Thinking back to my experiences of rural CofE parishes (benefice and/or team ministry), where the various types of Sunday service rotated around the churches, I can think of three patterns of behaviour in relation to a churchgoer's attendance on any given Sunday:
* their own parish church, regardless of the type of service
* the nearest service that included Holy Communion
* the family service
Thinking back to my experiences of rural CofE parishes (benefice and/or team ministry), where the various types of Sunday service rotated around the churches, I can think of three patterns of behaviour in relation to a churchgoer's attendance on any given Sunday:
* their own parish church, regardless of the type of service
* the nearest service that included Holy Communion
* the family service
My instinct is that this has been changed a bit by the pandemic (notwithstanding what I wrote above) - I think that since the 'return to church' there has been a weakening of the first category to look a bit more like 'their own parish church, when there's a service they want to attend'
Ie, (many more than previously of) those people who used to go to everything are now just going to the services they actually value, and not going anywhere else on other Sundays. To be perfectly honest, I do sit slightly in that camp myself, having ditched the service that I really can't stand (I do still go to others that aren't my cup of tea, but the one that I almost hate has gone out of the window).
The more people/I behave like that of course, the more damage is done to individual churches within a benefice as numbers per service drop off. But at least I plead guilty!
2 is definitely true, although I'm in a benefice of 5, and was previously in a benefice of 7, and 'communion hunting' was/is definitely a minority sport where I've been.
Re 3, I don't think we actually have a family service in the benefice, and I've written before about how I worshipped for a decade in a church in a different benefice, where we gritted our teeth through a monthly 'family service' to which no family, to my awareness, ever came. Ever.
My experience would put most people in group 1, 2 is a minority that definitely exists but you might be talking single figures (or single person) per parish, and I can well believe group 3 is out there, but not in my experience. Actually, we're now a young family, and we sit in group 1. Inflicting U5s on whatever happens to be on.
Thinking back to my experiences of rural CofE parishes (benefice and/or team ministry), where the various types of Sunday service rotated around the churches, I can think of three patterns of behaviour in relation to a churchgoer's attendance on any given Sunday:
* their own parish church, regardless of the type of service
* the nearest service that included Holy Communion
* the family service
My instinct is that this has been changed a bit by the pandemic (notwithstanding what I wrote above) - I think that since the 'return to church' there has been a weakening of the first category to look a bit more like 'their own parish church, when there's a service they want to attend'
Ie, (many more than previously of) those people who used to go to everything are now just going to the services they actually value, and not going anywhere else on other Sundays. To be perfectly honest, I do sit slightly in that camp myself, having ditched the service that I really can't stand (I do still go to others that aren't my cup of tea, but the one that I almost hate has gone out of the window).
The more people/I behave like that of course, the more damage is done to individual churches within a benefice as numbers per service drop off. But at least I plead guilty!
2 is definitely true, although I'm in a benefice of 5, and was previously in a benefice of 7, and 'communion hunting' was/is definitely a minority sport where I've been.
Re 3, I don't think we actually have a family service in the benefice, and I've written before about how I worshipped for a decade in a church in a different benefice, where we gritted our teeth through a monthly 'family service' to which no family, to my awareness, ever came. Ever.
If everyone stops attending the near-hateworthy service maybe TPTB will reconsider what is on offer?
Or am I being incredibly nieve?
As soon as a church has more than one service, they will have different congregations and the challenge of creating links between them.
Nope. Not here. Maybe sometime in the future, but we do not need to create links at present, as they have always existed to date.
Same for everywhere I attended, even the large church which had a complement of students that only ever showed up in the evening. Part of it was a lot of continuity in terms of the congregation, as well as staff, and the narrative of leadership being that this was one church with multiple congregations.
I'd add to the mix in rural parishes an element of town and city dwellers commuting out to rural Zoars to escape drum'n'bass and PowerPoint slides in their own suburban settings.
That's been a feature around here for quite some time. I suspect some village churches attract more outsiders than worshippers from within the village itself. I'm talking about villages that lie very close to towns or suburbs. This is less apparent the further you go into the countryside.
I get the impression that this has died off to some extent as most of those who took refuge in rural parishes are themselves dying off.
