What is the future of ‘gathered’ church?
At the beginning of Baronial, Jude Smith (who is squad rector of Moor Allerton and Shadwell in North Leeds) wrote an intriguing and slightly pessimistic article on the challenges facing the idea of the gathered church coming together on a Lord's day morning time, and I have been pondering it over the last few weeks.
The context was the headlines nearly the financial challenges being faced by her diocese—merely her observation was that there are deeper challenges we all confront which are non to do with financial, but to practice with the personal and social pressures that discourage regular, disciplined meeting together for worship (however we empathise that). She sees the claiming in five main areas:
- The end of early retirement volition mean fewer energetic volunteers with time to give to run things.
- Commitment to grandparenting, every bit families are increasing dual-occupation and dual-income because of fiscal pressures.
- Childolatry, where children are given what they desire, and need to add skills to their CV to compete for places at university and in work.
- Shifts and gigs which means that work patterns for those in employment are more irregular.
- The death of practical skills means that nosotros will need to call in the professionals.
I was struck by the article, since these are already measurable factors which have a visible impact on church omnipresence—merely I don't come across many people actually engaging explicitly with these issues. And there is much to be said about them, both theologically and practically.
My most theological observation is that all of these are connected with a (mostly unnamed) ideology which has gripped our culture, one that I think is securely inimical to the gospel. George Monbiot helpfully sheds light on it:
Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The credo that dominates our lives has, for about of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug. Fifty-fifty if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the fiscal meltdown of 2007/8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offering u.s. only a glimpse, the slow plummet of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump…
Neoliberalism sees contest as the defining feature of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are all-time exercised by buying and selling, a procedure that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
And if concrete small group meetings are important, what are we doing with our strategies for online appointment? Aslope two kinds of small group meeting structure, where I am (at St Nic's, Nottingham) we also ensure that the sermons are recorded and put online, so that those who are not physically there can however benefit from the preaching. It is the digital equivalent of delivering cassette tape recordings to the housebound (anyone retrieve doing that?). But I wonder what we should be doing to offer a more consummate digital opportunity for back up, discussion and reflection? There is a lot of theological word that goes on online—but how much intentional time and free energy is invested in this by church leaders (lay and ordained)? If Jude Smith is correct about the fragmentation of concrete attendance, mayhap we should meet this as a routine function of our pastoral ministry, rather than something extra and optional or the province of specialists.
For those unwilling to commit to regular Sunday gathering, we demand to teach that information technology is office of commitment to Christ. Simply for those unable to nourish regularly, we surely need to brand provision for them to be fed, built up and encouraged in faith in other ways.
Come up and join u.s. for the secondFestival of Theology on Wed October 17th!
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