysis by Prof David Voas (who's also been involved in some of the CofE research recently). More details plus a link to the full research here.

Professor Voas concludes that it would be more meaningful to allocate people to one of seven categories:

• Non-religious (28% of the 1970-born cohort): Does not have a religion or believe in either God or life after death.
• Unorthodox non-religious (21%): Does not have a religion or does not attend services. Believes in God or life after death but not both.
• Actively religious (15%): Has a religion and believes in God and life after death. Attends services.
• Non-practising religious (14%): Has a religion and believes in God and life after death. Does not attend services.
• Non-identifying believers (10%): Does not have a religion, but believes in God and life after death.
• Nominally religious (7%): Identifies with a religion. But believes in neither God nor life after death.
• Unorthodox religious (5%): Has a religion and attends services at least occasionally. Believes in God but not life after death (or, in a few cases, vice versa).

It's a fascinating spectrum, and a reminder that the UK doesn't have a simple Christian/atheist binary option (if it ever did). On first sight it reminded me of the current political opinion polls, a spectrum of identities with no one block claiming a significant or decisive percentage. 

What I'd love to see is some way of tracking how people end up at these points. The research suggests that the stronger your religious upbringing, the more likely you are to have a faith now, and be practicing it. No surprise there. But how do you end up as an agnostic who believes in God and life after death. Or a Christian who doesn't believe in either?

It's a reminder that we can't pigeon hole people, everyone's faith is part of their life story, not everyone in church will believe the same thing, nor will everyone at a Richard Dawkins book signing. People need to be listened to, rather than lumped together, 

The report also notes that men are much less likely to identify with a faith than women. Another challenge. Given that Jesus started with a bunch of blokes, the church has to ask itself what we've lost of authentic Christianity that the majority of men don't see Jesus as any of their business, or themselves as any of His.

Vicars - A Great Resource Squandered?

A major survey of clergy views on a range of issues has just been published, covering everything from austerity to the parish system, immigration to assisted suicide. Full tables are here, press release from Linda Woodhead here, and a helpful summary at British Religion in Numbers.

There are various fascinating bits of detail, e.g. a much higher concentration of liberal clergy in Cathedrals. The bit that caught my eye was this question:

Based on your experience, do you feel that the Church of England is generally good or bad at identifying and supporting clergy’s talents, gifts and initiatives?

Bad 16%
Quite Bad 33%
Neither Good nor Bad 20%
Quite Good 25%
Good 3%

Women were slightly more likely to rate the CofE better, as were younger clergy, and those ordained in the last 14 years, since 2001. The only subgroup in the stats who gave a net 'good' rating were Archdeacons and Bishops. Well, you would wouldn't you, if you were the ones who had the main responsibility for 'supporting clergy talents, gifts and initiatives'. (And this makes the problem worse - those who are mainly responsible for supporting clergy, or for making sure the support is there if they don't directly provide it themselves, actually think they're doing a good job)

This is a shocker, to say the least. About 70% of our budget goes on clergy, but only 1/4 of those clergy feel that their talents, gifts and initiatives are well supported by the church. Almost 50% feel unsupported to some degree or another. If half of your main workforce aren't being supported and resourced in using their talents and gifts, then it not surprising the whole enterprise is struggling.

Mind you, it would be interesting to see a similar survey of CofE laity. I don't recall any training in my 4 years at theological college on how to recognise and support the talents and gifts of my congregation. Though a key part of leadership is spotting, nurturing and deploying talent, we are still wedded to a vicar-does-everything model. In some places, it's the laity who are more determined to maintain it than the clergy. For a great post on what a gift-affirming church could look like (but doesn't) read this at Learning to Float.

Though a lot of the comment on this survey will focus on split views on same-sex marriage, or on whether the church can/should 'disagree well', this is a stat that needs close and sustained attention. If we really are failing 50% of our frontline paid staff then the CofE needs to look long and hard at how it supports us, and helps us to support others.

