We Can't Carry On Meeting Like This

At time of writing, there is still no guidance for public worship, which is supposed to be permissible from next Sunday. That disconcerting noise you hear is that of a vicar flying blind.

Boris Johnsons comments about weddings suggest, that maximum service size is 30. In practice much less in small buildings like ours, where we are looking at 10-15). Maximum meeting size in a house is 1 other family, or 6 people outdoors.

This all means that churches are going to have to completely rethink their basic building blocks. Neither the gathered congregation (our two churches number 90 and 40) nor the midweek homegroup (8-12 people) are going to be possible, perhaps for up to a year.

What will this mean? 'In person' worship becoming a scheduled but sporadic experience - we'll probably need a 2-monthly cycle for people attending in turn, unless we start running multiple services. And the 'small group' unit becoming 3 or 4, which presents a very different dynamic for bible study, pastoral support, prayer etc.

And if that all lasts a year, what will happen to the sense of identity of any 'congregational' (25+) or 'home group' (7+) sized structure that tries to ride it out? Do churches need to explore other structures for a shared common identity and mission, rhythm of prayer? Like this, for example....



 We are going to have to stop meeting like this.

Churches: the 'New Normal'

The United Reformed Church has produced a discussion paper for local church leadership on 'The New Normal'. It covers a variety of practical and strategic questions for use of church buildings post-lockdown, and is a helpful read whatever church tradition you're from. With the news that Hillsong may not meet as before until 2021, there is a lot of thinking going on about what a post-covid church looks like.

I read this in an excellent collection of short pieces about lockdown/digital church. Seems spot on:

Companies have discovered that their employees really can and will work from home, so expensive office space gradually will be eliminated as will the lunch time crowds of many eateries. Although there will be a rebound as we try to “return to normal,” soon enough, every industry will recognize that this change is more enduring than the virus....

...Unfortunately, when things “return to normal” churches and restaurants likely will breathe a sigh of relief and go right back to business as usual. They won’t even notice that something inexplicable has changed forever, and by the time these new habits and trends become obvious to moribund institutions, it will be too late.

Mainline churches have been merging or closing for several decades. In the wake of this pandemic, that will greatly accelerate because the “return to normal” will be short-lived, and our churches are biding their time, waiting to get back to the way things were. It isn’t happening. 

Many congregations have seen the future and are retooling for it. They are paying attention to the implications of what will be the “new normal” for society. Churches that thrive will adapt to, and even exploit, new cultural realities. Those faith communities are rare, though, because the church and its leadership are among the most change-resistant creatures God ever made. In this case, however, that resistance may prove fatal.

Why I no longer go to sporting events

discovered on Facebook, clever. People do have genuine reasons for leaving/not being part of a church, but most of them aren't the ones on this list.

A month and a half of Sundays - Adrian Chiles' Lent Challenge

So, a mixed bag, as were the priests. A third of them I found to be great, with a handful quite life-changingly brilliant. Another third were sort of OK. The rest were pretty hopeless, not least because I often couldn't actually hear what they were saying. And a handful were grumpy to the point of malevolence.

Spiritually, if I'm to really "connect" at Mass, I need a good priest to help me. And by good I mean, first and foremost, that they should look pleased to be there and pleased that we're there. Often they speak of great "joy" while looking as bored as swimming pool attendants.

Secondly, with the liturgy - essentially the same script which they do day in, day out - the best of them find a way of making it sound fresh. As the inestimable Father Paul Addison of Our Lady of Delours in Kersal put it to me: "The clue's in the word; communion is all about communicating." And the same is obviously true of the sermon. One of the beauties of daily Mass is, frankly, its brevity - invariably less than half an hour. Sometimes the sermon is dispensed with altogether, but often it just takes the form of a thought or two, which I find much easier to get my head round than one of Sunday's lengthy orations.

Adrian Chiles on his 46 days in 46 different churches. Worth reading the whole thing, great perspectives. And encouraging that he concludes it was one of the most rewarding and quietly intense 46 days of my life. 

