Who is the church building for?

This is an interesting question, especially in the light of sustainability and the issues surrounding 'getting rid of buildings'. It also features (well it should) in any considerations regarding alteration to, or building' of new church buildings, halls and the like.

My ideal is that the church building would be a place 'owned' (not perhaps in the legal sense) by the community and 'used' by the Church. The problem is that this is not often the reality!

When I was a child we lived in the back room and the kitchen. The front room (weren't posh enough to call it a lounge) was reserved for special occasions and visitors. The sadness is that this is the same situation that I find in church buildings that I visit. There is the special room kept for God and Sunday services and then there are other rooms (if they have other rooms) which are earmarked for committees, Sunday school and perhaps a hall for the community too!

We are on the road to building but we want to build something that the community can use and make their own and still have a space for us to do our worship. Some of those in the discussion are convinced we need a special room that is reserved only for services and that this shouldn't be left open to all and this is part of the potential curse of having a building as I see it.

As I go around doing missioner stuff I find so many church members who want to bring people into 'their church' and they want to do it on their terms and have the visitors behave in ways that they consider to be right and proper. They can come but only if they are respectful and act like us; But only on a Sunday as the rest of the time we keep the church building locked (locked churches - now there's a discussion to be had!). It's 'OUR' building and you should be grateful we let you in at all.

Take a look at the question that is the title of this blog entry and have a go at answering it and when you do ask yourself if the building/s you have match the response. If they do then hallelujah and if they don't - what do we do about educating, changing our building or perhaps getting rid of it.

Pax

Location, Location

So here we are on the 'get rid of buildings' trail and looking the criteria of visibility, accessibility and location it seems to me that one of the most telling is that of location, something that urbanisation, de-urbanisation, deprivation and the green belt all play their part in. Alongside we have the parish system and the enclosing (a sort of ecclesiastical enclosure act perhaps?) of our county that this represents

Confused (then my work is done)? Let me explain.

In the nineteenth century industrialisation drew many from the rural areas into the town and these towns grew accordingly. The tensions created by the expressions 'All England should be Christian' and 'a Vicar in every village' brought new churches into being to serve the new communities in the towns and cities, for the new communities in the expanding areas were surely villages by another namer (and in a different setting). As new communities were settled, new churches were built to serve them. The reality was that even in the 1800's Church was a middle-class affair (around 40-45% of the population went and the mission field was the inner city working class (18-20%) and so we built and worked. But the halcyon days of churchgoing were, like Titanic and it's sentimental, nostalgic tosh, never a reality.

Wearing rural dean and missioner hats I have been looking at some of the churches in the expanse that is the West Midlands and find that there are some places with a church building and little or no community as the tide which brought workers has ebbed leaving an empty expanse of nothing and no one. Other places I look at in the de-industrialised areas find me bumping into church building after church building with some of these areas have lost the industry and the houses which houses the workers whilst others are now surrounded by people of other faiths (a very different discussion). Outside of the major conurbations I find lots of rural churches which no longer have any substantial resident community (due to 'incomers' who appear on a Friday and leave Sunday afternoon, commuters and the demise of the estates and tenant farmers and the growth of larger, more efficient conglomerates).

One of the interesting ways of looking at a community is that of asking where it 'looks' to. Some of the communities that I have (wrongly) assumed might be considered to be part of a whole actually 'look' to different places than those I have assumed and some, rather sadly, look nowhere. They are merely remnants of a bygone age and are enigmatic creatures. They exist for themselves and because they can pay are likely to remain and yet as they do the money and mission in others places is absorbed (or perhaps influenced is a better word) by their existence and so they hamper rather than extend the work of being Church.

So here we are. A quick splurge onto the screen and a throwing of all my thoughts and internal dialogues out into the open with the reality that regardless of efficacy or missional thinking, there will always be opposition to closing churches (quite rightly so) but not always for the right reasons (which is of course wrong) and some just need to be rationalised and reduced (and some need to be opened too!).

Here's photograph of the West Midlands - each red dot is a place of worship:

I look forward to your comments.

pax