Vicars: Personality Type and Church Growth

I'm working my way through some of the material from last months Church Growth Research Programme report, and came across something quite startling, though so far little reported. The slides from David Voas presentation on numerical growth have lots of helpful charts on different factors in church growth. There are a couple on the personality type of clergy.

Most of us who've been through vicar factory have probably done a Myers-Briggs test or three. If you don't know it, the test explores 4 aspects of personality (here's my rough summary):

• Extravert/Introvert - are you energised by the outer world and other people, or the inner world
• Intuitive/Sensing - do you look at the big picture, possibilities, and process information with your imagination, or do you look at the details, the present and the empirical facts.
• Thinking/Feeling - do you process information through logic and reason, or through relationships and how people will be affected.
• Judging/Percieving - do you like to organise things and plan them, or take things as they are and go with the flow.

The startling finding is this: "Growth is associated with E(xtravert) and N (intuitive). The combination of E and N is particularly effective. I-S clergy are three times as likely to preside over decline as substantial growth, E-N clergy are twice as likely to experience substantial growth as decline"

Extraverts will tend to do more motivating and enthusing of people, and here is the correlation in the research between 'motivating' (generating enthusiasm and inspiring people to action) as a personality quality for the vicar, and how much their church has grown, or not.

And here is the chart for '"Envisioning" (having a clear vision for the future and being focused on achieving it" (which is principally an 'Intuitive' quality)

Alternatively, being 'empathic' and 'persisting' were identified as 2 qualities which don't make for church growth. Both are good qualities, but if 'persisting' becomes 'inflexible' and 'empathic' becomes 'don't do anything that will upset people" then its easy to see how a church can get stuck. 

They are also two qualities which link at a very deep level to the culture of the CofE and the way it has traditionally seen ministry. I remember a visit to a senior CofE cleric who suggested that if I wasn't motivated principally by doing house visits to the sick (pastoral care) and saying my prayers according to the daily office (persistence) then perhaps I didn't belong in the Anglican church. Do we have a serious cultural problem here?

I don't believe that these charts simply sanction lack of 'empathy' or 'persistence' - you need persistence to see a vision through, and you need empathy to love people. But perhaps the role of the leader is to make sure that good pastoral care is going on, rather than doing it all themselves. For the Anglican church to grow, so that we can keep saying our prayers and loving people, we need more leaders who don't fit the current mould.

As an extrovert (I blog, what did you expect?) intuitive, I find this all quite encouraging. But what does it mean for people who are wired differently? One of the other qualities strongly correlated with growth is 'reflection' - the ability to evaluate what you're doing and change/improve it. That's something introverts should be good at. And maybe it also encourages us to think about leadership teams, rather than vicars alone, and enabling lay leadership with the qualities which we ourselves lack. We have both a lay pastoral team, and visionary/motivating leadership on a new building project, also led by a lay member of the church. 

Final note of caution: the figures above are based on the leaders own reports of whether their churches are growing or declining. You'll notice that it looks like the majority of churches in the survey are growing, which clearly isn't the Anglican reality. So the stats may be less stark, but they're still significant.

update: plenty of debate in response to this on Twitter, if you can make sense of it!

update 2 good reflections from Jody Stowell on what constitutes good leadership. Makes the important point that a good leader is reflective, which is also made in the research, and that's not always what comes naturally to Extraverts.

Church Growth Research Findings published today

The Faith in Research conference today will showcase the findings of the CofE's 'Church Growth Research Programme'. Looking again at the strands of the research, I wonder if some of this was behind Justin Welbys new year comments on growing churches. If quality of local leadership is found to be a key factor in church growth, then the dots are fairly easy to join.

There is the inevitable hashtag, so you can follow the conference via #FIRChurchGrowth, or the Church Growth R&D twitter account.

update: and here's the report of findings.

Researchers have concluded that, while there is no single recipe, there are common ingredients strongly associated* with growth in churches of any size, place or context. 

