Talking (non)sense about rural mission
When we lived in Poole, and the kids were small-scale, we loved to ride on the Swanage Railway. Its steam and diesel fuel locomotives, run by volunteers, gently haul visitors from the busyness of the seafront to the drama of Corfe Castle, nevertheless standing defiant against the devastation wrought past Cromwell after the Civil State of war. But the near fascinating thing virtually the line is how it came to exist. It was recommended for closure past Beeching, and was due to close in 1967, but passionate local protests delayed the conclusion for a further four years. Passenger services final ceased in January 1972—and the preservation society was formed 4 months later. Information technology was only 3 years after the track was lifted that the rails were put downwardly once again.
Information technology illustrates something significant about the Beeching process. Although Beeching's cuts (proposed in 1963 every bit theReshaping of British Railways) were seen (by him and others) as 'cuts of the surgeon'south knife', most would at present see many of the cuts as a big error which should be reversed. Indeed, the list of lines cut shows that at least one was re-opened within a yr—presumably at some price. The BBC documentary two years ago, marker 50 years since Beeching'south report, demonstrated that much of his analysis was based on ignorance and misunderstanding; the men visiting stations and measuring efficiency often didn't understand how the lines worked. Equally a result, whilst there was conspicuously a problem of inefficiency to be addressed, Beeching was offering the wrong solution because, as an outsider, he didn't really understand the dynamics of what he was working with. The changes isolated many rural areas and accelerated automobile usage.
So Beeching was poorly researched, based on ignorance, and made the incorrect recommendations which were expensive to opposite since, though an outsider, he thought he knew better than those at the coalface. Appropriate, then, for Giles Fraser to look to Beeching in his 'solution' to the challenge of rural mission. One rural minister offered a wonderful satirical response in the form of a letter to the parish magazine:
I was tidying the churchyard terminal week when a strange priest arrived.
However I accept to stress I did not know he was a priest. From his open up-necked shirt I assumed he was an accountant on "Dress-down Friday" at his office, nipped out from Banbury to eat his sandwiches. It was only from his posh accent and insistence that he solitary was correct near everything that I realised he was in fact Giles Fraser.
Mr Fraser – I cannot bring myself to call him "Fr Giles" or "Reverend" as he does not wear a canis familiaris collar – was on an expedition to find out what a rural church was. He told me that St Leodegarius was unnecessary, that it was also empty, that our rainbow banners were as well insistent upon their clan with Noah'south Ark, and that our church is a glorified rural motorcoach stop and should be run past the council. I pointed out to him that our (Conservative) council had no desire to run a toilet-less 800-year-old building with a leaking roof in a pocket-sized village, and he seemed to foam at the mouth.
He and then asked why nosotros did not take a Wednesday grouping for Sikh single mothers; where he could become a Starbucks; and where the nearest Tube station is. I told him because in that location are no Sikhs for miles around; Banbury; and That London. He shuddered and went off to revere a photograph of Jeremy Corbyn to settle his fretfulness. And then he bought a postcard of the church building and went over the stile into Leys Meadow. I concluding saw him being chased by a flock of sheep, screaming "the land demons have come to get me!"
He'southward non hoping to be the curate, is he?
It raises the question: is there any area of ministry building where it is helpful for someone to offer simplistic solutions to a trouble they don't understand, especially where the aim appears to be non much more than than grabbing headlines? I suppose we might put up with this from a journalist, just why would anyone in ministry think this was of whatever help at all?
There are some sobering and challenging facts to bear in heed nigh rural ministry in the Church of England. In terms of clergy deployment, there are more than clergy in rural areasper head of population than there are in urban areas—in some dioceses, nearly twice as many. (You can find all the details in Statistics for Ministry.) Church attendance is besides consistently higher in rural areas than urbanas a pct of the population.It is easier to see church growth in minor congregations than in larger, so in many means rural ministry offers a better model for mission than large, urban congregations do. And even so, the universal felt experience of those in rural ministry (which includes neither me nor Giles Fraser) is of being over-stretched and under-resourced, not least considering we count numbers in buildings and measure miles we take travelled. The problems of buildings and their maintenance, and multi-parish benefices and their meetings, are well known. Tiffer Robinson, who is in rural ministry in Suffolk, offers this response to Fraser (also posted on Archbishop Cranmer):
The Church in the countryside is in a crisis. Expensive cold medieval buildings with a handful of elderly worshippers sitting on uncomfortable pews Sunday by Dominicus, sharing a priest with one-half a county. Just Giles Fraser has a solution. Close all the churches! Well, not all of them. Keep the odd 1 open every twenty villages, and put a couple of priests in. The minster model, he calls it – it worked over a millenia ago, why non now?
