Growing Good: Embracing complexity
Growing Good: Growth, Social Action and Discipleship by Hannah Rich, in partnership with Church Urban Fund and Theos, was the culmination of three years of extensive qualitative and quantitative research, including 350 interviews in over 60 parish communities across England and new analysis of existing parish data that explored the relationship between social action, church growth and discipleship in the Church of England. The Growing Good Toolkit from Church Urban Fund helps church groups explore and implement the findings of the report.
The Growing Good report details 6 features of churches exhibiting healthy growth. In this fourth extract from the report, the focus is on Adaptability. Many of the standard approaches to church growth and discipleship contain implicit assumptions about context which often bear no relation to the reality of people’s lives. Adaptability is the ability of churches to acknowledge and work with layers of unpredictability and sometimes dysfunction in the lives of the communities and individuals they serve. Where the church is growing and flourishing through involvement in social action, the congregation’s capacity to adapt and embrace complexity is critical.
The lives and experiences of individuals and communities are not homogeneous, and therefore neither are individual and collective journeys of faith. The circumstances that may have led a person to engage with the church’s social action might also have implications for their discipleship and the life of the church, in ways that can challenge the status quo of the church community. This can be an opportunity rather than a barrier for the growth of the church, but requires a level of resilience and compassion within the church.
Neither growth nor discipleship are linear processes by nature. In the same way that the growth of a congregation can be understood through metaphors of natural growth, which convey the time, depth and intentionality required to grow something, the intricacy of individual faith journeys can also be seen in these terms. A linear understanding of growth in terms of church attendance also does not distinguish between the complexities of different individual journeys.
One person described how in their parish, “it’s not always a nice, easy trajectory where people come to faith and commit and that’s that.” They were speaking with respect to the particular challenges of a deprived estate context, but we might question whether it is ever that nice and easy in any context, irrespective of socioeconomic profile.
Another interviewee contrasted the growth of a cedar tree with that of a mustard bush in order to illustrate the diversity and complexity of growth, both individual and congregational. The cedar tree is tall and straight and therefore its growth becomes quickly apparent. The mustard bush grows in a more tangled fashion, growing in length and complexity without appearing much taller like the cedar. It was suggested that if the entwined branches of the mustard plant were stretched out to their full length, they would reach as tall as a cedar tree, but would be less likely to be recognised as such. This was presented as an opportunity for ministry, as well as a challenge to the way we quantify growth and discipleship, which are not always tidy or linear processes.
Social action brings the church into relationship with people whose life stories are less tidy than some corners of the church might be used to. Echoing Jesus’ words that it is “not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Luke 5:31, New International Version), one interviewee described their church as being like a hospital, where “nobody in the whole congregation, including the vicarage, was OK”.
In communities where mental health difficulties, unemployment or dysfunctional family situations are common, the fact that that members of the local church also struggle with these issues can be a healthy sign that the congregation is connected with and representative of its context. Conversely, it might be seen as greater cause for concern if a congregation was not also wrestling with some of the same problems as the wider parish population.
Reductive understandings of discipleship that equate coming to faith with middle-class notions of morality risk missing the complex beauty of some people’s experiences. In one case study, we heard the story of an individual for whom the transformative impact of the church in his life was illustrated by the fact that he no longer found himself in situations of running away from the police. In another case study, a client of the job club run by the church told us:
When I first came here, I was bad-tempered and I kept getting wound up. It just didn’t end well at all. Doors got broken. Hands got broken. I’d say I was a horrible person. I don’t want to swear on your recording, but I was an arsehole. I had the biggest ego and I walked in thinking I was better than everyone else. Now I just think we’re all humans loved by God.
Neither of these individuals are regular members of the Sunday congregation, nor have they made a formal profession of faith. By some definitions, they might not therefore be counted as disciples; “not running away from the police” is not a widely applicable measure of discipleship. Neither would they figure in statistical accounts of church growth. However, there is a transformation of sorts occurring in their lives, attributable in some way to the church, and this might be considered part of a wider journey towards faith, if not yet definitive discipleship.