•  Good leadership
•  A clear mission and purpose
•  Willingness to self-reflect, to change and adapt according to context
•  Involvement of lay members
•  Being intentional in prioritising growth
•  Being intentional in chosen style of worship
•  Being intentional in nurturing disciples
• All of the above are linked to growing churches

I get the feeling Justin Welby knew all this when he was speaking on New Years Eve.....

nice little graphic on the Fresh Expressions research:

and a fairly lengthy press release from the CofE here.

CofE Church Growth Research: The Findings

...will be announced at this conference in January

Here's some of the blurb:

This exciting conference will provide you with an early overview of the findings from a major 18- month research programme investigating factors related to church growth within the Church of England. This will include results from a survey of over 1,700 churches, a detailed study of Fresh Expressions in 12 dioceses and a study focused on factors related to growth at cathedrals and greater churches. You will gain from the conference:

 - An overview of what we can say about church growth from the data which the national Church already holds and which has been collected during the research.
- Insight into some of the challenges involved with researching church growth.
- Practical suggestions of how both diocesan leadership teams and those working on the ground in parishes, fresh expressions and cathedrals might seek to encourage church growth.
- A chance to discuss and debate the findings: including their relevance to your situation.
- An honest assessment of what we still do not know and of where we might go from here.

looks good.

Church Growth Research Findings - CofE Conference

The CofE's new Church Growth Research Project will be reporting back early in 2014 at a special 1-day conference in London. Here's some blurb:

Faith in Research Church Growth Research Conference 2014

Thursday 16th January 2014 at Hotel Russell, London 9:30-16:30

This exciting conference will provide you with an early overview of the findings from a major 18 month research programme investigating factors related to church growth within the Church of England. This will include results from a survey of over 1,700 churches, a detailed study of Fresh Expressions in 12 dioceses and a study focused on factors related to growth at cathedrals and greater churches. You will gain from the conference:

 - An overview of what we can say about church growth from the data which the national Church already holds and which has been collected during the research.
 - Insight into some of the challenges involved with researching church growth.
 - Practical suggestions of how both diocesan leadership teams and those working on the ground in parishes, fresh expressions and cathedrals might seek to encourage church growth. 
 - A chance to discuss and debate the findings: including their relevance to your situation.
 - An honest assessment of what we still do not know and of where we might go from here.

Full details, including how to book, here.

Mission to new housing areas: what works?

...a question I'm very interested in, given that it's a major thread of my work here in Yeovil. The Church of Englands new 'Church Growth Research' unit has commissioned a piece of work to evaluate the CofE's engagement with new housing areas in recent years, particularly in the 14 Dioceses which have received national funding to support mission work in new developments.

Some of the key factors in the evaluation include:

• The extent and effectiveness of support and training provided by dioceses for the local projects/posts being funded; 
• Whether any common factors are emerging which are contributing to (or hindering) the success of pioneer and other outreach posts(e.g. supporting team in place; links to parish church, being resident on or near the new development s/he is serving; access to community facilities; access to facilities for worship; length of term of appointment for post-holders);
• Whether and how community engagement initiatives through the projects/post-holders being funded are translating into new Christian disciples;

looks like a helpful piece of work, and I'm delighted to hear that it'll be reporting back in March 2014, a lightening-fast timescale for the CofE.

Church of England attendance stats 2011

The C of E attendance stats for 2011 are published today, 3 months later than normal, but looking at the main document that's not surprising - there's quite a lot of detail and extra number crunching involved. A few headlines

 - Average Sunday attendance fell by 1.2%, but average weekly attendance (i.e. including midweek services too) was broadly flat, dropping 0.3%. 18 Dioceses out of 44 registered an increase in the weekly attendance figure, with a further 3 stable year on year. Compared to recent history, that's an improvement.

 - Midweek attendance is therefore actually rising - 13% of regular worshipping adults now attend midweek, rather than on Sunday, among young people and children the figure is 38%. In itself that's an interesting one: what connections are there between the midweek and Sunday congregations? How do we integrate young people and children who've grown up in a separate expression of 'church' to Sunday morning, or do we not, and develop church as a group of networked congregations?