But I think it is fair to say, as our rural dwelling posters have pointed out, that people tend to support whatever is going on in their village church regardless of style or 'churchmanship.'
Sadly, rural non-conformity is in rapid decline. A retired vicar in a southern English county told me how most village Methodist, Congregational or Baptist churches had closed in his area as the villages became the playgrounds of the wealthy and the long-distance commuter.
In rural Wales the decline has been precipitous. I've come across Welsh-speakers who were life-long non-conformists who now worship at their nearest Anglican parish as it's the only place of worship still going - and where there is some Welsh used in the services.
While I'm sure that's the pattern in many places the adjoining villages where I used to live in W Yorks are now served only by the Baptists, and our priest, now retired, decamped there too.
I'd add to the mix in rural parishes an element of town and city dwellers commuting out to rural Zoars to escape drum'n'bass and PowerPoint slides in their own suburban settings.
I'm using the term loosely, @chrisstiles - not literally. There isn't any 'drum'n'bass' music in the technical genre sense in any church I know.
I know someone who is a big guitar fan - he likes Ry Cooder and so on - but disapproves of their use in church services.
So he'll refer to 'banjos and ukeleles' even though he knows full well that these particular stringed instruments don't feature in any church's worship round here.
What I should have written, of course, was that these people left their suburban parishes to attend rural ones to escape contemporary worship styles.
I used 'drum'n'bass' in a hyperbolic rather than a literal sense and apologise for that.
The reality, of course, is that contemporary worship styles are generally a few steps behind secular music trends.
Anyhow, the exodus I'm thinking of took place around here in the late '90s/early 2000s. Most of those who left for the Promised Land have either died in the wilderness or else bemoaning the lack of young people in the parishes they fled to for refuge.
It's a tricky one. My late mother in law didn't like to see drum kits in church but felt they were necessary to attract and retain 'young families.'
So what do we do? I know of one village church which suddenly had a large influx of children and parents after the vicar, a former street entertainer, went into school assemblies with his puppets and conjuring tricks.
Everyone was terribly excited but once he left and moved on, the kids and families stopped coming.
Everyone was terribly excited but once he left and moved on, the kids and families stopped coming.
I often see examples of this kind quoted and usually some kind of subtext is assumed. I'm not entirely sure that things would have been better off if no one had tried anything.
Sure. I'm simply making an observation - and yes, I suppose there is a sub-text in that I could take it to reinforce the 'consumerism' thing from the OP.
Even if that is the case, then who knows what the outcome/impact of this initiative might have been ... sowing seeds and so forth? I can remember things from school assemblies that later resurfaced, so no, I'm not 'writing off' the validity of the attempt.
Plenty of cradle-Orthodox only turn up at Easter. We don't see them for the rest of the year. Would anything be different if we tried something 'new'?
Who knows?
Again, I'm 'thinking aloud' - thinking allowed - I have no idea whether things would be any better or worse at that village parish had the vicar not taken his puppets to the school assemblies.
Heck, I was part of a full-on all-singing, all-dancing charismatic fellowship for 18 years. It no longer exists. It closed down a few years ago. Had I wasted nearly 20 years of my life? No. I don't think so.
I'm 'seeing' someone at the moment. It feels hopeful and exciting. If it ended next week would I have wasted my time? Again, no, I don't think so.
I think it is probably worthwhile to consider that something that starts, thrives for a time, and then ends is not necessarily a failure. I wonder whether we harm ourselves by thinking that something must be permanent to be considered successful. Would time and effort spent on trying to keep something alive be better spent on birthing something new? The measure of success is not in a monument or in a continuing institution but in changed lives.
I wonder whether we harm ourselves by thinking that something must be permanent to be considered successful. Would time and effort spent on trying to keep something alive be better spent on birthing something new? The measure of success is not in a monument or in a continuing institution but in changed lives.
Funnily enough that’s exactly the Masonic take on lodges. All in England and Wales are numbered from one upwards, and they’re still consecrating new ones, so numbers are north of 10,000 now.
If lodges hand back their warrant then particularly the low numbers are mourned, but the attitude is that they’ve done their work and met the needs of their members for however long, and the new lodges where there is demand are still coming.
