Centre for Church Growth at St. Johns Nottingham

My old college, St. Johns Nottingham is launching a new 'Centre for Church Growth' - it's almost as though they read this blog. It looks like Bob Jackson will be heading it up, and it will deliver teaching as part of the college programme (hooray! Can we backdate it for people who were there in 1996?), conferences, consultancy, and research. This is great news, if Dioceses and the CofE are ready to take it seriously.

There's a conference for Dioceses in the Midlands and North this September, looking at Diocesan church growth strategies, what works and what doesn't, and it includes a panel of clergy from growing churches talking about what parishes need from their Dioceses. If you're in this part of the country, then the head honchos and honchettes at your Diocese will be getting invitations, do pester them to book their places. I look forward to something for us Southerners before too long.

Bob Jackson's introduction to the new centre reminds us:
Archbishop Rowan recently suggested that the top priority for the Church of England over the next five years was ‘to take forward the spiritual and numerical growth of the Church of England, including the growth of its capacity to serve the whole community of this country.'


Having mentioned Sheffield last week, we can maybe add Chelmsford to the list of Dioceses which are taking this challenge seriously. If you're in the CofE, what's your experience?

Return of the Mouse

This whole women bishops thing must be serious, even Church Mouse has broken cover from his nest in the vestry, to encourage the CofE to get on with it. It looks like it's a one-off squeak, but worth reading just the same.

I must confess this is one area of church politics I've avoided on this blog, partly out of frustration that we spend more time talking about sex than mission, and partly because the CofE position on ordination is such a mess. We proclaim a 'threefold order of bishops, priests and deacons' which bears minimal resemblance to the ordering of ministry in the Bible, and don't even follow through on it. In most places, deacons are just a priest in short trousers, waiting for 12 months to elapse so that they can take communion services. The New Testament depicts 'bishops' (overseers) as part of the team leadership of a local church, which is a far cry from what they've become in the CofE, never mind the Roman church.

Which is why I can't actually get that political about whether or not we have women in a role that isn't sanctioned by the Bible in the first place. And everyone else will probably be thankful that, with a theology like this, I go back to avoiding the topic.

(And I haven't even got started on the way we've created a sacramental theology which bolsters this structure and makes it almost impossible to question or unpick. )

Motivational Signs for Teenagers

Reminds me of a quip attributed to Mark Twain, which goes something like "when I was 14, my dad was so stupid I could hardly bear to have him around. By the time I was 21 I was surprised by how much the old guy had learned in 7 years."

thanks to various people on Facebook for this one.

parishbuying.org.uk - new CofE co-operative purchasing website.

The new Parish Buying website goes fully live tomorrow, though it seems pretty functional already. The aim is for the 13,000 parishes of the CofE to save £10m a year between them by co-operative purchasing. The site covers energy, IT, office supplies and equipment, and fire safety. Individual churches, church schools, cathedrals etc. can order through the site, but pay at discounted rates because they're one of hundreds ordering through the same source. 

from the press release:
Favourable deals have been negotiated on a range of products and services including gas and electricity, heating oil, photocopiers, stationary, IT software and fire safety, by the Church's two National Procurement Officers.

"This is not just about saving money, although we are aiming for annual savings of £10 million," says Dr John Preston, National Stewardship Officer. "The Parish Buying service will help parishes both to buy with confidence, knowing contracts have been professionally negotiated, and to be better stewards of their spending."

good bit of work, well done to those who've set this up. If they could cover Fair Trade coffee and decent biscuits, then we really would save a packet (sorry). I wonder if there's a way of extending it to non-CofE churches?