The Worship Minefield

There are all sorts of minefields you think you need to overcome when you first start going to Church. Like where to sit. Everyone has their usual spot, and woe betide the unknowing newcomer who pinches it, right? And, what if I don’t wear the right clothes and people think I look scruffy? My fiancé was mortified on one occasion when he forgot himself while going up to receive Communion. He was first out of the pew and rather than stepping back and waiting for the rest of us to file out and walk up ahead of him he just stalked off up the aisle, eager for his bread and wine. When I pointed this out to him later he spent all of the after-service tea and coffee time apologising to everyone else in our pew!

I managed to best this little faux-pas however, when, on a visit to Salisbury Cathedral for a Sunday service I, not being aware of the protocol, took myself off for Communion before the Steward instructed me to and managed to cause a bit of a hole in the line-up. So, if you’re going to make a mistake, go big and do it at a Cathedral.

The thing I’ve started to grasp though, and admittedly it’s probably taken me longer than it should have, is that people don’t care. 

read the rest here. Essential reading for any church (don't think to yourself that because you don't have Anglican formalities, you don't have traditions and in-house language, its just different to ours). This person, thankfully had her fiance to navigate her through the oddities. 

How many others just find it weird and don't bother coming back, because there are so many house rules they feel like an outsider, rather than a welcomed son or daughter?

Are people 'welcome' or welcome?

'Everyone welcome!' proclaims the poster outside the church. Is this a statement of fact, or a piece of marketing? It all depends on what happens when they turn up:

We all have people drifting into our churches from time to time. If they receive the right sort of welcome and feel they found a place where they can belong, a valuable start has been made. Here then is a 30 second checklist:

Outside: If the noticeboard is out of date and the grounds overgrown then the building is giving the impression of death and no-one will want to go near …

Inside: Solid wooden doors, long paths, dark porches, doors which don’t tell you whether to push or pull, poor signage and lack of disabled access are all things that seem small to us but which can put huge barriers in the way of a visitor. Remember, visitors will be embarrassed, nervous and unsure of themselves.

Welcome: The single most important factor in the first 30 seconds is the person you meet first on getting through the door … someone who smiles, is genuinely pleased to see people, and will enquire after the names of newcomers and show them to a seat is one of the most vital parts of a church.

Atmosphere: Walking into a buzz of conversation can seem friendly to those on the inside, but for a new person it can be intimidating because they feel that everyone has friends except them! The best atmosphere is one of prayer with music playing gently in the background so that the silence is compelling rather than embarrassing.

simple, but crucial. How welcoming is your church this Christmas?

update: just failed badly on the 30 second test at last nights service, what's the point in blogging this stuff if I then ignore it?

Love your neighbour? First you've got to meet them. Here's how.

They teach that people should love their neighbour* but a major new study shows that churches are one of the few places most modern Britons might even meet them.

Ground-breaking new analysis of the friendship networks of almost 4,300 people aged from 13 to 80 has identified churches and sporting events as the last bastions of neighbourliness and integration in Britain.

Overall, it found that churches and other places of worship are more successful than any other social setting at bringing people of different backgrounds together, well ahead of gatherings such as parties, meetings, weddings or venues such as pubs and clubs.

*I think that was Jesus who said that, so it's not a surprise to find his followers modelling community (however imperfectly), more than most other settings. 

Media story here, based on some ongoing work by the Social Integration Commission (no, I'd never heard of them before either), with a report due out next month. I do sometimes wonder where else the children in our church (or indeed the adults) would get the chance to mix with such a diverse range of people: aged 0 to 90+, Navy commanders, nurses, single parents, widows, carpenters, engineers, teachers, Japanese, Romanian, Italian, Nigerian, kids from several local primary and secondary schools, Oxbridge degree, NVQ1, self employed, and I won't even start on the range of medical conditions. 

A few days after discovering our daughter had type 1 diabetes, a church member 55 years older than her had a chat: he told her he'd been diagnosed when he was 5, and it hadn't stopped him doing anything. To see the living, breathing proof of what we'd been told/read but hadn't really taken in was so reassuring, and just one aspect of the church being the church. 