 - Christmas attendance rose strongly - not surprising after the poor weather in 2010, and so did the number of baptisms. Encouragingly, adult baptisms were also up by 5%, though confirmations were down.

Here's some of the press release:

Christmas 2011 drew 14.5% more worshippers to Church of England services than attended in 2010, reaching a total of 2,618,030. Whilst one of the factors for such a high annual increase include the poor weather on Christmas Day in the previous year 2010, initial returns from 2012 suggest a further increase in Christmas attendance on these high 2011 figures revealing a growing trend for church going at Christmas.

The number of christenings increased by 4.3% and was accompanied by a rise of just over 5% in adult baptisms with a combined total of 139,751 baptisms - meaning that the Church of England conducted an average of over 2,600 baptisms each week during 2011. Thanksgivings for the birth of a child also rose; an 11.9% increase taking numbers to 6,582.

Average Weekly Attendance nationally fell by less than half of one per cent (0.3%) to 1,091,484 a stabilising of average weekly attendance figures. Almost half of the Church of England's regional areas saw growth in Church attendance, with 20 out of 44 dioceses showing increases. Nationally there was a 1.2% increase in children and young people attending to 216,928.

Weddings saw a slight decrease of 3.6% in 2011, to 51,880, whilst the number of wedding blessings (Services of Prayer and Thanksgiving following a civil ceremony) was up by 4.5%. The wedding figures confirm the trend of the past decade where the Church of England married an average of 1,000 couples every week.

Church of England Clergy and lay ministers conducted 162,526 funerals in 2011, a fall of 2.8% on the previous year, reflecting figures from the Office for National Statistics which showed a fall of 1.8% in deaths in England and Wales in 2011. On these figures the Church of England conducted an average of over 3,000 funerals every week in 2011 - over 400 every day.

The CofE tends to highlight the positive - don't we all? - but I hope someone is looking at the long term trends. Having one years' statistics - a slight rise here, a slight drop there - doesn't give you the overview of longer trends, though to be fair the main document has a few tables showing the longer term profile of the stats. 

The stats of a single year are manageable, but they can mask other things. For example: you wouldn't guess from the Christmas attendance this year that we're still 15% down on 5 years ago, and with 20% fewer communicants - which suggests a lot of people attending who don't really understand what's going on. (and why would they?). (update: an alternative explanation is that non-communion services are more popular, rather than people attending Midnight Mass but skipping the bread and wine, see the comments)

If time permits in the next couple of days, I'll do some Diocesan tables on attendance, hopefully they'll look better than the last lot, but you never can tell. The figures for my own diocese are, once again, not very encouraging, so if you're the praying sort then please pray for the appointment process of a new bishop who can help us turn this around.

Future of Britain Report: a Tick for the Archbishop and an Opportunity for the Church.

The recently published 'Future of Britain' report backs up Justin Welbys comments about the recession being a depression. Page 1 of the report claims that the results:

“support the suggestion that Britain has entered a depression as far as our outlook and expectations are concerned”

There are all sorts of fascinating things in the report - unfortunately not available online at time of writing, but if you email them for the findings then they seem pretty helpful. Here are a few of them, and some comments...

1. Mindful consumers
One of the effects of the recession has been to make people think again about how and where they spend their money:

We have fallen out with big companies. We no longer trust them, we don’t want to work for them and we’d much rather deal with local, ethical, established community-focussed businesses. (emphasis mine). 

If you swap 'business' for 'organisation', then that sounds like quite an accurate description of a local church, or at least of a local church that's doing a good job. So perhaps there is an opportunity here to reconnect with people. 

2. Flexible working and living
In another section, there are questions about how people see the future, and how jobs, qualifications, residence etc. will shape up. 