In numerous parishes, people spoke about stories like these and the challenges of integrating them with existing norms of discipleship. One vicar told this story, noting how it blurred the lines between our research terms:
A lot of people who come to this church have a pattern of broken, damaged or non-existent relationships. We had an alcoholic guy called Jimmy who came here for six years and gave us a lot of grief. We often didn’t know what to do with him. But he came Sunday by Sunday and at the second attempt, he moved away and achieved sobriety. When he came back, he actually thanked us and said this was the first place where he’d ever felt he really belonged. I don’t know whether you would say that directly falls under the category of social action or discipleship but I think it shows we are building that sense of community.
Many interviewees who have encountered the church through its social action express their faith journey in terms of how their self-perception and behaviour have changed, rather than explicitly how their belief or articulation of their faith has developed. The changes in attitude and behaviour that occur as a person goes deeper in their faith may look different for different people. In congregations where a large proportion of people have challenging lives, there can be consequences for resources within the church.
The word ‘complicated’ is used frequently in describing people’s lives, particularly in more deprived areas. Churches often conceive of money and time as comparable resources for people to give to the church, but for many, neither of these are fully their own to give. For the most 101 What helps churches grow? Qualitative insights economically vulnerable in society, the resource of time is often outside of their control, whether because of shift work, zero hours contracts or caring responsibilities, regardless of whether they would like to commit to a church. Between long working hours, Sunday trading and a culture that prizes busyness, poverty of time, not only of resources, is a reality for many and may restrict their capacity to commit. As with material poverty though, those who are time poor in the world’s terms are not considered poor in kingdom terms, and church communities need to be able to embrace this. Growth here is still valuable, but might not be accompanied by an equivalent growth in capacity. It can require a great degree of flexibility and adaptability to enable whole congregations to participate fully in the life of church in ways their living circumstances render difficult.
Church leaders described the difficulty of dealing with congregation members who often do not know until first thing in the morning whether they will be offered work that day and therefore cannot commit in advance to take on a role in a rota. In one particular congregation in an inner city parish with a large immigrant population and high levels of precarious employment, this applied to a significant proportion of lay leaders. For example, having arranged well in advance to meet with a member of the PCC during a visit to the parish, on the morning of the interview he was called into work at the last minute and was therefore unable to participate. The church leader explained the logistical challenge this posed:
My congregation’s time isn’t always their own, let alone ours. It’s not that people are inherently unreliable. It’s that their lives do not allow them to be relied upon, which is really difficult because you want to plan for someone to bring the bread for communion on Sundays but they might not be there. It’s a difficult balancing act as a leader to know whether to do it yourself or to continually try and push it on someone else… when their lives won’t allow them.
This congregation has experienced numerical growth to an extent that might not have been possible if it were not adaptable and agile enough to offer to enable individuals like this to participate actively in worship and lay leadership. Elsewhere, we heard from one individual – a licensed lay reader who works part-time as a care worker – who spoke about how she had had to fight with her employer to be guaranteed Sundays off from her paid work in order to fulfil her role as a reader in the parish. This had come at the cost of agreeing to work early morning and overnight shifts on weekdays, limiting her ability to get involved in the midweek social action activities her church runs.
There is an additional complexity for churches wrestling with the twin pressures of complicated congregations and a societal move away from the sacredness of Sunday as Sabbath. There might be difficulties in extending discipleship and community to those for whom Sunday does not symbolise rest nor an inherently spiritual day of the week, as one curate told us:
It isn’t built into family routines here to come to church on Sundays because you’ve got very fragmented, dysfunctional families. You might have families with one parent in prison. If Mum is a single mum and they go to their dad’s on a Sunday, we can’t give her what she really needs on that Sunday which is a lie in! It’s so difficult to know how you do it.
Furthermore, for many communities, growth can bring with it further challenges for the church. As one lay PCC member acknowledged:
For us, growing is something that stretches us further rather than resourcing us.