I'm also reminded of something wise said by one of our tutors at vicar college: in church, just as we are enriched by the presence of others, so we are diminished by their absence. The church could do and be so much more if those who professed to be Christians realised that you do have to be part of a church to fully live that out.

h/t CofE daily news roundup

Justin Welby at Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast

An inspiring, challenging and encouraging talk 'the global church in the 21st century' by the AB of C at the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast earlier this week. The full text is here, video here, below are some snippets which jumped out at me:

whatever else the Church is, I hope and pray and we will never just be useful – what a dreadful condemnation that would be. There have been moments when we’ve fallen into that trap, and the walls of Lambeth Palace are lined with Archbishops looking useful [laughter], a bit like Hogwarts. But it’s always happened when we’ve lost sight of the fact that at the heart of being a Christian is knowing Jesus Christ, so that together as we meet with Him and share in worship, we find ourselves renewed and strengthened for the call of carrying the cross and following Him.


"The Church, though, is a suffering church in this century. It is growing and in growing it suffers. It carries a cross. That is as true today as ever, and the last few years have demonstrated the truth and cost of that reality. A couple of weeks ago, Caroline and I were in Lahore in Pakistan....  We met some of the clergy and the Bishop of Peshawar who were involved in the bomb explosion last September at All Saints Church, an Anglican church, in which over 200 people were killed. And you ask them: “How are things recovering? Are people still going to church?” “Oh,” they said. “The congregation has tripled.” It is a suffering church and a church of courage.

all Christians belong to one another as sister and brother, not as mutual members of a club. Through all our differences of culture... and we belong to one another not because we choose to but because God has made us that way; you can choose your friends, but you’re stuck with your relatives, and I have to tell you that all who follow Christ are relatives, so you’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you, so we’d better get used to it.  And that last point is essential to understanding how we act as the Church in the 21st century. We do not have the option, if we love one another, of simply ditching those with whom we disagree. 

In the Church of England we are seeking to start a radical new way of being the Church: good and loving disagreement, a potential gift to a world of bitter and divisive conflict. What can be more radical than to disagree well, not by abandoning principle and truth, but affirming it – agreeing what is right, acting on it and yet continuing to love those who have a different view?

"The poor are not served by a divided church obsessed with inward issues.

even 20 years ago it took months to reach the far corners of the earth now, as we know, take seconds. Instant reaction has replaced reflective comment. That is a reality that you deal with in politics, and it demands a new reality of ways in which we accept one another, love each other, pray for each other. The best answer to a complex issue on which one has heard a soundbite from a sophisticated argument is not always given in 140 characters.

"International aid. The Church of the 21st century is among the most efficient and the best deliverers of help for the poor that exists on the face of the earth... Isn’t it wonderful, let’s celebrate what’s good – it’s easy to be cynical about politics – but let’s celebrate what’s good: that with cross-party support in this country we have maintained international aid at 0.7 per cent of GDP.

"In the South Sudan, again in January, Caroline and I were there, and we were called a couple of days before we got there by the Archbishop, Daniel Deng, one of the great heroes of the faith, and he said: “Would you come up to Bor with me?” A town in the middle of the fighting zone. Well, we did, with a slight objection from some people, but we did. And we went out and we found the town that had been taken and retaken four times. Bodies on the streets, the smell of death in 40 degrees of heat everywhere. Mass graves to consecrate. And what does Daniel do? He goes on national television in the South Sudan and calls for reconciliation. Isn’t that extraordinary? Doesn’t that speak of what the Church should be? And in Sudan, the Church is also speaking heroically for an imprisoned woman and her two children, Meriam, for whom truth matters enough to die. A 21st-century global church loves the poor and the victim, and stands for human dignity, challenges oppressors and supports victims. It speaks for women killed in lynchings called “honour killings”, or for those imprisoned under blasphemy laws. It does all that despite its own suffering. Truth and love embrace.

"And it’s a forgiven church because it’s a failing church. The Church is always full of failure, and I’m sorry to say that’s because it’s always full of people. Without wishing to be controversial, you’re sinners, and so am I. I once said that in a sermon and someone came up afterwards and said: “I’d never have come and listened to you if I knew you were a sinner.”

