Herding cats and counting sheep

Whilst away Church of England attendance figures for the year were released, triggering the usual ritual Groundhog Day for terminal decline, renaissance, or business as usual, depending almost entirely on the prejudices and agendas of the people doing the prognosticating. It doesn't seem to matter much what they actually say. Everybody, of course, is abslutely right from their own point of view, especially when it’s buttressed by hard figures.

As it happens, however, yesterday Kevin Ryan, diocesan ICT manager came yesterday to explain to Bucks area deans and lay chairs the use of Tableau, a new statistical tool we are making available for deanery planning. This enables people to drill down easily into local statitsics. As well as Kevin, we were lucky that one of our lay chairs is a professional in the field of marketing statistics, and was able to correct many basic errors of perception and interpretation among our group of 21 people. From this exercise we learn a few home truths:

1. The interpretation of statistics for serious marketing purposes is a fne art. What you are looking for affects what you find, and all kinds of allowances have to be made, with local knowledge, before you can arrive at a real answer to pretty much any particular question. It can be done, but not without a lot of work and qualification. Look at two examples from Bucks of explosive growth, more than doubling numbers over five years. One is caused by the fact that it is a reopened former redundant church near new housing.The other is caused by significant Evanglism more than doubling the size of an already large congregsation in five years. Make what you will of either, but to make sense of data you need to consider contextual and local realities.
   
   
2. Figures usually look enticingly accurate and absolute simply because they are figures, and only very occasionally because of the precision with which they describe particular realities. Go to any school governors' meeting in the league tables season, and you'll see what I mean.
   
   
3. Everything depends on the accuracy of the data that went in to begin with. Church statistics, especially attendance ones go through three significantly wobbly layers of filtration which cannot be avoided... starting with the fact that they are collected largely by volunteers.
   
   
4. Level 1: One is the significant differences in counting methods and consistency, which vary from never to regular, as well as from scrupulous to megasloppy. When I was an incumbent I once took a Sunday out to check our numbers. I physically counted 242 people on the premises. The number in the book was 127. This led to two significant discoveries about my parish. (a) the greatest variable factor was usually, in fact, which verger had done the counting. The more otpimistic ones tended to count higher, the more pessimistic lower, and some always the same kind of figure by a process of dead reckoning whereby they would go to the vestry, check the figure they'd put in last time, ask themselves whether the service felt fuller or not this week, and then stick something in the book. I’m not proud of this doscovery, but it was the way I discovered things were generally done. Accuracy was higher for smaller services simply because it was very much easier to count 16 people at evensong than 242 at the main morning service.
   
   Level 2: To derive the usual Sunday attendance figures, you need to average four Sundays in October noting any exceptions (like, say a baptism in the main service). This, along with the mathematical abilities of clergy and wardens, reveals a cornucopia of results, some more compliant with the theory of how they should be collected than others.
   
   Level 3: Returns rates vary. Only one deanery out of ten had an almost complete dataset and for another it was almost non-existent. Those who want to count sheep need first to herd cats.
   
   
5. As a result of all these realities, the grossed up statistical picture may, surprisingly, be the most “accurate.” I don’t mean the figures are actually correct, they surely aren’t, but grossed out across a field through a few years, trends may well appear, with the inaccuracies cancelling each other out a bit. The big story seems to be one of significant and fundamental erosion in the nineties, and a generally flatlining pattern this century. It’s a good way of disappointing everyone with an axe to grind, but it seems to be the truth. It’s is probably the least promising straw from which to make bricks to load into coshes, but I'm sure noble attempts were made last week.
   
   
6. The best use of these figures is local, because that's where people have the contextual knowledge to make sense of them. Thus our use of Tableau.
   
   
7. These figures are like reported crime rates. Other oft-quoted data, for example, the English Church Census, is of the nature of the Home Office Crime Survey — the dataset behind it is very much more partial and any extrapolation from it very much more an expert game, like long range weather forecasting. Caveat Emptor.
   