This is hard to articulate without denigrating or patronising those who are joining the church and whose part in the community should be celebrated. However, it is a reality that in many cases, growth increases pastoral challenges. This is particularly hard in churches without large staff teams or administrators where the majority of pastoral care thus falls to the clergy.
In order for the church to embrace growth and adaptability together, there is a need for a degree of congregational resilience and openness to lament. In several case studies, we encountered congregation members wrestling with the sadness of an individual they had invested time and energy into having reoffended or fallen back into addiction. Sometimes they questioned whether the faith and transformation they had celebrated had been genuine, and whether it had been worth it only to experience the ensuing disappointment and grief.
This requires a huge amount of emotional resilience and compassion, modelled at every level of church leadership, in order to travel along the whole journey with individuals and show them grace at every stage.
One lay leader spoke emotionally about a young man with whom they had walked part of this journey but who had since returned to prison:
It could have been the biggest success story on earth the way he was going, until he fell back off the wagon, but we’re still praying for him.
In a number of case studies, we also heard about the importance of grieving together as a community – a marker of a pastoral approach capable of handling the joys and sorrows of life together. One church with significant outreach to the local homeless community frequently holds funerals for rough sleepers. This was described not only as the extension of the social action work, but also the beginnings of discipleship for those who attend such funerals, often fellow rough sleepers, who are given space and dignity to mourn their friends.
For some congregations, the ability to model within the church the complexity of their community is seen as a strength and a contributing factor to their growth. Where new churches have started with little resource and no physical building, in particular in the estate context, people often respond well to the vulnerability and fragility because they recognise it in their own lives. This is not necessarily replicable where the church is already established.
If the church is recognised as a place where it is acceptable to bring the messiness and complexity of your life and admit when things are difficult, it is more likely to be a place people feel they want to join. This can stem from the honesty and openness of church leaders about their own struggles, sometimes in ways as simple as acknowledging that theirs are the children misbehaving during the service. It can involve interaction within the service and the agility to adapt to people’s reactions during worship and the mood of the congregation that particular day.
One church staff member noted that:
We don’t get called hypocrites by people on the estate because we’re open about being failures.
One case study congregation described having made a deliberate effort to smile at people arriving late to worship rather than tut at them or make them feel uncomfortable, mindful of the myriad reasons why they might not be on time. The collective response to something as simple as arriving late conveys a great deal about the congregation’s aptitude to handle complexity. The church leadership can be instrumental in how it models this to the congregation. This is another example of how a church’s culture is as influential on its flourishing as the action it engages in.
Whilst the Fresh Expressions model of church is not the focus of this research project, we nonetheless encountered multiple congregations where creative expressions of church were central to the connection of social action with discipleship and ensuing growth; for example, congregations which had grown organically from social action projects. This was not a factor in the sampling process, but in the end around a quarter of the case study parishes had additional congregations that fit this description, not including those which run Messy Church. We observe that these models can enable and equip church communities well to handle complexity.
One church in one of the most deprived parishes nationally began a house group for drug addicts, consisting of a meal and a chance to pray together. From the very start, the model – called Ignite – blurred the lines of social action and discipleship, offering both without condition. This group grew rapidly and the decision was made to run an Alpha Course, which attracted 80-100 people each week. At the end of the course, there was a desire to continue meeting, which led to the establishing of a midweek congregation with “all the hallmarks of church” but aimed at those on the margins of the community.
It was originally an attempt to meet those who were marginalised, who were poorly educated or who had special needs or criminal records, lifestyle challenges and all that malarkey. People who felt sidelined from society and like they might not belong in church or might not be welcome in church. Ours was an intentional attempt to reverse that feeling.