-          62% think a job for life is a thing of the past

-          53% see themselves changing jobs every couple of years

-          54% envisage changing where they live in order to get work

-          47% see being self-employed as being more attractive than working for a big company

-          44% think that most jobs in the future will be created by entrepreneurs

This should give churches pause for thought. We are already seeing these trends, but it looks like they are accelerating. How does a 'permanent' church thrive in a place where jobs and residence are temporary? 

A few thoughts:
 - we will have to become much better at welcoming new people into communities, and into churches, and reduce the 'probation' period before folk get the chance to use their gifts and skills in the life of the church
 - with a greater value on autonomy and entrepreneurship, can the church become more enabling, giving people more leadership responsibility and support?
 - is there a place for 'temporary church', pop up congregations which aren't designed to last forever? Do we need a few more tents and a few less temples?

3. Good Company
And finally: part of the survey looked at what sort of businesses we would like to work for, or deal with as customers. The first affects how we look at ministry, the second how we look at outreach:

The Ideal Job: is one that is secure, fun, relaxed, financially rewarding and flexible. Given that we're dealing with a lot of volunteers, so the 'financially rewarding' isn't such a big part, is this how are churches are to work or volunteer for?

The Ideal Company to buy from is one that is ethical, flexible, well known, secure, established and local. I personally think that or church is probably more flexible than it appears, and think we score fairly high across the board. A good local church fits very well the profile of the kind of company/business/organisation that people like to engage with as customers. 

Again, there is an opportunity here. Maybe what is missing is that church engagement with most people is based on our issues rather than theirs. The Bible is packed with teaching about wellbeing, finance, ethics, community, environment etc., all the issues that people say they care about. But how often are we heard talking about these things? Nobody else will do this for us - the media reporting of this report is evidence enough: 2 newspapers used it to sneer at the church, whilst failing to mention that the church is 6 times more trusted than the media. 


the findings are based on interviews with over 2000 adults. 

Google vs The Church of England?

According to some media reports earlier this week, a new study had revealed that Google was more trusted than the Church of England. The reality, of course, is much more interesting than what you read in the media. 

The question is part of a bigger study Future of Britain, put together by the OMD consultancy (no, not that OMD). There's lots of other material in the report which I'll blog on in the next few days, but here's the full set of answers to that Google question. 

To what extent do you feel each of the following types of business have your interests at heart? (top 3)

The NHS 37%

Police 26%

Big charities 21%

Supermarkets 19%

Google 17%

Religious institutions 17%

building societies 15%

local authorities 10%

private healthcare companies 9%

Facebook 9%

legal profession 8%

Banks 7%

The media 6%

utility companies 6%

Insurance companies 5%

political parties 3%

There are quite a few interesting findings here:

 - The NHS being top isn't a surprise, it is our national religion after all.

 - Despite the bad press over pricing, undercutting other retailers, horse meat etc., supermarkets have done surprisingly well. 

 - Google comes across as the oddity - religious institutions are pretty much level with building societies, supermarkets and charities. 

 - What a surprise that the media reports didn't mention that hardly anyone thinks the media has their best interests at heart. 

The report isn't available online, but if you email them and ask nicely....

Update: There appears to be a bit of doublethink going on too: 100% of the respondents to the survey disagreed with the statement "large multinational retailers are reliable and I trust them". If that's how people feel about Wal-mart, Tesco etc., then it's quite hard to see how, logically, you would also think these organisations had your best interests at heart.

Fresh Expressions - encouraging research on CofE church planting

Claire Dalpra, researcher at the Sheffield Centre, talking about research on Fresh Expressions recently done in 3 Anglican dioceses. Some of the key findings she mentions:

 - Out of every 5 members of a 'fresh expression', 1 was already a Christian, 2 are 'de-churched' (people who have been part of a church, dropped out, and now rejoined through the FX) and 2 had no church background at all. So they are clearly working in reaching folk not reached by traditional churches.