That’s a massive aside, but the parallels struck me!
I think it is probably worthwhile to consider that something that starts, thrives for a time, and then ends is not necessarily a failure. I wonder whether we harm ourselves by thinking that something must be permanent to be considered successful. Would time and effort spent on trying to keep something alive be better spent on birthing something new? The measure of success is not in a monument or in a continuing institution but in changed lives.
Yeah, and at one level 'delaying the problem' is the same thing as 'solving the problem' (it's like the phrase 'kicking the can down the road', that's not necessarily a bad thing! the road is very long!)
Are Freemasons 'changed' by the experience of practising the 'craft' in a similar way to how Christians might claim to be 'changed' by conversion, participation in spiritual practices and disciplines etc?
We could go off on a Masonic tangent here but I'll try to rein that in. I s'pose my 'take' would be that adherents of any faith or 'system' - and I know that Freemasonry isn't a faith as such - are going to be shaped by it in some way.
I'd agree with @Arethosemyfeet that because something might not last for hundreds of years, it doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile or didn't serve its purpose.
It's sad and salutary to reflect though, that of the many Anglican religious orders that arose from 'The Oxford Movement', very few outlived their founders.
I don't mean that to disparage those initiatives. 'Look at the Benedictines, they've been going 1600 years! That religious order over there only lasted 90 ...'
But the shelf-life of some groups and initiatives do seem to be increasingly transitory, probably due to the faster pace of societal change.
The 'classic' Pentecostal denominations here in the UK have been going for 100 years and as far as I can tell both Elim and the AoG are holding their own - the 'Apostolics' less so.
But both have a very different 'feel' to what they'd have had in the 1920s and even the 1980s.
It's sad and salutary to reflect though, that of the many Anglican religious orders that arose from 'The Oxford Movement', very few outlived their founders.
On the other hand, perhaps that was a particular movement that witnessed to a generation, had its greatest effect in influencing the broader church and whose ultimate institutional heft was seen in the strength of feeling that led to the Ordinates (which you could argue was sad and salutary in another way, though the Zhou Enlai retort springs to mind).
But the shelf-life of some groups and initiatives do seem to be increasingly transitory, probably due to the faster pace of societal change.
The 'classic' Pentecostal denominations here in the UK have been going for 100 years and as far as I can tell both Elim and the AoG are holding their own - the 'Apostolics' less so.
Or looking at it another way, 'all' the charismatics got in the UK were Vineyard, NFI, and a quarter of all Anglican ordinands.
That’s a little bit like my set up, across five village churches in the benefice. But in general, people tend to only attend their own village church, for whatever service is on offer. Even when there is a only one, the group service on a fifth Sunday, there will be perhaps only one person, or maybe four at most from any of the other churches. They don’t seem to want to shop around.
We have the same set-up with a joint service across five churches on a fifth Sunday. It's popular here, with packed churches, although the total number in the single church is less than the cumulative total over the five churches on other Sundays.
There is some competition between the congregations to put on a good spread of home baking when it is their turn, so perhaps cut-throat rivalry the warm hospitality on offer helps.
I do wonder if there is an element of irregular verb in the way that we view this?
I make principled decisions
You are motivated by consumerism
They are selfish "blessing chasers"
Kind if thing
More seriously, @Bullfrog I s'pose I'm trying to explore the extent to which it has become a 'consumerist' thing.
[...]
We need the freedom to worship wherever we please, or where God leads us - which might not always be the same ...
How can you tell the difference, objectively speaking? Is there one? Was there ever?
Even if you're the sort that believes in a "disciplinarian" approach to church, "I like rules" is definitely a personal preference, and I have definitely seen people pursue it as a personal choice. Some people find that kind of rigor to be pleasing, and no shame in it.
But then, it raises the same questions about "God's will" versus "personal pleasure." Some might say one pleasure is more godly than another. I'm not entirely convinced. I might even suspect that self denial can create attachment, where "I suffered for this" creates a sunk cost fallacy that becomes confused with God.
And I'm not accusing you or anyone in particular of making that case, but I think that it's always negotiated. There are always limitations.
