Last week, along with ten other people from across our parish I attended a two-day conference in Sea Salter. It was organized by the diocese and run by an organization called Leading Your Church into Growth, who’ve been working with the Church of England nationally for twenty-five years.
The first thing I’d want to say is that it was encouraging, inspiring and highly practical, and if you’re part of a local leadership team and get a chance to go to one of the conferences the diocese is offering in 2025, do say yes if you can! It works best if you have three or more people participating together from the same church community, as there are lots of opportunities to discuss how you can relate the content presented to your specific context.
I won’t attempt to summarise all the exciting ideas we shared over the two days. But it did get me thinking. I remember back in 2021 visiting every church’s main Sunday service and asking people to fill out a questionnaire about what we were passionate about in our churches. The answers showed that concern for growing our congregations – in total numbers and involvement from the under 60s – is widespread across the parish.
I don’t imagine that’s changed. In fact, maybe that concern has got stronger for some of us, as it’s become evident that church members who melted away during the pandemic restrictions just aren’t coming back.
I wonder, though, how much we pin our hopes for church growth on people who are already faithful Christians joining our churches – either because they’ve recently moved to Ashford, or because they’re transferring from another local church. It feels much easier to grow a church by drawing in people who are used to church life and ‘oven-ready’ to sign up on our various rotas!
The first session of the conference talked about growth in three key ways: new people coming to know Christ; church members going deeper in following Christ; our churches extending the range and depth of their relationships with the community around them. How serious are we about growth of all three kinds, beginning with helping people who are seeking something spiritually to discover the gospel of Christ?
Welcoming people who are already Christians and familiar with church culture doesn’t require us to think too hard about how we might need to change. But getting serious about being a church that is growing in all three ways we heard about at the conference – that might open up challenging questions around our priorities and our use of resources, above all our time.
The Revd Dr Jeremy Worthen
Comments