South Somerset Core Strategy - Schedule for Open Meetings

This came through earlier in the week:

South Somerset District Council - Draft Core Strategy Committee Meetings Timetable

I am writing to respondents to the public consultation on the Draft Core Strategy (incorporating Preferred Options), October 2010 and also to those who have expressed an interest in the Core Strategy. Over recent months officers have been considering and responding to the issues that arose during the consultation process. Their findings and recommendations will be reported to and considered by the Council's Area Committees and the District Executive during February and March before consideration by Full Council in April. The timetable of meetings is set out below:

Area North   22 February 2012  1.30pm, Edgar Hall, Somerton, TA11 6SB. (Say hello to my fellow blogger Muck and Brass if you go to that one. )


Area South 7 March 2012 10.00am The Gateway, Yeovil, BA20 1QN

Area East 14 March 2012 10.00am Memorial Hall, Wincanton, BA9 9JF

Area West 21 March 2012 4.00pm The Shrubbery, Ilminster, TA19 9AR

Special District Executive 26 March 2012 10.00am The Gateway, Yeovil, BA20 1QN

Full Council 23 April 2012 6.00pm The Gateway, Yeovil, BA20 1QN

Please Note:


1) The dates for the Special District Executive and Full Council are provisional at this stage. You will be informed in advance if there are any changes to these dates.

2) Each Area Committee will only actively consider those development proposals within their area boundaries.

3) The timing of consideration of the Core Strategy is subject to other agenda items.

All meetings are open to the public and you are welcome to attend. Agendas and Reports will be available 5 working days before each meeting on-line at http://www.southsomerset.gov.uk/councillors-and-democracy/meetings-and-decisions/agendas-and-minutes/ and in Council Offices. The Minutes will also be published on-line and made available in Council Offices. For further information please contact the Committee Administrator for the relevant Committee on 01935 462462.

The most talked about aspect of this is the plan for an 'Eco Town' to the south of the town centre, which has been the focus of intensive lobbying in some quarters. I hope that the final outcome reflects what's best for the whole community, including those who will eventually live in the eco town.

And if you're going to the meetings at the Gateway, do give yourself time to visit the excellent coffee shop.

Coming Soon - The Beatbox Passion

Beatbox Vicar Gavin Tyte was at the Christian Resources Exhibition this week talking about the amazing success of the Beatbox Nativity rap, and mentioned that there is a Beatbox Passion in the pipeline.

Regular news and updates on the Beatbox Bible website. There also seem to be plans for a print edition later this year, covering the whole of Luke's gospel.

Painful Truths, Awkward Questions

In the last couple of days I've posted some breakdown of the Church of England attendance data for 2001-2010. Compared to the 1990s, it shows a continued, albeit slower, decline across the CofE. Only London diocese has seen its adult numbers rise from 1990-2010, every other one of the 43 dioceses has seen a decline. It's only slighly better with under-16's, with 3 Dioceses showing an increase in 1990-2010 (London, Canterbury and Southwark).

There are some truly frightening figures here. My own Diocese, Bath and Wells, is one of at least 6 which have seen a fall in adult numbers of over 30% in that 20 year period. Yes we have been sailing into some pretty strong headwinds: membership of all sorts of voluntary groups has been declining, culture is changing, Sundays have vanished as a day of leisure etc.

But, but..... we need to inspect some of those bullet wounds just below the ankle. Is it just possible that we may have got some things wrong? Like:
1. The parish communion movement. The CofE has developed a 'norm' of communion being held in every parish on every Sunday. As parishes have been amalgamated, this has put great pressure on clergy to run around dispensing holy wafers, and stood in the way of churches developing worship to reflect a changing culture. In turn it has become a totem, with many local churches fiercely protective of it. (I know vicars who bear the scars from relatively tame attempts to try somthing different) The original Lords Supper (correct me if I'm wrong) was a Passover meal. These weren't celebrated by a priest bussed in from Jerusalem, but by the head of a household. Once a year. How we got from that to where we are now is, well, too complex to go into. But we need a complete rethink, and yes I'm absolutely fine with so called 'lay presidency' at communion. It would set our clergy and our local churches free.

2. The parish system: there is more than one way for the CofE to be a mission presence in every community, and we don't need to have a building to do it. There are other ways, I think one is called 'people'. We could even (careful now) do this in partnership with other churches, rather than trying to do it all ourselves.