I do wonder if there is an element of irregular verb in the way that we view this?
I make principled decisions
You are motivated by consumerism
They are selfish "blessing chasers"
Kind if thing
On consumerism, the restoration of two stained glass windows at our home church consumed around $200,000. There was no question that they needed serious expenditure to make them safe, and one was a war memorial window that attracted grants to cover most of the cost. The other was a curiosity, damaged through our own negligence, and could have been replaced by something far simpler. My argument was that that confounded window had been keeping the light out of our sanctuary for a century: here's an opportunity to save some money and let the light back in. It is back to its original condition while our mission and outreach budget is embarrassingly small.
Styles of music were mentioned. I am a serious consumer of music on a Sunday morning, and the church, in my invariably humble opinion, is the best place to worship and to give thanks for the precious gift of music. At our adopted church, the organist is a brilliant professional musician who can play anything. We get traditional (sometimes more than enough...) hymns, but she will often sit down at the piano and deliver quite heavenly jazz. So perhaps I am disguising my consumerism as Christianity when I go to that church.
Tomorrow we'll visit a friend's small church where the music will probably be provided by an enthusiastic choir of four and a talented pianist. We'll listen to our friend who loves to preach and does it well, and we'll go home feeling that we've been to church and that whatever we put in the plate probably won't be damned as consumerism.
I don't think it's BAD for people, or for churches, to want good things--or to make choices that allow them to survive on more than the bare minimum. This is doubtless the place to haul out the example of Mary using that perfume on Jesus' feet, if we haven't done it yet on this thread. And yet, the hard part is finding the balance. For me personally, if I were church shopping, I'd need to figure out what I was looking for (teaching, music, better architecture grrrrr--we currently live in a breeze block barn) and what I could give (teaching, mission/evangelism skills). And I'd try to find the best fit.
What I wouldn't be doing (now that I'm not a self-sacrificial idiot anymore) is seeking out a place where I was doing nothing but give, and getting nothing back. Because that's a recipe for burning out. And that does nobody any good.
And the other extreme choice is of course pure selfishness--unless you're at a point in life where you're in need of that sort of extreme rest and nurture, which happens, God knows--or if maybe you've never noticed that giving back is a normal part of a Christian life.
And of course there are those of us who don't really have any choices, due to geography or whatever.
So as usual, it ends up being a balance, and we do the best we can. And need to show grace to people who appear to be choosing differently than we think we would, in their shoes. (How do we know, anyway?)
@Gamma Gamaliel initially the religious orders set up by Oxford Movement members were all apostolic (ie "active", although monastic life is no less active) women's orders - men's orders and monastic/contemplative orders came later. Most of those earlier orders were nursing and teaching orders, and their work simply became less necessary as state education and the NHS covered more of those roles. Male orders and contemplative orders on the other hand are doing much better, especially the Franciscan brothers and the Benedictines.
Comments
* their own parish church, regardless of the type of service
* the nearest service that included Holy Communion
* the family service
My instinct is that this has been changed a bit by the pandemic (notwithstanding what I wrote above) - I think that since the 'return to church' there has been a weakening of the first category to look a bit more like 'their own parish church, when there's a service they want to attend'
Ie, (many more than previously of) those people who used to go to everything are now just going to the services they actually value, and not going anywhere else on other Sundays. To be perfectly honest, I do sit slightly in that camp myself, having ditched the service that I really can't stand (I do still go to others that aren't my cup of tea, but the one that I almost hate has gone out of the window).
The more people/I behave like that of course, the more damage is done to individual churches within a benefice as numbers per service drop off. But at least I plead guilty!
2 is definitely true, although I'm in a benefice of 5, and was previously in a benefice of 7, and 'communion hunting' was/is definitely a minority sport where I've been.
Re 3, I don't think we actually have a family service in the benefice, and I've written before about how I worshipped for a decade in a church in a different benefice, where we gritted our teeth through a monthly 'family service' to which no family, to my awareness, ever came. Ever.
If everyone stops attending the near-hateworthy service maybe TPTB will reconsider what is on offer?
Or am I being incredibly nieve?
