Pew-Fodder, Brothers or Liabilities?

I was, once again, greatly taken up by Charles Simeon and the fact that he saw those who went out and did the stuff as brothers rather than his Curates or clergy. The problem is that as we (the Church) progress (in a temporal sense) we appear also to be diminishing in a number of areas and you know what? I think I know why ... Our problems coalesce into the sadness that is 'Sustainability' - that awful word which translates into a desperate attempt to cut our cloth according to our means and is in reality a contraction of Church as we read from the Book of spreadsheets!

If we look at what we can afford we will never have a thriving Church because we start off at square one but limiting that which we, and therefore by inference God, can do. We decide that church (here meaning 'local' body of believers) cannot afford to have ........ and therefore we see to it that they don't have it. And then we bemoan the fact that numbers dwindle and congratulate ourselves on our shrewd management skills in that we identified their weaknesses long before anyone else!

Of course we will never know whether our actions brought what might have been an otherwise stable structure tumbling or merely made the right decisions. How clever we are in that we have used sound management techniques and good fiscal management to build the Church. But then again, we're not building it are we?

One of the wonderful expressions the Bible has given the English language is that of 'casting our bread upon the waters' - stunning words from Ecclesiastes 11 that mean ... Mean what exactly? Let's have a bit of a think:

'Cast your bread upon the water, and you will find it.'

Chucking your Hovis onto the water is a sure path to having inedible bread. Of course it might be a reference to feeding ducks or have as its source the wisdom of an early Jewish Baker! So what does it mean?

It means that if you use what you have generously with those who might not, on the surface, appear to have a cat in Hell's chance of repaying you then it will reap volumes in returns! God tells us that we are to build the Kingdom of heaven, not become financially astute businessmen and women. Now this doesn't mean that we are to be profligate or foolhardy either - but we live to different rules and dance to a different tune!

Our church members are family, not independent revenue streams.

Our churches are family gatherings, not 'cashpoints'.

We are called to be courageous and missionally-minded  and this means believing in the product we market. After all, if any business behaved as we do as Church none of us would be at all surprised when they folded.

If you want to be successful then you need to have a good product - we do!

If you want to be successful then you need a great sales team - generally we don't!

If  you want to be successful then you need product placement - our sales force hide it!

If you want to be successful then you have outlets that are welcoming, attractive and you have plenty of them!

I think one of the big problems is that we are trying to build and maintain Church as if we are businessmen and we're not - we're Saints! We are risk averse where God is calling us to be risk takers. Leaders see their church members as pew-fodder whilst they, in return, see themselves as anything other than the sales team and this makes them liabilities!

We need to break the circle and see them as brothers (and sisters) and one of the easy ways of doing this is to grab them - even if it means one-at-a-time,  and take them out and teach them to witness, to share and be part of the marketing g team God calls them to be. We need to live as exemplars and drag them with us - encouraging them to 'do as we do' - and then WE ARE BROTHERS.

What's that Reverend? You do t do that?

Balancing the books is something you might be applauded for doing - winning the lost, discipling them and sharing with them in the missional calling we have - now that Prophetic and profitable ;-)

Your choice my friends - where you going to lay up your treasures?

Church - Rearranging the deckchairs - 4

Looking at the 2010-11 statistics for the Church of England I note that the Diocese of Lichfield clergy figures look like this:

Full-time stipendiary         300
Part-time stipendiary          17
Non-stipendiary                  72
Ordained Local Ministers    56
Total clergy numbers        445   (I notice the official figure is 498 clergy for 2009)

As I'm only looking at a ballpark figure to provide some sort of feel for the numbers we will be taking these as being somewhere near correct for the beginning of the period 2012 - 2020.

It is during this period that we are being told that some 61% of the clergy will be leaving us through retirement and other 'natural' loss. This means that on these figures we will be losing two hundred and seventy-two clergy during the period which when added to the thirty clergy destined to be lost by planned clergy losses (also known as redundancy) brings us to a total reduction (before additions by ordination and other means) of three hundred and two clergy (or a total population remaining of one hundred and forty-three clergy). This means we are left with one hundred and sixty-four clergy before we start ordaining (or otherwise adding).

So before we ordain (Stipendiary, NSM and OLM) we have something between one hundred and forty-three and one hundred and sixty four clergy to service the needs of some five hundred and sixty-seven churches.

There are a number of possible ways forward with such reduced numbers and if an average of twenty-eight  new ministers (stipendiary, non-stipendiary and OLM) is correct (I was told it was but I can not validate this figure!) then over the six-year period we will be adding eighty-four new priests to the total  (Assuming a three-year curacy). The rough working figures then see us with something between two hundred and twenty-seven and two hundred and forty-eight clergy and (before closures) five hundred and eighty-seven churches.

Taking the median of two hundred and thirty-eight clergy this means we will have around two point four churches each.

The issue before us is that we don't have enough clergy to take on the churches and even if we did, unless they were free, we wouldn't have the money to pay for them anyway!

So whilst some are complaining that the church has gone money mad I guess we should look at the figures (only for a minute because we are heading back to the Gospel very shortly) and feel some sympathy for the bean counters whom many are pointing the finger (and quite rightly in some instances - but that's something else for some time ahead too!).

I will leave you with my addled mathematics - all done with the aid of a fag packet and some crude and rudimentary maths. Mind you, work into the equation the sum of £50 per stipendiary and you'll be sweating along with the rest of the financial types.

pax