"And lastly we are a hospitable church in the 21st century if we follow Christ – utterly at home in a world of numerous faith traditions. Open about the hope we have while listening to others. In Lent I spent some time with Ibrahim Mogra, the remarkable Muslim leader from Leicester, and we shared together our scriptures: I read bits of John’s Gospel with him, and he read bits of the Qur’an with me. Hospitable. That belonging to one another, being different, diverse and yet authentic to oneself and to one’s tradition and the truth, is a gift this world needs. It’s the opposite of all this Trojan Horse process. It is a generosity of spirit and openness to listen. The 21st century Church knows that the good news of Jesus Christ is a gift which is to be shared in witness. 

"The church is not an NGO with lots of old buildings. It is the Church of God, rejoicing in the realities of cultural diversity in a way never known before: global, cross-bearing, confident and welcoming. The Church holds for the world the treasure of reconciliation, and offers it as a gift freely given out of its own experience of struggling with the reality of it, of being reconciled ourselves through the sovereign love of God in Jesus Christ. The global Church is above all God's church, for all its failings, and in passionate devotion to him will offer the treasure He puts in our hands, unconditionally, always pointing in worship, deed and word to Jesus Christ.

Sorry, that's a lot of snippets, but there is a lot of good stuff in there. Well worth a read/listen.

Some links to the media coverage of the breakfast here

Church of Cheeses

As a change from normal practice, I'm preaching at our local Elim Pentecostal church this Sunday. On hearing this at the tea table, one of my children said 'Elim? Isn't that a kind of cheese?'

A gentle reminder that the church's in-house references which might have made sense a century ago are a foreign language now.

But I'm expecting to find them mature, holy, and served with good biscuits.

'Gate-crashing an exclusive club': welcome to church?

How welcoming is your church. Really? Honestly? Excellent piece from our Archdeacon:

......when I'm on holiday and go to the local parish church ....on the whole my experience has been - bluntly - that we Anglicans are not very good at welcome.

I'm spoilt as an Archdeacon ... when I go to a parish usually someone has been briefed to meet me, even carry my bags and make sure I get to the vestry and know what I'm doing. When I go to church on holiday (not in this diocese of course!) my experience has been generally dismal -- collecting books from a group of people chatting to one another and no doubt thinking theirs is a very friendly church, no indication as to where to sit ... we all dread the embarrassment of being told we’re in someone else's seat ... and no one cheerily saying, ‘Good morning, welcome, are you are visitor? Good to see you…. Let me introduce you to so-and-so.’ Frankly, I wouldn't want to go back to many of them as the experience felt more like gate-crashing an exclusive club than worshipping God with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

I'm making a plea for us to look at the ministry of welcome. This is not a grand initiative to recruit new congregation members; rather it is offering simple kindness, acceptance and hospitality to another human being. It does not have to be intrusive or cringe-making. It's better to risk getting it wrong and welcoming someone who you later discover has been coming to church for 40 years, than ignoring the stranger.

read the rest here

GPS Worship

A couple of great stories have gone up on the Fresh Expressions site, one of a Car Boot Fair church - something I've long wondered about for Yeovil but not done much about - and one for Geochurche. I only heard of  'geocaching' when a church member explained it to me a few weeks ago, and loved the creativity of turning it into a spiritual pursuit in the Peak District:

There is a considerable, weekend population taking part in everything from mountain-biking and rock climbing to rambling, canoeing and… geocaching. This involves people searching for hidden things, or 'caches', by using Ordnance Survey grid coordinates. It's like treasure hunting, with participants using their smartphones, GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking devices or traditional maps to find a series of caches as part of a wilderness 'adventure'.

What we plan to do with Geochurche is to hide elements of a service - including prayers and meditations - in pods/caches around the Peak District on routes that can be used by walkers and mountain bikers. The grid coordinates for the 'hidden treasure' will then be shared on our website - along with a final reference point and time for a 'meet'

This gathering in the wilderness will include opportunity to think about what it has been like to share in such an experience. This will not be the same for everyone as we will set it up in such a way so that different people will access different pods, depending on the time and mode of transport they use - and not everyone will be able to find them. This will hopefully lead to time for reflection on our spiritual journey, some songs around the fire and a sharing of bread and wine.

