Moving Parish Church

After twenty years, YZ is leaving his parish church, St X’s, and moving to another. St X’s gave him a huge amount when he first came to it, and he has many friends there. But he now finds that St X’s and he seem to have little to offer each other.

YZ’s decision does not issue from a layman’s thwarted ambition. He has had the opportunity to help lead and plan an alternative service, numerous discussion groups, and various walking activities, all worthwhile, though none in the end having much impact on St X’s.

Most people who leave a church probably don’t provide feedback on their reasons for leaving. This is a pity, as an explanation could help a church. Here are YZ’s difficulties with St X’s, expressed as constructively as possible. Each is the shadow side of one of the undoubted strengths of St X’s.

1. The shadow of the Music

The choir is the glory of St X’s. It’s not just the first-class music and the support it gives to worship that makes it so. The choir is a real community. It has members of all ages. The young ones learn indefinable, invaluable life skills from the older ones. It is the matrix of the Sunday School. Its members care for each other. It has its own social life. YZ has even heard a rumour that it has its own Facebook group. In short, it provides almost everything that what some churches would call a ‘Fellowship Group’ should provide.

The problem is that the choir is not counterbalanced by any group or groups for those who do not wish to join it or are not musical. There is no ongoing ‘Fellowship Group’ for anyone else, providing community life, caring, learning, and friendship. There are no permanent groups for ‘fellowship’ at all. There’s no place of similar integration for non-choir children and young people. So St X’s is like an aeroplane with only one wing.

2. The shadow of the Liturgy

The regular round of Eucharist, the Festivals, Saints’ Days, weekday Morning Prayer, and other occasional celebrations is the mainstay of St X’s, and rightly so. The clergy—assisted by para-clerical laity such as the Choir, Servers, Chalice-bearers, Sacristans, and so on—faithfully maintain this cycle of services.

Having the Eucharist in some form is indispensable. But these services, as performed at St X’s, are essentially clerical activities, planned, shaped, and presided over by the clergy, even though they exist for the benefit of the whole church. The laity are not wholly passive, but they are there as additional participants in a ritual that primarily has meaning for the altar party and could take place without any congregation.

The biblical, theological, and spiritual background to these rituals is not effectively imparted to the laity. There are no long-term groups dedicated to passing on the knowledge of the basis of our faith and helping people to grow in holiness. The numerous short-term programmes of study and spiritual instruction have been increasingly ill-attended, probably because in the prevailing culture they are an optional extra. A few lay people in St X’s are theologically knowledgeable but many are hazy about both Scripture and Christian tradition.

Moreover, there are no activities (apart from music) in which the laity participate equally in leadership, such as study or prayer groups. Lay initiatives are not proscribed, but they are not actively supported and not treated as of equal importance with clerical projects. Hence few lay people aspire to lead. Lay participation has actually declined since the 1990s. This is a serious lack: research shows that successful churches (of any denomination) are those in which leadership is genuinely shared between clergy and laity.

And lastly, but significantly, outside the liturgy there is virtually no corporate prayer. It’s not clear whether St X’s theologically disbelieves in it, fears it, or merely lacks commitment to it.

3. The shadow of Christian heritage

St X’s was a wonderful church to join for anyone who’d previously had a difficult time in a more rigid or directive church. Its relaxed and non-dogmatic atmosphere takes one back to the comfortable, middle-of-the-road Church of England of the 1950s, to Scripture lessons, Sunday School, and the values of post-war liberal Britain.

It’s still like this: but the generation to whom these qualities speak is passing away. It is no longer realistic for a church to rely on them, because younger generations have not had that post-war experience. Neither can a church count on people having had even rudimentary Scripture or Sunday School teaching.

If a church like St X’s is to continue to exist, it needs to change. To maintain (let alone augment) the number of active members, new approaches are needed. There should be far greater flexibility in the timing, format, and content of liturgy. There should be much more extensive learning for both children and adults. Without a learning community for adults and young people of all ages you cannot retain many teenagers or parents; toddlers’ services and Saturday morning craft activities alone do not build a church. Active lay involvement is crucial for a generation which is not used to junior partnership in any enterprise.

There was a time at St X’s when it seemed that such change was beginning to happen. The appointment of the last Curate about eight years ago especially seemed to be a new dawn. For a year or so, many hopeful signs of change (in terms of services, preaching, and weekday activities) began to appear. Then quite abruptly, the Curate’s scope was restricted to two or three core children’s activities; participation in any other new developments vanished; and after six years the Curate resigned. In fact there has been a series of Assistant Priests with the vision and gifts to bring about change, each of whom has made forays into new territory, and each of whom has departed abruptly. YZ has been greatly disturbed by these departures, and suspects that whatever causes them may be a key to the malaise of St X’s.

4. The shadow of laissez-faire

St X’s is full of people (both clerical and lay) who are busy getting on with their own thing, privately. Being modest they rarely advertise their good works or other pursuits; and being tolerant they rarely inquire into those of others. The clergy pursue their own individualistic spirituality, from which emanate elevated thoughts on Love and Forgiveness. The laity pursue music, scholarship, and various charitable enterprises. Intermittently there is a surge of corporate enthusiasm, such as the support given to some local homeless people. But there are few ongoing common projects. The main recommended forms of spirituality are intensely individualistic.

The Body of Christ is definitely about diversity. But there also has to be cohesion and collaboration. Everyone at St X’s seems to be more focused on their own activities than on the building up of the Body. This may be why essentially very little change or growth happens (except in the realms of music and real estate). There’s little enthusiasm even for modest joint enterprises, such as the partner charities, Christian Aid, Churches Together, the Deanery, and so on. The clergy launch new schemes which repeatedly come to nothing—there’s a long list of ‘heroic failures’.  This is probably due both to the absence of genuine lay partnership, and to people not appreciating the need for commitment to the corporate nature of the Church; two vital aspects of Christianity which are hardly taught or modelled at St X’s.

5. The shadow of professionalism

Most people at St X's are professionals of some kind, which is what makes it a stimulating social group. But the Christian profession is not a profession in that sense. We are all learners, and clergy and laity are on the same footing. We need each other. Theologically speaking, the clergy exist to support the laity, but in a church like St X’s, where the liturgy is the main communal activity, the reverse order prevails; committed laity support clergy.

St X's is possibly a little over-respectful of professional expertise. The prevailing culture is that if you respect my expertise, I will respect yours. Hence there is an unspoken assumption that clerical expertise is sufficient for the job in hand. Everyone accepts the religious diet that's on offer. No one questions whether it is sufficient to nourish faith, develop holiness, or provide the strength to survive in an increasingly hostile world. Newcomers with little church background presumably believe that the spiritual table d’hôte at St X’s represents the full Christian menu—and would be justified in turning away disappointed. Few perhaps imagine that other and possibly more transformative angles on the faith of Christ might exist. There’s little encouragement to do so.

YZ fears for St X’s long-term prospects.