   
8. The figures we drilled down into, with some degree of local knowledge, revealed a huge variation, from the kind of classic decline patterns Fleet Street assumes, which do exist occasionally, to a far more egneral static pattern, and one or two examples of swift decline or explosive growth. More growth than devcline among these last. There are a handful of Bucks Churches which have experienced the kind of growth where they have had to double up shifts to fit everybody in, and one deanery in which, across almost thirty parishes, numbers have more than doubled over the past five years. What are you likely to experience in any of our 288 places of worship in Bucks? If you really want to know you’ll just have to go and see...
   

Taking a Global View

Interesting times, reviewing with archdeaconry colleagues basic stats for Bucks parishes, 2003-8. The figures are wildly variable, depending on who returned forms in any year and who didn’t. No surprises there, then.

The bad news is that flakiness about data collection makes it much less useful than it could be. The good news is that most places in which people talk decline are holding their own, or exhibiting steady organic growth. There are some clear examples of decline as well, along with one or two growth hotspots.

Interesting ranges like “small rural churches” and “Slough” exhibited surprisingly steady and heathy patterns across the range, of which the parishes themselves are probably entirely unaware.

So, we all need to get the act together about figures. The message for now is that the truth out there is probably more varied and less spooky than people may feel. Fleet Street don’t know Diddly-Squat.

The task of interpreting global statistics, indeed the very thought that bishops or archdeacons might ever have to look at and interpret such culturally alien things as mere figures, puts me in mind of a marvellous poem by May Swenson (1913-1989), first published in 1963:

Southbound On The Freeway
A tourist came in from Orbitville,
parked in the air, and said:

The creatures of this star
are made of metal and glass.

Through the transparent parts
you can see their guts.

Their feet are round and roll
on diagrams — or long

measuring tapes, dark
with white lines.

They have four eyes.
The two in the back are red.

Sometimes you can see a five-eyed
one, with a red eye turning

on the top of his head.
He must be special —

the others respect him,
and go slow,

when he passes, winding,
among them from behind.

They all hiss as they glide,
like inches, down the marked

tapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy inside

the hard bodies — are they
their guts or their brains?

Mission old and new in St Albans

Joy at the weekend to join over 2,000 in the Abbey to welcome Alan Smith, new Bishop of St Albans, my new episcopal next door neighbour. The sun shined as we all packed into St Albans Cathedral, site of the earliest Christian martyrdom in England.

One local paper caught Saturday’s celebration nicely. Thousands of joyful people celebrating together is of zero interest to most English media, who have their own agendas to pursue, but it is an amazing enterprise and tremendously moving to be part of such a thing. Jeffrey John and colleagues did the whole do proud — no mean achievement. It was an icon of the civil society that we take for granted, in the same way as we tend to assume all the wiring in our homes is there and works, without anyone having to pay any attention to it. In a way that's the whole idea, but it’s fascinating to see it all laid out in one place.

Bishop Alan spoke of the Church as a community of ordinary people, stirred by a willingnes to go deeper into God to do extraordinary things that make for a life based on generosity and care. It is this that transforms communities and makes disciples. It isn’t about institutions and empire building, but personal renewal and hope — discovering a different resource for life. At the end of the service balloons were released in prayer and blessing for the City and counties of the diocese. With no sudden release of helium indoors, we did not get to hear 2,000 people sounding like Mickey Mouse, but then you can’t have everything...

C of E: Historic, Sublime, Ridiculous

Three thought provoking posts floated out of the blogosphere today, which say something very imortant to me about what our Church is, and what it is called to be, and how, in different ways. First up, a bon mot from Martin Jackson, parish priest of St Cuthbert Benfieldside, Co Durham, drawn from the annual Durham clergy gathering, on the immortal pairing of nostalgia and pews. As plans were drawn up to remove some, wailing arose:

“Someone died in that pew.” To which the parish priest had replied, “Then it had better go before it kills someone else.” At which another priest leapt to her feet and shouted, “Let me have it - I can put it to good use in my parish....