Ten years on, this model has proved successful and been adopted at a diocesan level. Funding has been secured from the Church Commissioners to replicate it in five other marginalised communities across the diocese. The funding covers intentional community engagement, employing lay missioners to build relationships within the community with a view to beginning midweek Ignite congregations following the original pattern. The worship style is flexible and adaptable, with a high value placed on interaction and no assumptions made about people’s literacy or prior understanding of faith. Parallels can be drawn with the Messy Church model, in that the service often includes video content, practical activities and creative ways of praying in addition to a shared meal. It is seen as complementary to rather than competitive with the Sunday congregation. Individuals are able to move between the two if they wish, although this is not emphasised as the ultimate goal, which is rather that people come into a relationship with Jesus in whatever context they find most comfortable.
The Saturday Gathering community in Halifax is another example of this model. It grew out of the ecumenical food bank partnership in the town. The leaders recognised that many of the guests were interested in exploring faith but would not be comfortable with the existing congregations, nor were the congregations necessarily in a position to welcome those with serious addiction problems, low literacy or mental health issues. The gathering is flourishing, with over 100 people attending each week, and other congregations have been established in different areas of the town. It meets on a Saturday night, in recognition of this being a time when statutory services are not available and those attending might otherwise struggle. The local police have acknowledged a related reduction in incidents in the town centre at this time. Unlike the Ignite model, Saturday Gathering is outside of the parish structures; it is an ecumenical gathering rather than an Anglican fresh expression. However, the local parish congregation has grown demonstrably, as have several of the other denominational churches involved.
One of the pioneer leaders was a curate at the local parish church and, with the support of the bishop, a number of people have been confirmed in context of the Saturday Gathering. The leadership now includes several individuals who came to faith through the Gathering.
Case study
Standing in the encircling gloom of a wet autumn evening, the Revd Derek Maddox points outside the church and says, “this was all farmland.” It was. Until 1952, this was a rural area of farmland. But then, the farms were compulsorily purchased, and the Hartcliffe area of Bristol was developed, initially around the Imperial Tobacco factory and offices. The factory is long gone, but the extensive council estates remain, home to more than 11,000 people. Hartcliffe is, however, a long way from the fashionable image of much of Bristol. Beset by financial poverty, food poverty, drugs, mental health and debt issues, the life expectancy of someone in Hartcliffe is between 7-10 years less than those in the surrounding city. St Andrew’s Church is trying to meet the needs of the community: and most of those needs revolve around food.
A food bank provided seven days’ worth of food for 30 people (many of whom represented whole families) each week. Since the coronavirus began, that has tripled to at least 90 people each week. Just over a year ago, the church opened its doors on a Sunday afternoon, inviting the community in for a hot meal, and a short time of worship and Bible reading. “People would say that they hadn’t had a decent hot meal in weeks,’ says the priest-in-charge, the Revd Derek Maddox. On a Wednesday night, the church has a “more formal” evening of testimonies, at which end-of-day food from Greggs is given out. “I felt that we really needed to feed people, because that was the need here,” says the Revd Maddox. “We didn’t have any expectations of them signing up to be believers. It was about supporting people.” But, he adds, “Some people have been mightily touched by God.”
One of those is 38-year-old skip driver, BJ. A lifelong drug user and alcoholic, BJ came to faith in 2016. He now helps at the Wednesday evening testimony night. “I haven’t even got to speak,” he says. “Everyone knows I was a crack cocaine addict, but I’ve turned my life around. So, the people think that Jesus must be real. I do it because I want to see as many souls as possible in heaven. And I’m seeing it lots, yeah. It’s great, great to see. It’s mind blowing.”
Reprinted with kind permission from Growing Good: Growth, Social Action and Discipleship in the Church of England, Theos and Church Urban Fund 2021
Questions to consider:
The Growing Good Toolkit is a FREE six session course helping churches explore the connection between social action, discipleship and growth. Through six flexible, interactive small group sessions, we explore how our churches can be faithful and fruitful in our local communities.
· What are some of the particular ways your church/ congregation needs to be adaptable?
· How does your church community handle complexity? Sadness? Celebration
Hannah Rich is a senior researcher at Theos. She previously worked for a social innovation think tank and a learning disability charity. She has an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science for the London School of Economics.