I was recently discussing the first half of Pauls letter to the Romans with a group, and someone commented that it was a very dense, theological letter with not a lot of imagery and application. It struck me that, yes, that's how we read it, but in Pauls day it would have been image-rich. For us, terms like redemption, adoption, sin offering have all become technical theological terms. In 50AD (or whenever) they were daily realities, images drawn from everyday life. 

We wondered aloud what theological terms we might coin if we were drawing on imagery from early 21st century technology and society. The gospel, and the church, need continuous retranslation into the culture, and a lot of that will simply mean experiments. So I really hope Geochurche works, but even if it doesn't, there'll be valuable translation lessons. 

And Now the Good News

News from St. Pauls:

Capital Vision 2020 has the goal of creating or renewing a hundred worshipping communities and doubling the number of young people involved in local Christian community in London.

Bishop Richard Chartres quipped that he was constantly told by the media he must be very depressed because of dwindling church numbers. However, he said the opposite was true.

"How can we get the message through that the reality is quite different?" he said.

He quoted figures from a new report due to be published by the diocese stating that there are now 1,000 projects being run by Anglican churches across the capital, benefitting 200,000 people, and supported by 10,000 volunteers. According to the report, £17 million has been raised by churches to meet social needs in their areas.

and it's not just London:

•      A Church Army study of Fresh Expressions of church covering 6 dioceses in detail so far, has identified discovered 360 newly planted churches. They make up 10% of diocesan membership, and roughly 75% of members are people who had previously dropped out of church, or who had never been involved and had no Christian background.
•       Prior to his consecration, Justin Welby did a prayer pilgrimage to 6 cathedrals. Expected turnout to pray with him was 3-400, actual turnout was 2-3000, and several people became Christians at those events.
•       Exeter Diocese set a target for growing its church membership in 2009, which was met with a mixed reaction at the time. It's since grown by 11%, 2^nd best in the CofE. Using money from Exeters mission fund, a church in one rural village (pop 200) established a new all-age service, and now has 10 new adults and 15 new children regularly attending it.
•       In Lichfield  diocese, 2000 people joined local churches in  2011-12 who previously had no Christian faith or church connection. 
•       There are 1800 registered ‘Messy Churches’ in the UK, with an average of 55 at each one. There were none in 2005.
•        750,000 ‘Diamond Jubilee Bibles’ were sold last year, 5x more than expected, as a Jubilee themed gift for people to give away.

in the meantime the CofE is at the forefront of global campaigns to tackle world hunger and poverty, focused on the G8 summit next week, and at the local level the church is hugely involved in practical work to support and bless the vulnerable. I'm not sure where the stat comes from, but I heard that of 30,000 parent and baby groups in the UK, 27,000 are run by churches.

Because this is good news, it generally won't find its way into the media, but each stat here is a life touched, changed, blessed by God through his people.

How is an Anglican Welcome different from a Methodist Welcome? Not a Lot.

It's both encouraging, and slightly discouraging, to find that both the CofE and the Methodist church now have a good set of resources to help church focus on becoming more welcoming: both having a welcoming building, and being a welcoming people.

The Anglican resource is the superb Everybody Welcome course, which has been around for a couple of years. We're using bits of it at our local Deanery Synod (gathering of local CofE church reps, once a term): using a DVD clip to highlight an issue, and sending everyone back to their churches with a couple of the checklists to fill in to help them review an aspect of the life of the church. Then at the next meeting, we'll hear back how they got on, what they're going to do about it, and highlight another issue.

The Methodists now have their own resource, First Impressions Count, which covers a lot of the same ground, using a lot of the same tools - video clips, checklists etc. It's a bit briefer and less in-depth, but looks good and covers a lot of helpful material. It may be easier to use 'off the peg', whereas Everybody Welcome needs more preparation, but also goes into more detail.

Whilst it's good to see both of these national churches recognising a need and filling it with a good resource, I wonder why 2 sets of people needed to do 2 separate projects producing 2 separate resources. There is so much common ground that it would surely have been easier to have adaptable versions of the same thing? We've managed it with Mission Shaped Ministry/Mission Shaped Intro...