This led to a beautiful and extraordinary post from Kelvin Wright, a New Zealand priest who has been going through profound personal, spiritual, and ecclesial testing. Visiting Kent after a period of great uncertainty and disillusionment, he reflects profoundly on the meaning of the Church of England in its historical and cutural contexts:

Journeying to England has been an experience of the things which set this European country apart from the rest of Europe. A different currency, system of measurement and language and a deeper rigour about immigration matters are only part of it. In the rest of Europe you see the European flag flying as often as the national flag. Not in England. Here it's Union Jacks all the way, proclaiming a sense of difference and independence which is mirrored in the relationship of the Church of England to European Catholicism. This is a different church. Quirkily different. Proudly different. Sometimes different just for the sake of being different.

The Church of England is like that most English of jokes, a curates egg. Parts of it are excellent. The new life bursting out of Holy Trinity Brompton and the deep spirituality of Walsingham could not be more different but they are held in the same organisation and both are inspiring. I have been in dozens of small churches, though, where a tiny congregation struggles with the upkeep of their much beloved ecclesiastical museum (aka the parish church) with diminishing resources of money and personnel. I have seen both the church's impotence in the face of the increasing social and economic malaise which seems to be engulfing Britain, and her small courageous, and often ingenious attempts to make a difference. But it's the history which has helped me to understand the current Anglican church.

The church here is old. I met a vicar who spoke of the damage done to his parish church by "the invasion". He meant the one which took place in 1066 but he spoke of it as if it was last week. In every place the plundering of the dissolution, the ravages of Viking longboats and Luftwaffe bombers and the vandalism of the puritans have left their mark, and the current parishioners are dealing with them still. This is a church which has been part of the fabric of the society around it, and where the demands of being a social institution and of being the body of Christ have caused constant tension. Sometimes the church has become more a part of the social fabric than the spotless Bride of Christ, and it has failed. Sometimes though, it has been a witness to the Gospel in the face of hardship and oppression and sometimes the Spirit has caused rebirth, even centuries after a seeming full stop.

Unsurprisingly, it is where there is a continuing practice of spirituality that the church has flourished. Where there has been prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, meditation, social responsibility and almsgiving the Church of England has thrived. It has also thrived where there has been disciplined, holy, fearless leadership. To see the marks of the Church's history and to hear the stories has been to encounter this deep vein of spirituality and to feel again the influence of her sainted leaders. Where this rich seam is refound, as on Iona and in Mother Julian's cell, the 21st Century church has risen, seemingly invincible, from the ashes. It is this, the great treasure of our church, that I have glimpsed, and which I know to be the only hope of my own diocese and of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

I was raised a Methodist and chose to be an Anglican. After this month in England, I choose still to be an Anglican, but I know that much of what occupies our church and seems so important in our councils is froth and bubble: the detritus rising to the surface from the ongoing struggle with our wider culture. I choose to be an Anglican, but know that the only way for my own faith and my own parish to be viable is if I try to dive deeper and find the cool streams beneath. This seeking the depths must be what forms my ministry in this, the last decade of my life as a stipended Anglican priest. Which brings me to reflect on the third thread of my own journey: that inward one of my own soul.

The simple fact is you can’t write a cheque to “The Church of England” because it doesn’t, in any simple corporate form, exist, let alone had a bank account! What does exist is a messy bundle of several thousand ancient and modern trusts and corporations in context — and this reality is what Kelvin has captured. Those of us who live within it seldom see it anything like as clearly as he does from the outside.

That’s why detractors or zealous reformers can make no sense at all of the Church of England, as long as they imagine it is some kind of simple denomination or corporate organisation like Microsoft. Should it be more of that? Reading Kelvin’s beautiful reflection, he has captured a truth that would be profoundly threatened if it ever became so. In times of uncertainty and frustration, it’s easy to be attracted by autocratic models of church, Catholic or protestant, but they bring problems of their own.

Which brings me on to a thought from Ecclesologist and priest Nathan Humphrey, from St Paul’s K Street, Washington DC. A major custard pie fight has been going on in the US and elsewhere between Optimists and Pessimists about Progress. The Custard flying from Left to right is Justice-flavoured, and the Custard flying Right to Left is Orthodoxy flavoured. Custard is fun, but you can’t live on it; and this custard is largely sterile. In these circumstances, Nathan questions the facile use of terms like “inclusivity” — Inclusive of who, and why, and how — and concludes:

More and more, I am tending to think that any church that is not robustly ideologically diverse (that is, where there are safe spaces for conservatives and liberals to engage in dialogue, discernment, and conflict without the threat of broken communion) will end up a "niche church."