Same for everywhere I attended, even the large church which had a complement of students that only ever showed up in the evening. Part of it was a lot of continuity in terms of the congregation, as well as staff, and the narrative of leadership being that this was one church with multiple congregations.
That's been a feature around here for quite some time. I suspect some village churches attract more outsiders than worshippers from within the village itself. I'm talking about villages that lie very close to towns or suburbs. This is less apparent the further you go into the countryside.
I get the impression that this has died off to some extent as most of those who took refuge in rural parishes are themselves dying off.
But I think it is fair to say, as our rural dwelling posters have pointed out, that people tend to support whatever is going on in their village church regardless of style or 'churchmanship.'
Sadly, rural non-conformity is in rapid decline. A retired vicar in a southern English county told me how most village Methodist, Congregational or Baptist churches had closed in his area as the villages became the playgrounds of the wealthy and the long-distance commuter.
In rural Wales the decline has been precipitous. I've come across Welsh-speakers who were life-long non-conformists who now worship at their nearest Anglican parish as it's the only place of worship still going - and where there is some Welsh used in the services.
"drum'n'bass" sounds like a myth.
I know someone who is a big guitar fan - he likes Ry Cooder and so on - but disapproves of their use in church services.
So he'll refer to 'banjos and ukeleles' even though he knows full well that these particular stringed instruments don't feature in any church's worship round here.
What I should have written, of course, was that these people left their suburban parishes to attend rural ones to escape contemporary worship styles.
I used 'drum'n'bass' in a hyperbolic rather than a literal sense and apologise for that.
The reality, of course, is that contemporary worship styles are generally a few steps behind secular music trends.
Anyhow, the exodus I'm thinking of took place around here in the late '90s/early 2000s. Most of those who left for the Promised Land have either died in the wilderness or else bemoaning the lack of young people in the parishes they fled to for refuge.
It's a tricky one. My late mother in law didn't like to see drum kits in church but felt they were necessary to attract and retain 'young families.'
So what do we do? I know of one village church which suddenly had a large influx of children and parents after the vicar, a former street entertainer, went into school assemblies with his puppets and conjuring tricks.
Everyone was terribly excited but once he left and moved on, the kids and families stopped coming.
I often see examples of this kind quoted and usually some kind of subtext is assumed. I'm not entirely sure that things would have been better off if no one had tried anything.
Even if that is the case, then who knows what the outcome/impact of this initiative might have been ... sowing seeds and so forth? I can remember things from school assemblies that later resurfaced, so no, I'm not 'writing off' the validity of the attempt.
Plenty of cradle-Orthodox only turn up at Easter. We don't see them for the rest of the year. Would anything be different if we tried something 'new'?
Who knows?
Again, I'm 'thinking aloud' - thinking allowed - I have no idea whether things would be any better or worse at that village parish had the vicar not taken his puppets to the school assemblies.
Heck, I was part of a full-on all-singing, all-dancing charismatic fellowship for 18 years. It no longer exists. It closed down a few years ago. Had I wasted nearly 20 years of my life? No. I don't think so.
I'm 'seeing' someone at the moment. It feels hopeful and exciting. If it ended next week would I have wasted my time? Again, no, I don't think so.
Funnily enough that’s exactly the Masonic take on lodges. All in England and Wales are numbered from one upwards, and they’re still consecrating new ones, so numbers are north of 10,000 now.
If lodges hand back their warrant then particularly the low numbers are mourned, but the attitude is that they’ve done their work and met the needs of their members for however long, and the new lodges where there is demand are still coming.
That’s a massive aside, but the parallels struck me!
Yeah, and at one level 'delaying the problem' is the same thing as 'solving the problem' (it's like the phrase 'kicking the can down the road', that's not necessarily a bad thing! the road is very long!)
We could go off on a Masonic tangent here but I'll try to rein that in. I s'pose my 'take' would be that adherents of any faith or 'system' - and I know that Freemasonry isn't a faith as such - are going to be shaped by it in some way.
I'd agree with @Arethosemyfeet that because something might not last for hundreds of years, it doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile or didn't serve its purpose.
It's sad and salutary to reflect though, that of the many Anglican religious orders that arose from 'The Oxford Movement', very few outlived their founders.
