Category: Church of England

blogs with some connection to the Church of England or Anglican life

Big church / Small church

All Saints (which should properly be called a small percentage of saints) has 500 on the electoral role, 25 on the PCC and an Apostolic 12 on the Leadership team, although 2 are women. It has an average of 45 meetings a week if all the house groups, administration meetings, coffee mornings and communions are included.\r\n\r\nAround 50 people (10% of the electoral role) which includes 3 full time non-clergy staff are active, and spend much of their spare time  each week preparing for the 45 meetings.\r\n\r\nWhich leaves the Vicar and his Curate to go to schools, meet people on the street, and at funerals, and weddings, and baptisms, and to visit the elderly and infirm at home.\r\n\r\n350 people each week are passive – they turn up to the meetings of all sorts laid on for them.\r\n\r\nSt Valentis (named after a vigorous 1st century saint) has 45 on the electoral role, many of whom are infirm or old, so now only 25 regulars turn up to one Sunday service.\r\n\r\nThey have no house groups, but on average 5 of the regulars (20%) dedicate time each week to visiting the local old people’s home and the elderly and infirm members of the congregation who can’t travel.\r\n\r\nOne couple spend time each week researching local charities and world mission organisations to present to the congregation to raise financial support. One person plays the piano. One person leads worship. Two people, a man and a woman, preach regularly, and two women look after the four children on Sunday mornings. Being short-handed most people are on either the PCC or one of the other committees.\r\n\r\nIn all, about 85% of the congregation in St Valentis are actively involved in church life, guided by the vicar.\r\n\r\nSo I want to know, is a big church just a good small church with lots of extra hangers-on?\r\n\r\nAnd, which is the better church, All Saints or St Valentis?\r\n\r\nIt depends on which criteria are used, of course. Unfortunately ‘sustainability’ may become the overriding measure of success.\r\n\r\nUnless something cataclysmic happens, All Saints will continue as it is for the forseeable future, let’s say a conservative 20 to 30 years. Big church.\r\n\r\nUnless something miraculous happens, St Valentins will close down in the foreseeable future, let’s say 5 years. Small church.\r\n\r\nWhich is a shame.

Education and the Pastor/Teacher

A head teacher was talking on the radio about the introduction of a new exam system into mainstream education. He gave a coherent and comprehensive overview of how each facet of education will be affected by the change. It was along the lines of …\r\n\r\n“This will be good for Keystage 3 which has become a poor revisiting of Keystage 2, but not so good for overall numeracy and literacy at school leaving age. The proposed scheme segregates children on grounds of ability too soon, and expects a lower standard of achievement where we should be aiming for as high a standard as possible for all children in literacy and numeracy. And employers will not be helped by having an  group of lower attainment …” \r\n\r\nAnd so on, for quite some time.\r\n\r\nWhat made me pause to listen was the speaker’s obvious mastery of the issues affecting all children in that particular group of secondary school children. It was an elegantly expressed and coherent overview of the issues. What is more, he was speaking without the benefit of time for preparation.\r\n\r\nIt was what you would expect or want in a competent head teacher.\r\n\r\nWhich made me think about how vicars and pastors would compare if they were asked to give an overview of how the way they have structured their churches and in particular their teaching programmes to aid their people in maturing in their faith, from the immature early days of faith to a competency in literacy (Biblical and theological) and numeracy (lifestyle and personal management).\r\n\r\nI think I’ll start asking my vicar friends the question: “So how have you structured your teaching programme to help people to grow in their discipleship to a place of literacy and numeracy?”

Never Too Busy Churches

“The words ‘I’m too busy’ and ‘I don’t have enough time’ reflect an inner attitude. Great men and women never give the impression of being too busy, but rather appear to be quite at leisure.”\r\n\r\nSo said Oswald Saunders.\r\n\r\nI wonder if that’s true of great churches? That is, great churches never give the impression of being too busy, but rather appear to be quite at leisure.\r\n\r\nOr perhaps it’s the other way around: a great church is one that is full of people who are never too busy and have enough time?\r\n\r\nI wonder what that looks like?

Catalyst

Most church outreach activities are not catalysts for growth. We think they are.\r\n\r\nWhen we create  ‘messy church’ for example, we are hoping that by providing a new kind of church service to accommodate families we will create the essential catalyst for church growth through families.\r\n\r\nIt will not.\r\n\r\nWe have created something good, to be sure, and it has great opportunity to grow, but in itself it is not a catalyst for growth. In fact, in a church with limited resources, especially limited numbers of competent  leaders, many new initiatives will become regular events that use up valuable resources.\r\n\r\nThe catalyst for church growth is the gospel empowered by the Spirit. It is the Spirit who brings life, not the church, and certainly not a new format.\r\n\r\nIn fact, the model for growth is not the first church, but it is first the resurrection.

Outreach Galore!!

There’s Outreach Galore in our churches.\r\n\r\nTiddlers. Toddlers.\r\n\r\nYoung people. Old people.\r\n\r\nMen’s Breakfasts. Mothers Union.\r\n\r\nCoffee Mornings. Concert Evenings.\r\n\r\nAnd then there are occasional offices. Weddings. Baptisms. Funerals.\r\n\r\nAnd yet.\r\n\r\nThe church isn’t growing. Generally.\r\n\r\nAnd why?\r\n\r\nBecause it’s not outreach that grows the church, but the gospel of the resurrection told with the power of the resurrection.\r\n\r\nAnd somehow\r\n\r\n… we forgot to mention the gospel when the opportunity arose.