 - Fresh Expressions are being established in all sorts of different places, from rural to inner city urban, and over 1/3 are from 'central' or 'Anglo-Catholic' parent churches, which shows that anyone can do this, it's not an evangelical preserve.

 - In the 3 Dioceses surveyed, Fresh Expressions make up 20% of their worshipping congregations, and 10% of regular attenders. So a significant part of the CofE is worshipping in newly planted churches.

 - Over 80% have some form of discipleship development, e.g. small groups, mentoring etc.

 - Rates of church planting aren't slacking off - the fact that most were planted in recent years may reflect an attrition rate, that some of the earlier fresh expressions haven't survived.

It would be interesting to compare the closure rate we're prepared to contemplate for new churches compared with ones which have existed for centuries. I know of church plants with 20-30 members which were closed down because they were beyond the resources of the sending parish. But if you applied that logic to 'inherited' churches then over half the churches in my Deanery would be facing the axe.

New Online Library of Mission Research Papers

Yet more blessings upon the Sheffield Centre, who have gone live with an online library of research papers on mission, fresh expressions, emerging church and church planting.

The SCOLER library holds MA and PhD theses, and if you've done one on a relevant topic, it can be uploaded and added in. The portal links to abstracts of each thesis, and the full text where available. I'm already intrigued by Mark Rylands' 'Mission Shaped Cathedral'.

Church Commissioners Results 2011: Mission Questions.

The Church Commissioners today published their results for 2011, with performance slightly under-par, but still pretty good over the longer term. The bit that puzzled me most was this:

£37.7 million (£46.8 million) for parish mission and ministry support, primarily to less-resourced dioceses

£30.8 million (£27.5 million) for supporting bishops, including Archbishops, in their diocesan and national ministries, mainly for staff costs.

The main figure is 2011, with the 2010 figure in brackets. I had a look through the full report to see if there was any reason why support for mission should decline by 20% whilst support for bishops rose 10% at the same time, but couldn't find anything relevant.
 
The report itself gives details of several projects supported by special grant funding, and Andreas Whittam Smith's introduction notes:
 
In Leicester, traditional parochial ministry done to a high standard in the Anglo-Catholic tradition is producing good results. Liverpool Cathedral stages informal services at the same time as traditional ones. In St Andrew’s Clubmoor, church members have developed an impressive array of community projects including debt counselling and a food bank. In North Kensington, St Francis Dalgarno Way will shortly employ a children and families worker in what is a deprived area with a high proportion of young people. And in Worcester, a ministry for young people has been successfully developed despite a lack of parental involvement.
 
From which can be drawn the conclusion that as the Church can grow in such challenging areas, it can succeed anywhere. Nowhere is out of bounds, nowhere is beyond reach. Moreover it seems that different traditions of churchmanship can have equally good results. What mattered above all was the quality of local leadership, clergy and lay people alike, with the diocese providing backing where needed. (my emphasis)

Which begs my question: if this is so, and if this is one of the prime objectives of the Church Commissioners, why is funding declining in this area? Is it because the Dioceses aren't asking for the cash, because projects in new housing areas, are going on the back burner, or some other reason? I'm genuinely bemused. And I can't figure out the 10% rise in bishops costs either.

The other thing of note in the full report is page 11: £12m of Research and Development funding into church growth, including the church growth research project, and putting hefty money to 'help replicate church growth in areas of deprivation'. Watch this space, it's encouraging that the CofE is finally getting to grips with this. I'd love to see a more consistent approach at Diocesan level, but that too is about the 'quality of local leadership'.

Church of England Church Growth Research Project: Update

Tucked away at the end of a recent Research Bulletin from the CofE, are some details of a new research project into church growth:

The church growth research programme will consist of three inter-related strands and these are detailed further below:

Data analysis
As part of the research programme the research team will undertake a careful analysis of the full range of data that is collected by the central church as well as other existing data sets (such as that on deprivation). Work is already underway to prepare the data for analysis. The researchers will then test a range of hypotheses around church growth. They will look at the effect of particular factors whilst attempting to ‘control’ statistically for a range of other factors and interventions and so attempting to overcome the challenge of distinguishing between correlation and causation. There is potential to learn further lessons about what factors are associated with church growth from existing data, however there are some factors worthy of exploration which we do not currently collect data on. The second strand of the programme will seek to address some of these issues.