Mind and Soul

Somewhere there is bound to be a study on the optimum number of e-newsletters it's possible to receive, before the information overload means that you may as well not receive any at all.

At the weekend, an update arrived from Mind and Soul, a superb resource on Christian faith and mental health, bringing together articles, conference presentations, events, online directory etc., an excellent way to gather all the relevant material in one place. What stuck out was one vicars account of his trouble sleeping (which struck a chord) and this extremely helpful series by Adrian Warnock on mental health, including several posts on specific conditions (depression, schizophrenia etc.)

Though a few of us have been plugging away at this for a while now, there seems to be an extra level of interest among Christians in mental health issues, partly propelled by Katherine Welby's courageous admission of her own depression, and the encouraging levels of sympathy and support that resulted.

Next month the chaplain of our local mental health unit, plus one of the nurses, are coming to take a service on Christianity and mental health. It's probably the first time the subject has been overtly addressed in our church. I hope and pray that for those who suffer, it's encouraging and supportive, and for those who don't, it helps us understand and show informed Christian compassion.

Mental health, depression, and related issues probably affects more of us, and in more profound ways, than Europe, immigration, taxation and press regulation. It's something every church, and every Christian, should be clued up on. Not just to spare sufferers the dreadful experience of crass 'prayer ministry', but to aim much higher, that the church can be a place of understanding, support and acceptance.

One Man Church

ouch, little bit too close to the bone this one. I'm not a very good delegater! (delegator?). And that guitar looks exactly like mine, maybe someone's trying to tell me something.

More of Dai Woolridges excellent stuff here.

Forget Mission

I came across the following snippet in an Anglican course designed for local churches. It's an audio interview, and I'm still chewing it over

How is the local church best equipped to meet the challenge of being missionary?

"By forgetting that it's to be missionary, but remembering the extent of God's love for us, and demonstrating God's love for us. If we do things because we are trying to be missionary, we will fail. If we do things because we have been loved, we are called to love, and we practice love, then we will effectively do mission. But if we do mission because we ought to, (or from guilt, a sense of being holier than thou) we will fail."

I'm struggling with this on several fronts:
 - Jesus gave the church a clear mission, and it's reinforced in the New Testament. The recent history of the Church of England is that we have forgotten to be missionary, and just assumed that being nice and meeting once a week would suffice to disciple a nation. That's been, to use the lingo, an epic fail.

 - It creates a false dichotomy: the assumption that people are only overtly missionary from a sense of guilt, obligation or a sense of superiority. In my experience, those aren't the only reasons why people are motivated to mission. I don't see that in Jesus, Paul, Peter or the other early missionaries, or in more recent examples like Jackie Pullinger, Brother Andrew or the Chinese martyrs

 - The church has obligations, those laid upon it by Jesus, because we don't naturally love, forgive, make disciples etc. and so his clear marching orders to the church hold us to the course, strap us to the mast, of things we might otherwise find too hard or shy away from.

 - The church is not called to do mission, it is called by God to share in his. We have a vocation. In the end it's not about God's love for us, the church, or individuals, but about his love for the whole of creation, and the church called to be partners in redeeming it.

 - As a local mission enabler, I'm not quite sure where all this places my role.

It feels like it takes one aspect of the witness of the church (the regular refrain of the New Testament that the quality of the life and love of Christians is a witness to Jesus, one picked up well by Graham Tomlin in 'the Provocative Church') and turns it into the whole of the witness of the church. In fact, one reason the NT stresses the quality of community life and mutual love, is because it is missional. Mission and love are inseparable, rather than one entirely swallowing the other.

Or am I missing something?

From Dropping In to Staying In

Bob Jackson claims in his excellent 'Everybody Welcome' course that if churches could simply retain more of the people who come to visit, most of the would be growing not shrinking. What we need is not necessarily more mission activity, but to be better at integrating new members and helping them to belong.