Diversity for diversity's sake is not an inherent good, nor does it necessarily promote justice. Diversity for the sake of maintaining a space wherein all may patiently form relationships with each other that will be mutually converting is more likely to lead to a fuller expression of justice, truth, and evangelical mission than any "niche" where everybody thinks like me.

The Church exists to be a humble delivery system for a greater Kingdom, within which human and divine truths can meet, try to recognise themselves, and, on a good day, take flesh. The ways they do this will be as quirky, occasional, and inconsistent as the human beings involved. But if you cut the human beings out of the picture, as they are, you exclude the people — and it’s the people God loves most of all, just as they are, but loves far too much to leave them that way...

Birds of a feather?

ASBO Jesus frequently hits interesting nails on the head with cartoons such as this morning’s. I've been reading Bill Bishop’s book The Big Sort: How the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart. This shows the devastating effect on social cohesion of gated communities in many areas of American life. But this is not just a sociological problem; it’s a missional issue. What hapens when we do Church like this?

Well, I suppose, we are saying that we believe we can only do our Christianity with real people if we get the option to pick the kinds of people they are. And that doesn’t include all the people whose homes we drive by on our way to Church.

Drive-In Church seems ludicrous, but this is Drive-by Church. We proclaim the reconciliation of heaven and earth by the power that raised Jesus from the dead working in us, but then hedge that process about with an insistence that we get a veto over who’s on the bus. If we believe we need to be like this, we’ve pretty much made it happen anyway. Doesn’t make it true, though. Thank God he doesn’t take that attitude.

And however convenient it is for birds of a feather to fly together, consider the missional credibility issue this attitude and behaviour raises:

“God is putting together a new reconciled humanity in Christ, and you could wake up and embrace your part in this glorious process. Come and join us!”

“How do I do that?”

“By ignoring and excluding at least 6 out of the following groups of people: the old, the unsexy, the Radical, the emotionally needy, people without cars, the sexy, the poor, the young, Classical Music wonks, the rich, the over-excitable, the Conservative, Rock music wonks, the married, the divorced, the people with buggies, the people without buggies, the people who like/ don’t like the Vicar, people with big houses, people with small houses...”

And people on the street, many of them looking for ways out of their own ghettoes, may be illiterate about religion, but they’re not all idiots, and most of them can spot this one for a pup from a mile off...

Or have I missed something?

Weekly wailing & gnashing of teeth...

I thought Uncle Ben was a goodie — Spiderman’s uncle, all that. Nutritionally, his Long Grain Rice has helped generations of kids flourish, both sides of the pond.
Before entirely leaving my delight at David Dark’s new book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, however, I wanted to share a cautionary tale he weaves about how Christians can appear to everyone else. I offer this in the spirit of Joe the Peacock’s fabulous feedback last year on Spam versus Evangelism:

Dig, if you’re willing, this picture: a tiny town with a tight-knit community. The people share joys and concerns, woes and gossip. They keep a close and often affectionate watch on one another’s business. They talk and talk and talk.

What an outsider would notice within minutes of listening in on conversations are constant and slightly self-conscious references to “Uncle Ben.” A beautiful sunset prompts a townsperson to say “Isn’t Uncle Ben awesome?” Good news brings out how thankful and overjoyed they feel toward Uncle Ben. Even in tragedy, a local might say, in a slightly nervous fashion, “You know, it just goes to show how much we all need Uncle Ben. I know — we all know — that Uncle Ben is good.”

Uncle Ben is always on their minds.

Even when the magnificence of Uncle Ben isn’t spoken of aloud, he’s somehow present in facial expressions and actions. It’s the look of stopping a train of thought before it goes too far, of letting an uncompleted sentence trail off into awkward silence, of swiftly changing the subject. It’s as if a conversation can go only so far. People hardly ever look one another in the eye for long.