3. I'm afraid we have to ask questions about the quality of leadership in the church, both at local level, but nationally. What have our bishops and archbishops been doing? I applaud George Carey's 'decade of evangelism' in the 1990s (which is seen as a failure, but laid the foundations for some of the best work of the last 10 years) and Rowan Williams championing Fresh Expressions. And yes, the CofE is an impossible beast to lead. But what has our church leadership been doing whilst all this is going on, and how do we hold them to account for it? What is the point of the next General Synod holding 4 (count them) debates on women bishops, if the only decision the first female Archbishop will have to make is who will switch off the lights as they leave the building? Where is the sense of urgency?

Even from down here in Somerset I can smell the breath of fresh air which is Steve Croft, Bishop of Sheffield, making his principal focus as leader of the Diocese mission and church growth. But how many of his colleagues are doing the same? How many of our bishops and Archdeacons ever led a growing church? How many of our Dioceses make it a policy to only train curates in growing churches? And a hundred more questions.

My point is this, if we don't get our finger out on this one, there will not be much point in the church of England debating anything else. With the Ordinariate, we seem to have got more upset over a couple of dozen Papally inclined clergy following through the logic of their theology, than we have over hundreds of thousands of Christians who have lost their faith, left the church, dried out, burnt out or dropped out. And that's not to mention the millions that we've not reached at all.

If any Anglicans have got this far, next time you see your bishop, a question for him: "what are you doing to grow the church in this Diocese?" If he sticks around for a supplementary, then David Cooke has plenty more. And if you're reading this and you're on General Synod, then how about every February synod devoting a session to considering the mission stats that come out every January, and coming up with a plan of action in response?

Diocesan Attendance 2001-10 for adults and children.

Here are the tables for adults and childrens attendance for the 2001-10 decade, based on 'average weekly attendance'. The original data is here on the CofE website and was published last week. I blogged the chart for the combined 'all age' figure yesterday.

First the adult attendance. Some headlines:
1. Only 6 out of 43 Dioceses saw an increase in adult numbers. But that's an improvement on the 1990s when London was the only one, and it's good to see that London is still growing (though more slowly)

2. The overall picture is still of shrinkage, but more slowly than in the 1990s, when the average Diocese was losing 12-15% of adult members, and the worst lost 28%

3. Each of these figures masks as much as it reveals. For example, Bristol Diocese saw its adult numbers drop from 15,400 to 12,600 in 2001-8. Since then they've grown again, to 14,200. So an 18% drop, followed by a 13% rise in 2 years shows as a 7.8% fall overall. Nearly all the growth in London happened in the early part of the decade, since when attendance has actually fallen off slightly.

Now the childrens chart. This is better:

1. 15 out of 43 Dioceses have seen growth here. It would be interesting to correlate this to spending from the money released by the Church Commissioners for mission. Quite a lot of this has gone on local children and families worker posts, are we seeing an effect? (and if so, would we see an effect if we released lay ministry into other age group specialisms, like the over-65s?)

2. The overall numbers here are smaller to start with, so change is generally more volatile, hence the bigger percentage swings compared to the adults.

3. This is an even more significant improvement on the 1990s, when only London saw a rise in numbers, and that was fairly small (4%). To put it in perspective, my own Diocese, Bath and Wells, which is 23rd in the table, would have been 5th in the 1990s table on these figures.

4. But we are seeing the virtual disappearance of the CofE presence among children in some places. Blackburn and Liverpool now have around 45% of the under-16s they had 20 years ago. Church schools do not compensate for this. If only they were as succesful at discipling children as the National Secular Society would have people believe they are.

If you're wondering where the 90s stats are from, the source is Bob Jacksons 'Hope for the Church' (synopsis by Alison Morgan here), which I sense has still not been fully read and digested by the powers that be.

My fear is that bishops/synod/etc. will look at these stats and say 'oh hurrah, things are getting better'. Well, they are, in the sense of a man who has one leg amputated one week and only has to have half a leg amputated the following week.

Some more commentary tomorrow, if I can restrain myself that long!