Church profiling
This strand will involve a survey of 4,000 churches plus some in-depth follow up interviews. Churches will be invited to take part following a careful sampling process to ensure that a wide range of contexts are considered. The surveys will collect a range of data enabling profiling of the factors associated with growing churches.

Cathedrals, Amalgamation of Benefices, Fresh Expressions and Church Planting.
This strand will consider a number of particular structural issues and approaches to mission and ministry and their implications for church growth. One sub-strand will explore factors relating to growth at Cathedrals. Another will look at the implications of various Benefice structures including multi-parish benefices and team ministries for growth. Other sub-strands will seek to explore the impact of Fresh Expressions and other forms of church planting on growth.

It's good to see this up and running, after initially surfacing in January, and a website 'soon' is promised for people wanting updates on the project. Whilst in the end church growth and decline is about people, and the mix of people and places (I heard 2 inspiring examples of this on Wednesday at a diocesan meeting, where the right people have clearly ended up in the right places and God is doing great things), the CofE has at last started taking seriously the masses of data it churns out and working out what to do with it.

The article concludes

This major study of numerical growth in the context of the Church of England should significantly increase understanding of factors related to church growth. In doing so, the programme will provide a range of tools to assist diocesan, national and parish church leaders to equip them in their efforts to grow the church. Linked to this, the research will inform the resource allocation decisions which are taken at all levels of the church. More robust evidence on how particular resource allocations affect the growth of the church should lead to a more effective deployment of the church’s finite (and in some cases shrinking) resources.  Good.

What Sun Readers believe about Prayer and Easter

Fascinating survey for the Sun today on what Britons belive about Easter, prayer, wearing crosses at work, school assemblies etc. 31% of those surveyed belive that prayer works, another 24% are 'not sure'. Roughly 20% pray several times a week or more.

At the same time 75% go to church once a year at best. So a model of outreach based on getting people into church has got some serious limitations.

To take your mind off all that, you could listen to my contribution to BBC local radio here in Somerset, starts about 20 minutes in. Yes, I know I talk fast and say 'um' a lot.

Sad Stats for Synod: Childrens Attendance 1989-2010.

Following on from yesterdays figures for adult attendance, here's the stats on childrens attendance at CofE churches from 1989-2010. I hope that Synod this week can take time away from rearranging the dog collars on our cruise liner, and the usual tittle tattle about Rowan Williams, to ask what this data means for us.

The same riders apply to these figures as to the adult ones: it's 2 different measures for the 2 decades (usual Sunday attendance, then average weekly attendance) and theres a gap for comparison between 1999 and 2000.

The good news is that 15 Dioceses saw childrens numbers grow in the Noughties, which for all except London was a reversal of decline the previous decade. So it is possible to turn things around. Remarkable as it seems from the stats above, Carlisle actually saw some growth from 2000-2010. Yes, the 90s were that bad.

Further good news, 42 out of the 43 dioceses have a better figure for 2000-10 than 1989-99. The bad news is that for the majority of those it still had a '-' in front of it, but at least that's going in the right direction.

And that's about all I can do to cheer you up. At every other level this is catastrophic. If any other sort of organisation had these sorts of stats, we'd be debating a lot more than bonuses. It leave it for others to print off this chart, leave it on every seat at General Synod along with yesterdays stats, and ask at what point Synod will give some concerted energy to talking about the future of the CofE. And no, the solution is not more church schools. The state education system cannot, and should not, do the church's work for it. And it's obvious from the data above that, even if it is, it's not doing it very well.

It's times like this when union with the Methodists seems like a good idea. Here is what their equivalent of Synod was discussing and endorsing a few months ago. A church shaped for discipleship and mission? Are we?