At the beginning of each week there’s a meeting in the largest house in town. Upon arriving, people get caught up in good fellowship and animated discussion of the week’s events, with conversations straining in the direction of Uncle Ben. When a bell sounds, talk ceases. Everyone moves to the staircase and descends into the basement. Each person sits facing an enormous rumbling furnace. Seated close to the furnace door, as if he were a part of the furnace itself, is a giant man in black overalls. His back is turned on them.

They wait in silence. In time the man turns around. His face is angry, contorted. He fixes a threatening stare of barely contained rage on each person, then roars, “Am I Good?” To which they respond in unison, “Yes, Uncle Ben, you are good.” “Am I worthy of praise?” “You alone are worthy of our praise.” “Do you love Me more than anything? More than anyone?” “We love you and you alone, Uncle ben.” “You better love me, or I’m going to put you... in here” — he opens the furnace door to reveal a gaping darkness — “forever.” Out of the darkness can be heard sounds of anguish and lament. Then he closes the furnace door and turns his back to them. They sit in silence.

Finally, feeling reasonably assured that Uncle Ben has finished saying what he has to say, they leave. They live gtheir lives as best they can. They try to think and speak truthfully and do well by one another. They resume their talk of the wonders of Uncle Ben’s love in anticipation of the next week’s meeting.

But they’re limited, in myriad ways, by fear. Fear causes them to censor their own thoughts and words. Fear prevents them from telling anyone of their inner anguish and fright. Fear keeps them from recognizing in one another’s eyes their common desperation. This fear is interwoven, subtly and sometimes not so subtly, in all of their relationships.

End of story.

Finally, siblings, to mull over additonally, David starts his book with a quote from Jon Stewart:

Remember to love your neighbour as you love yourself. And if you hate yourself, then please — just leave your neighbour alone.

Worship for the Me Generation

Do you wish worship at your church was more relevant and personal? As we all become more obsessed with ourselves, churches become self-selecting voluntary organisations for people who like all-day clubbing, or share particular views. Salvation becomes self-fulfillment, & Ego judges everything. Here’s the ultimate hi-relevance lo-tradition praise resource for the me generation... hi-impact worship that will always cheer you up.

Dwindling Churchgoers Death Plunge

Excellent summary by Thinking Anglicans and analysis by David Keen, here and here, of this week's press puffdoodle about church attendance. A basically serious Christian Research Report has, apparently, been hacked around and hammed up, with an hysterical sauce added about, guess what, Muslims. What a surprise.

All I can add is this yellowing cutting from the Times of 29 July 1971. It solemnly announces, as a matter of mathematical certainty, that as Britain secularises all churchgoing in the UK “will have disappeared completely” by... er... 2011. So, according to the Times of 29 July 1971, in two and half years time there won't be anything left at all. What are you waiting for? Pull your finger out! Get your skates on! Haven’t you got homes to go to?

Gentle Reader, this all goes to show... the fun of statistics. I note that the paid circulation of the Daily Telegraph in 1971 was 1,454,581. In 2005, allowing for giveaways, it was 605,555. At that rate, the Diocese of Oxford Reporter, with its stable circulation of 65,000 will overtake the Daily Telegraph, as a matter of mathematical certainty, by 2035. What a bunch of crap!

It also goes to show how elusive and subtle the phenomena of religious participation are. Despite the efforts of Christian Research and others it could be we simply don't have the reach and depth of figures that would shed light on the detailed position. There’s a really thoughtful reflective trail on the real situation and its implications on Richard Hall’s excellent blog, and, from a Conservative Evangelical perspective, John Richardson’s. See also the Interesting discussion of hammed up news by Simon Barrow here.

How do people use Church (or not)?

As well as reading about Church coming and going, I've been reading about how people in different cultures use their computers. Forrester research has been investigating the “Groundswell” of new media. Its research analyses usage like this:
The categories are made up around what you do online. Spectators read blogs, Critics Comment on blogs, Creators originate blogs. Joiners use Facebook et al. You get the idea. An individual can be on several rungs at the same time. Proportions on each rung are vastly different in different cultures. In the US, 25% are creators — in Europe only 10%. 53% of Europeans are inactives, 41% of Americans, only 37% of South Koreans.