Sunday Welcome

On Sundays the people of St Jude’s are very, very friendly. They chat. Open faced. All those expressions associated with acceptance, raised eyebrows, big grins, relaxed body language.\r\n\r\nThe problem is this.\r\n\r\nWhen Jack, who has been coming on Sundays, wanders into the church for a midweek meeting, he is met by a strange and what he believes is an uncharacteristic coolness (compared to the church he knows on Sunday). The same people that grinned and relaxed with him on Sunday just glanced over in his direction, and carried on in their own conversation.\r\n\r\nIn fact, the group of five or six people talking seemed to be huddled together. They hadn’t linked arms or anything like that. They just seemed to be closer than usual. On more careful inspection it was clear that although they were perhaps standing marginally closer physically they were remarkably closer socially. It was something about the focus on their faces. Jack had seen it on faces in the canteen at work. There was an aura that said, “Not you. Not now.”\r\n\r\nIt was clear to Jack that this was another group altogether. Same people, different group. Jack did what most slightly self concious outsiders do in church, the ones that don’t have the balls to just walk out in case they upset someone, as if …\r\n\r\nJack started to read notices, pick up books on the book stall, study Sunday School pictures on the wall, examine the Lady Chapel, and gradually drift towards the door.\r\n\r\nHe was unnecessarily self concious. No-one noticed.\r\n\r\nHe thought, “where was that Sunday Welcome?”\r\n\r\nand\r\n\r\n”What was that Sunday Welcome?”

Whole Church Time Management 2 – the calculations

By the way, the time log for the previous blog went something like this:

  1. Clergy: 2No @ 55 hrs p/w (110)
  2. Clergy: 2No @ 30 hrs p/w (60)
  3. Wardens: 2No @ 20 hrs/p/w (40)
  4. Office Staff: 3No @ 50 hrs/p/w (avg) (150)
  5. Treasurers: 2No @ 3 hrs/p/w (6)
  6. Lay Ministers: 4No sermons and services at w/e: 4No @ 7 hrs p/w (28)
  7. PCC: 6 No Mtgs/12 people pro rata hrs/p/w 4.5 (4.5)
  8. Leadership Team: 6No Mtgs/10 people pro rata hrs/p/w 3 (3)
  9. Leadership Sub Groups: 6No groups/8 people/6 mtgs pro rata hrs/p/w 8.5 (8.5)
  10. Social Secretary: 2 evenings a week/2hrs p/eve (4)
  11. Organist: 1No 6hrs
  12. Small Choir: 6No @4hrs/p/w (24)
  13. Large Choir: 45No @ 2hrs/p/w (90)
  14. Band: 7No @ 6xp/yr+rehearse pro rata hrs (4)
  15. Sidespersons: 4No @ 3hrs/p/w (12)
  16. Coffee Rota: 4No @ 2 hrs/p.w (8)
  17. Old Peoples Lunch: 4No 2hrs/p/w (8)
  18. Youth Team: 2No @ 3.5hrs/p/w (7)

525 hours administration, management and preparation per week.

For how much worship?

  1. Old Peoples Lunch: 25No 2hrs/p/w (50)
  2. Sunday 8.00 HC: 5 No @ 1 hrs/p/w (5)
  3. Sunday 11.00: 70No @ 2 hrs/p/w (140)
  4. Sunday 18.00: 16No @1.25 hrs/p/w (20)
  5. Monday 19.30 Hs Gp:  12 @ 2hrs/p/w (24)
  6. Monday 19.30 Recorder Group: 8No @ 1.5 hrs/p/w (12)
  7. Wednesday 10.00 HC: 12 @ 0.75hrs (9)
  8. Wednesday 19.30 training: 8No @ 2 hrs/p/w (16)
  9. Friday 19.00 Youth Gp: 12No@ 2hrs/p/w (24)

300 hours of public events per week

Whole Church Time Management

St Jude’s used to be a big church. Several hundred adults used to meet every week and several hundred children came to Sunday School in the afternoons. More recently it had fallen on hard times (somewhat of its own making) and as people had aged without new people being introduced the congregation was, to put it inelegantly, dying off.

There was no doubt about it, St Jude’s was still a busy church. There was lots to do, and although only around 70 people came regularly to the morning service there were probably around 90 people who met across the parish for various activities throughout the week. This included children.

The problem at St Jude’s was that like a frog in a saucepan of water on the ring of a gas stove, it hadn’t noticed that it’s days were numbered. The only area that hadn’t declined was their organisational structure. They still had all the structures in place to run a church of at least four times the size, and each post was filled, praise God, which meant that each person involved was very busy, very tense, very combative or very put upon depending on their personality, and very tired. They had some sense that things were not right at St Jude’s (who was of course the Patron Saint of Lost Causes) but they did what had to be done to keep the show on the road.

When each person’s contribution was added up it came to 525 person-hours of administration, management and preparation each week (the time it takes to make 21 cars). This time was spent to support 300 person-hours of shared public worship and activity by 90 adults and children. This incredibly inefficient ratio of time invested in management to time expended in worship (525/300=1.75) represents the church on a knife edge. It means that on average every person (including every child) is investing an average 1 hour 45 minutes for every 1 hour of public worship experienced.

Once the time spent/time gained ratio goes above 1.00 the alarm bells should ring.