Latest CofE Attendance Stats (2010): the Snooze Button Buster Remix?

The latest batch of attendance stats from the CofE has come out today, and it's not for those of a nervous disposition. The trend of decline is still there, and showing no signs of bottoming out or reversing. The only glimmers of light are an upward blip in weddings (early impact of the Weddings Project and their excellent website?) and baptisms (which are replacing weddings as the first public rite of passage for a new family, possibly because they don't cost so much).

Press release
figures
stats on Fresh Expressions nicely presented in a series of powerpoints. There's estimated to be 30,000 people who are part of a Fresh Expression, but who wouldn't otherwise be part of a church.

As and when I get time, there'll be an update here of the Diocesan 'league table'. Only 10 dioceses have shown an increase in adult attendance in 2008-10, and the overall picture is pretty grim. From 2000-2010 CofE adult attendance on Sundays fell 11%, that of children and young people fell by 23%. The only consolation is that this is marginally better than the 1990s (14%/28%)

And it's not that people are moving to midweek or monthly patterns of attending either: 'weekly' attendance is dropping faster than Sunday attendance for adults (-13%) and monthly attendance is -11% over the decade. So whichever way you look at the CofE cookie, it's crumbling.

Public Memo to General Synod: how about handing over one of the 4 allocated slots for debating women bishops to debating this stuff? After all, what would be the point of a perfect gender split in the house of bishops if the only thing they have left to debate is who will switch the lights off? At what point is this a wake up call, or will we just hit the the 'snooze' button again until next years stats?

Update: a very positive take on the stats at the Guardian, reflecting the good work done on the Weddings Project.

When I Needed a Neighbour, You Were There, It's Just That Up To That Point We'd Never Spoken

The Observer published a major study of identity, belonging and UK attitudes at the weekend, a couple of the charts struck me:

Whether British citizens are born here or not, their weakest sense of belonging is with their local neighbourhood. Around 40% of the people who live around you don't feel like they belong.

For nearly 20% of people, they never feel part of their neighbourhood, and for another 18% there is at least 3 years of loneliness and alienation to get through before they feel that they belong and are accepted.

Here is a twofold challenge for the church, particularly the Anglican church, which works very much on neighbourhoods and the local setting:

 - If you base your identity, appeal and mission on being 'the parish church for x', and then find that 20% of your parish residents don't feel like they belong to x, and a further 20% have, at best, a very weak sense of belonging, what does that do to your mission and ministry in this area?

 (And on a wider front, if the CofE is based on the parish system, in turn premised on a sense of local belonging, and that sense of belonging is missing or tenuous for 40% of the population, then what does that say about the parish system?)

 - How can the local church enable people to feel a sense of belonging to their neighbourhood?

According to the data, (p104) the groups which feel least sense of belonging to their neighbourhood are 25-35s, working people (as opposed to non-working) and white people. The sample sizes start to get a bit small at this level, but this raises a separate question. Does a group who wants to build community (church or otherwise) try to get these groups interested in their neighbourhood, or would they naturally find a sense of community somewhere else (e.g. workplace, club scene, sport)?

not that the church should be organised based on the latest opinion poll, but then neither should it be organised as if it operates in a historical and cultural vacuum. Plenty of chewy questions here...

I Wish All Church Reports Were Done by the Baptists

This is how to do a report. 1 page, and plenty of good news. It's a survey of Baptist church planting since 2005, gives a breakdown of the types of plants and the types of leadership, and takes about 3 minutes to read. I dread to think how long it would take the CofE to put together something similar, or even if we were capable of it at all.

One reason the Baptists are good at this is that they have a clear strategy, some great resources, committed, regular and targeted finance, and they review and evaluate. Ok, that's 4 reasons. They also don't have a parish system, which means that new estates and unreached areas are 'greenfield' sites as far as church plants are concerned, rather than political and ecclesiological minefields.