OK Team. This method has absolutely no tested validity at all in the field of religious participation, but let's sketch on the back of an envelope. If patterns of church involvement were similar, and for all I know they are, In the UK roughly 70% = 35m people say they are Christians. Most actives would be, er 10% = 3·5m weekly participants. Anglicans would be just under 1m bums on pews a week. Inactives would be 53% = 26·5m. They are.
Spooky, ja? Anyone care to develop this kind of approach?

Church — Six Buckets of Sick

Interesting Comment by David Keen on this week’s annual Social Trends figures for the UK. He’s also noted a growing number of Church leavers based on recent work by Richter and Francis. Like all social groups, churches face accelerating churn rates, some higher than others, with more complex and diverse reasons for dropping out.

The Barna Group researches American religious attitudes and practice. It’s Evangelical, with a high commitment to excellence and accuracy. Last year I read its serious work on the black hole opening up in 18-30 US discipleship demographics. Members of this age group, including those within the churches, report six overwhelming turn-offs about the Church:

1. Hypocritical
   fuelled by some well-known scandals, there is increasing scepticism about inauthenticity among Evangelical Christians
   
2. Too focussed on gaining converts
   Many people, including those who have been members of Evangelical Churches, feel they are not taken seriously as people, but rather prized as converts
   
3. Antihomosexual
   Barna takes a Conservative line on homosexuality itself, but notes popular disgust at the way American Evangelical Christians appear to look down on gays and lesbians, with bigoted fixations about them. Simply announcing they are not bigoted does not dispel the overwhelming impression they are.
   
4. Sheltered
   Old-fashioned, boring, and out of touch with reality, with a preference for shallow solutions over searching spiritual and moral questions.
   
5. Political
   Motivated by a right wing political agenda, including support for the Iraq war, and Conservative social policy
   
6. Judgmental
   Swift to judge others, dishonest, and fixated on rules rather than people

I suspect there is significant difference in the UK, partly because the public face of religion is less protestant Evangelical, partly because UK politicians “don’t do God” and our right wing agendas are far more secular. However localised versions of these factors doubtless do turn people off Christianity in the UK — it’s worth reflecting which ones in particular, and how...

One thing’s for sure, bearing in mind recent discussions of church size. To the extent that people are accepted and respected as they are Churches seem to flourish qualitatively within their contexts. Pushy sectarian ones (whether they do it for “Evangelical” or Social clique-serving reasons) gather birds of a feather up to a point by being distinctive and driving hard, but plateau within a niche with eclcetic congregations along with a high and increasing churn rate. A small residual core of heavies reinforce their own sense of righteousness by ranting and bearing down hard on others, but with diminishing self-awareness on their way to the ghetto. The Crass utilitarian welcome and the tale their leavers tell says it all..

Churches that grow too big?

Great and interesting series of Easter posts by Mike Croghan critiquing classic US denominational models of Church, including a great post about Church size and growth. When you go over 75-100, he suggests, it becomes very difficult to maintain real relationships:

I can't think of anything that a single church community can do which a network of communities working together can't do (though admittedly, such networks would probably move more slowly in many cases). On the other hand, I can think of a bunch of thorny issues that begin to arise when communities get so big that anonymity is possible - which probably happens when they approach 50 or 70 adults; fewer if the leadership responsibility is concentrated in one or two individuals. Once anonymity is possible, the church ceases to be a community of followers of Jesus.

He draws attention to two particular issues:

It's not a community where relationship is optional. It's OK to be an introvert. It's OK to hang back and take relationship at your own pace. But once it's possible to simply fall through the cracks - to neither know or be known and for no-one to realize that - it's not a community. It's more like a neighborhood - or a housing development. There are , no doubt, communities within the neighborhood - groups of people who share real relationship with each other - but the only thing shared by the entire group is not relationship, but mere proximity. Just like in the average housing development in the US today.

