Is this the solution to our missional challenge?
At the last Archbishops' Council, I was rather startled to come across a slide in a presentation on some background problems about funding and mission. The slide offered an analysis of the proportion of the population attending Church of England churches confronting another cistron (whose label I have, for the moment, removed), and there was a striking correlation.
Now, the mission of the Church cannot existreduced only to attendance, but numbers do matter since numbers represent people. And 'coming to church' isn't the only matter that matters, since people have (in the past) come to church for all sorts of reasons, and experienced all sorts of things. Simply in the present context of numerical decline, addressing the question of how many people actual attend church is at the very least and important part of mission—and attainment of the beginning goal of the Archbishops' Council ('Evangelism') is measured in terms of growing omnipresence across the Church.
So, if y'all could guess what 1 factor correlated with increased attendance, what would you estimate it would be?
My instinctive response was to do with social context. Hereford, Carlisle and Gloucester are substantially rural dioceses, whereas Manchester, Chelmsford and Birmingham are substantially urban. But it turns out that the correlation in question actually applies inside dioceses, and in the comparison between areas of similar social context.
The respond is: number of stipendiary clergy. Here is the graph with the axis labelled. And for me it raises a serial of questions.
The get-go question is whether this is a plausible correlation, in terms of the data. There are clearly going to exist other factors at work, such equally social context; it is widely noted that, although rural areas account for around 1 5th of the population equally a whole, they contribute two-fifths of the omnipresence in the C of E. But it is also consistently true that in that location are more than clergy per caput of population in rural areas in comparison with urban contexts. Rural ministry can feel very demanding and stretched because of the distances involved and the number of dissimilar locations of buildings and services—but note on the chart that Hereford has almost three times as many clergy per caput of population than Birmingham.
At that place is some other anecdotal evidence for this correlation. Sure traditions of non-conformist churches have larger congregations, simply they often describe from wider areas than Anglican parishes, and so have lower equivalent attendance per caput of population—and have fewer paid leaders. (The correlation is not true for the Roman Catholic Church building). Information technology is also worth noting that, i hundred years ago Church of England attendance was very much higher than now—and the ratio of clergy to the population was four times what it is today (there were around twice the number of clergy, and half the population in England).
And I am reliably informed that where you lot have larger urban parishes, and then fewer paid clergy per head, then church attendance is lower. You would demand to see the detailed analysis, beyond different areas, to be sure of this—but I think the assay has been done.
And so the 2nd question is: what does this mean? What is it telling us well-nigh ministry and mission? At that place is ane piece of cake answer that has been offered in the past: that 'church' ways clergy plus building plus services. Some would go farther and say, on the basis of that, that whether anyone actually comes is beside the point. Another grade of this is represented in a comment by the bishop who ordained me:
Tin you imagine the effect of hiring l actors in a parish and putting them in dog collars, and having them spend all day wandering effectually? Information technology would transform the mission of the Church!
I call up both these approaches represent the worst course of clericalism, and whatever the sociological or practical points being made, neither can exist supported by a credible theology of church building or ministry. And two factors undermine a purely 'clericalist' approach: the correlation withstipendiary clergy (rather than clergy equally a whole); and the presence of lay stipendiary ministry. There are not enough example of stipendiary lay people leading congregations (as we have in my deanery) to have a noticeable bear on on the statistics, but there is no reason to think that nosotros would get a different upshot if nosotros simply correlated stipendiaryministry rather than stipendiaryclergy.
Is at that place an alternative caption? In Luke'southward account of the earlier parts of Paul's ministry, there appear to be two distinct moments of significance. The first is the management of the Holy Spirit to:
'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have chosen them' (Acts 13.ii).
The Christians in Antioch do then by prayer and fasting and sending them off; but information technology but later on becomes credible that the ane thing they haven't done in their 'setting autonomously' is to make any financial provision. They announced to assume that Paul and Barnabas will be able to support themselves. Then a second moment comes when Paul is in Corinth, and we read the slightly birdbrained comment:
'When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah' (Acts 18.5).
Information technology takes some fourth dimension to realise that Silas and Timothy accept really brought with them a financial gift from the Christians in that location which allows Paul's ministry to be 'stipendiary' (see 2 Cor 11.nine)—and that seems to make all the difference. When leaders are provided for, then they are able to invest themselves not simply in mission and evangelism in the surface area, only also in encouraging, discipling and didactics the people of God, who can then get more effect in the mission that God has called the whole church to undertake with him.
And then it seems to me that the correlation between 'investment in ministry' (expressed in terms of the numbers of stipendiary clergy or lay leaders) and attendance as a per centum of the population is plausible, and is explicable in terms of the relationship betwixt clergy/leader and the whole trunk of Christ, and the mission and ministry that nosotros share, without lapsing into an unhealthy clericalism.
Only this leads to the third question: what should we do about this? How should this correlation affect questions of clergy recruitment and deployment?
The information (with a supporting theology) suggests that the two most notable policy changes in the C of E (the increase in the number of ordinands coming frontward, and a national policy of church planting) are pregnant steps in the right direction. The Church is unlikely to abound if the numbers of stipendiary ministers continues to decline; and establishing new worshipping communities, specially in demographic areas where there are fewer congregations, is likely to be a good way of reaching more people with the good news of Jesus.
Within this, though, there are both national and local challenges that arise. A large national challenge is the ane that Philip North, bishop of Burnley, has been drawing attention to: the failure of the Church building of England to really engage in ministry building in the outer estates. Although I have some questions about the details of his argument, the data appear to support the main observation: we have fewer stipendiary church building leaders in estates, and correlatively, church omnipresence is significantly lower (run across the two slides to the right).
There is another national challenge which does not surface quite so obviously. Why is it that urban dioceses oft have so many fewer clergy or stipendiary leaders than rural dioceses? I suspect the result is complex, and there is also a circular attribute to this: if church attendance is higher, and so giving volition be college, and then a diocese volition be able to afford more than clergy. Just hidden behind this is the difference in historic avails of the dissimilar dioceses. Many of the urban dioceses are more than recently established, and when they were founded at that place was a failure to share out the historic avails of the older dioceses, leading to a significant disparity from ane diocese to some other.
Simply there is a local challenge too, in terms of the distribution of 'ministry building resource' within each diocese. I have just come back from our diocesan conference, and if I have understood aright, nosotros were informed that 'parish share' (better called 'giving for ministry') is going to be based primarily on ministry building costs, rather than another measure such as congregational size. There are many good things about such a motility. For one, calculating share on the basis of congregational size ofttimes just looks like a 'tax on growth', appearing to penalise larger congregations. For some other, relating giving to ministry offers a sense of ownership and accountability. For a third, connecting giving to ministry costs asks important questions near sustainability of ministry and therefore of congregations; if a congregation remains small-scale, and their giving is not enough to embrace the costs of the stipendiary ministry there, what should happen?
And there's the rub. Whilst connecting giving with ministry building helpfully asks those questions, it is going to crave specific decisions well-nigh deployment if mission is going to be effective in areas where church building attendance is currently low. If at that place are inner urban areas or outer estates where we are making little touch, and so congregations are small-scale, tying ministry investment to numbers could simply perpetuate this down spiral. To reverse the decline will need a deliberate, mission-driven decision to invest stipendiary ministry building in these areas, in a stylenot related to the ability of existing congregations to give.
The need to exist intentional is good—every bit long as such intentional decisions are actually made.
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