A recent 'Resourcing Mission Bulletin' from the CofE had a study from Canterbury Diocese on churches that did well at retaining new members of all ages. Here are 10 factors which were seen as significant -

What was it about these churches that helped these newcomers not only to become committed members of their faith communities, but also be transformed from churchgoers into disciples of Christ? Interestingly, the same factors which help adults to do this also help teenagers and children:

1. The children were happy and enjoyed their activities:
Briony (11): It's nice doing all the activities every Sunday with your friends and you have a lot of fun. And you have fun and you're still learning.

2. The quality of the welcome they received overcame their initial nervousness:
Carl: It was very laid-back and very welcoming. I had a lot of fears of what it would be but they were kind of not there when I actually came to it and I actually sat down and walked around and people were talking to me, it was a very nice, great atmosphere.

3. A relaxed and friendly atmosphere, even where the worship was more formal:
Mary: It's very friendly and welcoming and easy to feel that you’re a part of; it's not that you've got to work at it. It's very comfortable.

4. The Christian faith was taught well and made relevant to life and its questions:
Chris: You can kind of slot in what the Bible's saying and what you're being taught into your life. I think that's quite important. I don't think that I would go if it had no relevance to my life at all.

5. Existing church members enfolded newcomers into their friendship networks:
Richard: My first impressions of going to a house group was they were nice; nice people. And some of them I've stayed in contact with I am real solid good friends with.

6. Newcomers were invited not only to participate in the life of the church, but to take on responsibilities of many different kinds:
Ben (16): Before it had been, like, ‘Oh I'm still giving this a try’; after three or four months they decided to lend me a drum kit? And then, like, apparently I was pretty good, so they drafted me into one of the bands? And that kind of kept me going out of duty, but then I also loved doing it at the same time?- so it was a sense of ‘I like doing this; I want to be here’.

7. After initial questions were resolved, new questions of faith were constantly raised and addressed:
Liz: He said to me: ‘You have to read it in the context in which it is written’. And so my reading started to expand and, subsequently, I read the Bible in the context in which it is written, and I still do to this day. Question things constantly.

8. Worship was inspiring, though very different in each faith community:
Lily (14): It helps me, like, focus on God. It gets rid of other distractions. 

9. Children began to make friends and grow into a faith of their own:
Maggie: With Macey (7), if she's upset or someone gets hurt, she'll quite often say, ‘Oh, can we pray about it’… she's learning to build a relationship with Jesus even though he's maybe not aware of that.

10. New members ended up with a new sense of identity, as a Christian who belongs to a particular faith community:
Kate: It's not just about Sunday morning for two hours; as well, it's very much a whole lifestyle.

Fresh Expressions of Gym

A church on Exmoor has stepped in following the closure of a local gym, and is hosting 'bring and share' gymn sessions 5 times a week, with kit brought in from people's homes. Great example of big society stepping in where business has failed, and of a church knowing its place in a community.

The company who ran the gym say they are planning a re-launch in September, but based on their figures, it may be hard to make a local gym financially viable. Local folk, judging by the comments and campaign site, aren't impressed. In a sparsely populated area (as with church hosted post offices) maybe this is a different and more viable way of making facilities available to the community.

Churches and Bereavement Support

Care for the Family have just published the results of a survey of over 1000 churches on what ministry and support they provide to the bereaved. There are a sizeable number of churches who would like to do more to support bereaved people, but lack either the time or the expertise.

There are also a small number of churches who are involved in a lot of funerals (40+ a year), whilst the vast majority are doing fewer than 10 per year. On the ground, that may mean that a lot of funerals are done by churches which are already heavily in demand, and that makes it difficult to offer quality support.

Care for the Family are developing more resources for local churches to use in this area.

We probably do 30-40 funerals a year, alongside a large number of baptisms and weddings, 2 churches and a lot of community involvement. With more resources and expertise we could provide more support than we currently do. Some of this is about priorities, and some of it is about available time from suitable volunteers. There's only so much people can do. It would be really good to hear from a church which thinks it's offering a good level of bereavement support, and how you've gone about it.

Free eBook: Unintended Consequences

There's a superb free ebook on offer at Andrew Brims' blog, which is really worth a look. It's very well written, with some great stories and illustrations, and lots of uncomfortable analysis. It's based on one question: what are the unintended consequences of the way we organise the church? I'm part way through it at the moment and all sorts of things are already sparking off.