It's not community where following Jesus is optional. It's OK to be just starting on the way. It's OK to not be sure you want to be on that way at all. But it should be clear to everyone that following Jesus is what the community is about. It's not a group with a dual track: one group of people who try to be disciples, and a second group who choose the second, perfectly acceptable alternate track: simply show up once a week and pay for services provided by the first group. Oh, I know that every church says it's about discipleship. But practical reality speaks way louder than words, and the fact is that in communities large enough for folks to "slip through the cracks", it's blatantly obvious to all involved that the "just show up and consume" option is a perfectly valid one, 'cause folks can see plenty of people all around them choosing that.

Thinking of our network of almost 300 congregations in Bucks, I can see real truth in Mike’s words, encouraging and challenging. Encouraging because it’s a tremendous opportunity to serve in a Church which doesn’t (by dint of history) have any denominational coherence, and never has had. Practically speaking, there are one or two large (even four figure) congregations, but they have a really sophisticated game plan for maintaining community on a smaller scale within them. Far, far more often, parishes come in small packets: Mike’s 75-100 figure is eerily accurate for many. Call that good news, if you will, where people really relate to each other within those congregations — and that does happen surprisingly often. Smaller rural Churches can be really strong relationally; places where everybody is somebody. Sometimes.

I’d add a third problem to Mike’s two. People can be too geed up about quantity. The first question people ask vicars at parties, and vicars ask themselves, is often “how big is your congregation?” Fear and fantasy infects their minds, and they begin to think they are failures if they don’t grow into a 200+ congregation. So they flog themselves to try and grow. This compromises their authenticity, which in itself prevents them growing. Thus the vicious circle runs, and the more they bash their head against a wall, the more it hurts, and the more stuck they become.Jesus once said something interesting about grapes, figs and briars. A Tangerine is not a Small Orange, and however hard it fantasizes about being a Big Orange, God won’t let it happen.

What concerns me isn't the size of congregations as much as Mike’s second point about dual tracks. Where congregations of any size become “dual track” with a bunch of keenies doing the Jesus bit and everybody else in it for what they can get out of it, or sheer force of habit, Houston, we have a problem. We’re probably less hung up (explicitly) on numbers than Americans, but more hung up on relationality. Hmm. What do you think?
PS h/t Studiohermetique for “Schizophrenic Supplicants, above.

Exclusively for Everyone (= Anyone?)

Having mentioned denominational ins and outs yesterday, I stumbled over a thought-provoking and perceptive post by marketing guru Seth Godin, about the power of exclusion to fuel sales:

When I was in college, the Dean tried to put together an advisory group of students. Nobody he invited joined--it wasn't worth the time. Then he named it, "The Group of 100" and in just a few days, it was filled. The easiest way to have insiders is to have outsiders.

Credit card companies have made billions by selling a card that others can't get.

Politicians stand up and talk about their (exclusive) religion, or pit one special interest group against another.

And of course, the best nightclubs have the biggest velvet ropes and the pickiest doormen.

Limiting the supply of your service, or the quantity of your product, or being aggressive in who you sell to (and who you don't) are all time-tested ways to build a killer brand. Humans like being insiders, and will work hard to create their own imaginary demarcations to demonstrate that they've made it inside.

Populism is almost always a hard sell, it seems.

When Tiffany's lowered prices and quality and tried to reach out to the masses, they almost went bankrupt.

He goes on to talk about how this works on the net, and the exclusion models, conscious or not, of Wikipedia and others. He goes on to suggest, as a marketing guru,

The first thing I'd ask myself before launching a product, a service, or a candidate is, "who are we leaving out?" If the answer is no one, be prepared for uncharted waters. The future of marketing (at least the big successes) is going to be fueled by those with the guts to embrace the masses. The profits, at least in the short run, may well be found by those that embrace exclusion.

Groucho, famously, said he wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have him as a member, and this aspect of human nature applies to faith, too. The C of E, like it or lump it, with its all embracing medieval parish system, lack of ass-busting heresy trials, and legal niceties that give rights to anyone and everyone, flies straight in the face of conventional marketing. Formally, the doors are open to all — It’s informally that the social networks have subtle ways of excluding. Church is a worked example of both the joys and perils of open source thinking and living. The most exclusive and demanding churches grow fastest but seldom get any bigger. The least are always in decline, but seldom die out. Can marketing theory help explain these paradoxes?