Well, no. I'k distressing Giles, and the steady trickle of urbanites who accept commended you for being "brave" and "bold". If you had bothered to ask any of usa who, you know, exercise the rural ministry thing for a living, we could take pointed out that we've sort of thought of that. And here'southward the reasons information technology's but, well, daft;
Firstly, that isn't the minster model. The minster model is nigh larger church centres resourcing the mission and ministry in every surrounding customs. Which ordinarily involves some form of ecclesiastical building. What y'all are proposing is just having big churches around and encouraging people to become to them. We already have that. In most rural communities a town or suburban church is only a short drive away, and some choose to make the journey for consistency of worship, or for improve music, or just not to brand up a 10th of the congregation. But the vast bulk don't, and wouldn't. As others have said, the methodists tried this, the baptists tried this, the post office has tried this, and it hasn't worked. Why would it piece of work for Anglicans, who have a far greater sense of incarnational parochial ministry, where it has failed (catastrophically) for everyone else?
Secondly, no one wants our buildings. The state aren't going to accept them on. The various organisations that from time to time buy important redundant churches are maxed out, and don't want the average village church building anyway. What would happen to most of these buildings were we to follow this route is that they would fall to the diocese to maintain and make prophylactic. This would and then increase costs for every extant parish in the area – I'm non and then certain urban churches will willingly fund the maintenance of St Agathas in the marshes, which was previously being cared for by a PCC and supportive hamlet community. Individual ownership has its own problems – I know plenty of churches left to rot in villages where the developer ran out of money, or cruel foul of listing regs, and the customs have a very visible reminder that the Church of England is crumbling earlier their optics. When I have gone to village events in such places to correspond the Church I am asked what I am doing there: "we don't take a church anymore". In terms of mission, it's the worst thing you could practice.
Thirdly, and more importantly, we aren't just a club with too many buildings, but we are a Church building. Indeed, nosotros are the Church building of England. We don't just pack upwardly and leave. Whether yous understand the role of the local church every bit a placeholder for the gospel, or as a place where the sacraments are celebrated, churches are important for the communities they serve. And rural villages are a place where the parish organization still works. Where people exercise want to go to know their neighbours. Where it'south important that the local vicar knows who you are, whether you lot come up to church or non. Where ten people on a Dominicus morning represents a regular opportunity for the lonely to meet their neighbours and support ane another. And on that note – where rural ministry is properly resourced and wisely managed the proportion of the population in Church building on a Sunday is often significantly higher than at Elephant and Castle. The 4 churches I minister in have a combined a population of 2000, and we have 80-100 men, women and children in church building every Sunday. I know of churches where a tertiary of the village nourish a monthly songs of praise. Where the Christmas carol service is attended by more than people than really live in the parish. Close these churches, and that ends, overnight. We've seen it happen.
There are enough of challenges facing the rural church, and clergy deployment is a existent problem, and in many dioceses finances are dire. But there are those of us who are at the coalface, who are discussing and experimenting and growing the kingdom of God in these places, with these people. Possibly just requite u.s.a. a ring the next time you determine to undo all of our difficult work with a soundbite.
My final ascertainment: If (as someone claimed on Twitter today) 'evangelicals all hold with Giles' then I wonder if nosotros have get too urban, likewise businesslike—and too lacking in self-awareness. I cannot recall an evangelical colleague who, as function of mission strategy, has not given a good deal of time and energy to thinking virtually the edifice that the church meets in. And if 'place' matters to people in an urban context, how much more does information technology thing in the countryside.
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