I don't mean that to disparage those initiatives. 'Look at the Benedictines, they've been going 1600 years! That religious order over there only lasted 90 ...'
But the shelf-life of some groups and initiatives do seem to be increasingly transitory, probably due to the faster pace of societal change.
The 'classic' Pentecostal denominations here in the UK have been going for 100 years and as far as I can tell both Elim and the AoG are holding their own - the 'Apostolics' less so.
But both have a very different 'feel' to what they'd have had in the 1920s and even the 1980s.
On the other hand, perhaps that was a particular movement that witnessed to a generation, had its greatest effect in influencing the broader church and whose ultimate institutional heft was seen in the strength of feeling that led to the Ordinates (which you could argue was sad and salutary in another way, though the Zhou Enlai retort springs to mind).
Or looking at it another way, 'all' the charismatics got in the UK were Vineyard, NFI, and a quarter of all Anglican ordinands.
But it was and still is something.
FWIW, I think the charismatic thing in the UK certainly had a significant impact and that beyond its own immediate constituency too.
Plenty of churches that aren't avowedly charismatic in their approach (I nearly wrote 'theology' then ... 🙄 😉)* use charismatic style songs.
I'd say the influence is wider too in more subtle ways, a more laid-back and 'casual' approach for instance which puts people at their ease.
I'm sure there are lots of other influences more widely too.
FWIW I'd say the charismatics deserved what success they've had and are having because they've worked hard and put the effort in.
They get things done.
* relax, I'm not saying there is no such thing as 'charismatic theology' for all the stuff about it being 'a spirituality in search of a theology.'
I'd also suggest that all true theology is 'charismatic' in the wiser sense.
We have the same set-up with a joint service across five churches on a fifth Sunday. It's popular here, with packed churches, although the total number in the single church is less than the cumulative total over the five churches on other Sundays.
There is some competition between the congregations to put on a good spread of home baking when it is their turn, so perhaps cut-throat rivalry the warm hospitality on offer helps.
I make principled decisions
You are motivated by consumerism
They are selfish "blessing chasers"
Kind if thing
How can you tell the difference, objectively speaking? Is there one? Was there ever?
Even if you're the sort that believes in a "disciplinarian" approach to church, "I like rules" is definitely a personal preference, and I have definitely seen people pursue it as a personal choice. Some people find that kind of rigor to be pleasing, and no shame in it.
But then, it raises the same questions about "God's will" versus "personal pleasure." Some might say one pleasure is more godly than another. I'm not entirely convinced. I might even suspect that self denial can create attachment, where "I suffered for this" creates a sunk cost fallacy that becomes confused with God.
And I'm not accusing you or anyone in particular of making that case, but I think that it's always negotiated. There are always limitations.
[And pardon me for being away, been busy]
Of course.
😉
Styles of music were mentioned. I am a serious consumer of music on a Sunday morning, and the church, in my invariably humble opinion, is the best place to worship and to give thanks for the precious gift of music. At our adopted church, the organist is a brilliant professional musician who can play anything. We get traditional (sometimes more than enough...) hymns, but she will often sit down at the piano and deliver quite heavenly jazz. So perhaps I am disguising my consumerism as Christianity when I go to that church.
Tomorrow we'll visit a friend's small church where the music will probably be provided by an enthusiastic choir of four and a talented pianist. We'll listen to our friend who loves to preach and does it well, and we'll go home feeling that we've been to church and that whatever we put in the plate probably won't be damned as consumerism.
What I wouldn't be doing (now that I'm not a self-sacrificial idiot anymore) is seeking out a place where I was doing nothing but give, and getting nothing back. Because that's a recipe for burning out. And that does nobody any good.
And the other extreme choice is of course pure selfishness--unless you're at a point in life where you're in need of that sort of extreme rest and nurture, which happens, God knows--or if maybe you've never noticed that giving back is a normal part of a Christian life.
And of course there are those of us who don't really have any choices, due to geography or whatever.
So as usual, it ends up being a balance, and we do the best we can. And need to show grace to people who appear to be choosing differently than we think we would, in their shoes. (How do we know, anyway?)