1. “S/He who is not against me is for me” is there in the gospels, but balanced by “S/He who is not for me is against me.” With teaching on his second miles, giving away you shirt, and going anywhere to teach, Jesus challenged this aspect of human nature, as well as acknowledging it. Some people are attracted, and some repelled, by the concept of a really inclusive church. We need to understand why and how this happens, and look behind both kinds of slogan, asking what’s happening in us when we react to them, and why. Coincidentally, How gender specific is this response?
   
2. The Kingdom of peace and love only grows when people feel special and together, but at the same time empowered to embrace strangers. Expressions of Christianity have to hold in tension a coherence principle and an inclusion principle. They have to find ways not to play one off against another, but somehow feed one off the other. Are Liturgy, symbol and art, perhaps, ways of expressing the whole that square this circle?
3. If people are interested in Church growth and Evangelism they have to distinguish two different kinds of processes that can claim the name —
   
1. a marketing process driven by exclusivity, guilt or chauvinism that always ends up diminishing its objects, wittingly or not — church imperialism can be very powerful, but its fruits will turn out to be sick, like cancerous growth. Here, people have firmer in and out lines, and are harder on outsiders than themselves. Ideals never quite translate into action, and the ceiling to growth is that of the marketing paradox to which Seth refers.
   
2. organic growth, often more steady, where the stress is on discipleship leading to personal growth in community. Here, people are harder on themselves than outsiders, and its hallmark is powerful bonding (social capital) which is at the same time generous and outward looking — they'll know the Christians by their love and because those people, being unlearned, are turning the world upside down. Thus the exclusion paradox is transcended.

What, in Seth’s terms, is our experience of Church growth and evangelism? What does the fruit of our effort imply we are really doing? How much is our practice based on marketing logic, and how much on Jesus’ radical bucking of this aspect of human nature?

Pray together, stay together

Final notes from this year’s retreat — about worship. There's a natural tendency to think of worship as a programme based activity, like vacuum cleaning, or watching telly. Everything is projected on a screen before me, as entertainment or edification. Good worship requires Gear, either Muppett show electronic gizmos (Big Mixing Desk and Jumbo Projector), or a shedload of Twee Gear from the Mowbrays Catalogue (“randy for antique”).

If you stopped Joseph in the carpenter's shop and asked him about worship, life was worship, family meals were worship, the table he'd made yesterday was worship. Synagogue was part of it, and so was the temple occasionally. The roped off God zone was really rather minimal, and when Jesus died, the veil was torn and the ropes snapped. How silly to try and recreate it now , and call it a missional tool.

Furthermore 7% of communication is the script. That means 93% isn’t! Forty years long of faffing around with the words of worship in the C of E, and I reckon we've pretty much determined empirically what a place like Saint Wandrille, which has only changed the script once in the past 1300 years, knew all along — that the attitude with which we pray is infinitely more important than the words we use.

The Rule is a whole of life policy, that starts at the God end. What goes on in Church is an integral part of life and work, not a bolt on extra. You just do it and see what happens. The point is not to entertain yourselves, but to focus everything else, using the psalms in particular. All human life is there, all emotion, including nasty, tentative, lary, hopeful and thankful (sounds like the basis for seven brand new dwarfs). What goes on in the church is as integral to life as breathing. Sometimes air tastes good, and sometimes it's just air. By and large there's no point worrying about breathing, unless you're underwater. You just get on with it. In a very undecorated place like Saint Wandrille (where the church is, literally, an old barn) the community itself is the icon, and everything is radically simple and unselfconscious.

So where does this leave the whole language of “doing Church?” Worship as Muppett/ Antiques Road Show easily becomes rather stilted and artificial. Emergent churches are starting at the other end, creating community first. Worship ends up much less cheesy and artificial — an expression of who the community is before God and part of what they do, rather than an aspirational exercise. The measure of worship is not the words or gear we use, but how Pelagian or self-conscious we are in Church.