Growing Good: Investing in the long-term
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.
In a five part series for the Living Theology Forum we explore the 6 features identified in the report that characterise churches exhibiting healthy growth. In this second extract from the report, the focus is on Perseverance. This is not to be confused solely with longevity, it is to do with sustaining a visible and effective presence within a community over the long term. The relationship between longevity and perseverance is both passive and active – as the report says: ‘The longevity of the church not only means that the church intends to remain in a place for the long haul, but also that it is prepared to persevere and invest in processes and relationships that will take a long time to develop’. Churches that do this play a vital part in community coherence, despite declining national church affiliation.
The stories people tell about their community often go back several decades, or even centuries, and reflect the continued presence of the church throughout that history. The community may have experienced mixed socioeconomic fortunes over that period and the congregation may also have struggled. The history of a place is often tied to the history of the church in ways that are deeply rooted in local culture. For example, if a neighbourhood was built around a particular industry that has now gone, the community may have lost something of its identity. However, unlike the mine, steelworks or other emblem of decline local people point to, the church has stayed put.
When the reverse is true, this is felt by the whole community. In one parish where there had historically been a high turnover of clergy, congregation members and local residents alike spoke about how their whole community was framed as a place that no one wanted to stay and that it takes time for the hurt of that to heal. Another vicar told us:
When I came sixteen years ago, someone said to me ‘you will stay, won’t you?’ and I didn’t understand what they meant… I am the longest serving vicar by a huge margin. The church had been open fifty years and the average stay was less than five years.
The local church has the potential to build social and spiritual capital by bucking these narratives, but may also entrench them further by mirroring the community’s decline (note 1).
Particularly in more deprived communities, the long-term presence of the church contrasts starkly with the approach of statutory organisations and charities, which may only work in the area for a short time then leave when the initiative’s funding changes. This is true not only of finances but also individual people. The church can represent consistent community leadership of the sort not always enjoyed by other groups or institutions. For example, one vicar noted that their seven years of incumbency made them the longest standing community leader in the parish. Another priest we interviewed had been in the post for five years and had worked with four different head teachers in the local primary school in that time, telling us:
We don’t want to be like everyone else who comes and go. Part of the fruits of the spirit is to be long-suffering and patient. That’s part of the Holy Spirit working in people... The biblical narrative is a long-term thing, not a quick in-and-out turnaround.
The Greek word typically translated as ‘patience’ in the context of the fruits of the spirit – makrothumia – has connotations of endurance and ‘long-sufferingness’ not only of patiently waiting for something, and this is an important dimension for the church to focus on collectively.
In these scenarios, the church has the capacity to bring different agencies together and share its institutional knowledge. People in places that have experienced this high level of turnover in social workers, teachers, councillors and other community workers may be reluctant to build relationship and trust because of the perception that people will continue to come and go. The parish model means that church leadership and most of those who volunteer within the church live within the community, which is an asset not necessarily shared by statutory agencies or charities. The value and stability of the church, as one congregation member and resident in an estate parish said, is that “we are there, we live there and we don’t go home at the end of the day”.
One of the catalysts for the turnover of community stakeholders is short-term funding cycles, with local council funding having been reduced significantly in the last decade (note 2). Where some people lament that the state has taken over much of the social function of the church, the gift of the church has always been that it will endure beyond the current iteration of state funding. A fear expressed by a number of participants was that, at the same time that local churches are trying to shift their community work away from reliance on short-term funding (e.g. lottery funding) because of its lack of sustainability, the central church institution and the Church Commissioners are perceived as moving towards short-termism in their financial structures.
One priest we interviewed, in an outer estate parish, explained his theory that the waves of fortune experienced by a community are mirrored by the church, but with a delay. The parish had been a desirable place to live when it was first built as a garden estate on the edge of the city centre, but over several decades since has gained a degree of notoriety and a bad reputation. The church has, it seems, echoed the decline of the community. There had not been an incumbent for almost five years before the current vicar was appointed, which had had a profound effect on the congregation. The advert for the vacancy described a ‘desperate’ community with ‘significant problems’. Three of the four parishes in the benefice that spans the estate have congregations that are small and in decline, and all four are in the 5% most deprived parishes nationally (note 3).
The churches have been on that same wave, but as the churches always are, we’re a wave behind or half a wave behind. As the community went down, we went down as well and we’ve not come up yet properly, but there are signs of growth.
For this priest therefore, the apparent decline of the parish church might not be cause for undue desperation, but rather part of the natural cycle of local community fortunes. The estate itself is beginning to recover but while the church is active and well known in the community, it has not yet reversed the trend of declining attendance. However, the worshipping community is 75% larger than the parish’s usual Sunday attendance, and it is growing. These ‘signs of growth’ are primarily from midweek acts of worship for local families and food bank guests.
The church as a body of people may be subject to the same ups-and-downs present in the lives of its congregation. There is however a critical role for the church in telling a more positive story and effective lasting transformation. In as much as social action leads to the flourishing of the whole community, it can also be seen to lead to the flourishing of the church itself. This recalls the words of Jeremiah 29:7 about “seeking the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Social action is a way of the church effecting this. Coupled with a focus on praying for the community in ways which may deepen discipleship too, this is seen to lead to growth.
The longevity of the church not only means that the church intends to remain in a place for the long haul, but also that it is prepared to persevere and invest in processes and relationships that will take a long time to develop. The result of this is that the growth of the church may therefore appear slow. Analogies of sowing seeds, tending plants and waiting were frequently used by interviewees and are also central to many of Jesus’ parables of kingdom growth. Implicit in these agricultural metaphors is the understanding that growth naturally takes time and perseverance. The sustained and sustainable growth of a congregation – what we might call good growth – takes time, especially when it arises from social action and engagement with vulnerable communities. As one community worker on an outer estate told us:
I’m learning that it’s not about quick fixes. Some things take a long time. It’s been seven years but we’re only just beginning to see the fruit. It’s taken five, six years to put that foundation down. It’s hard when people expect quick wins because it’s not like that in this context at all.
One case study church on an estate had recently established a new congregation on a Sunday afternoon. This service is more informal than the traditional worship of the Sunday morning congregation and consists of over 50 adults and children, most of whom did not worship at the church previously. The service is not only attended but also led by local residents including single parents and individuals with long-term health problems, who have grown in faith and been empowered in leadership even before they were confirmed or committed members of the church.
When we visited, the congregation had only been running for a matter of months, but was already thriving. Statistically speaking, many of the individuals would be counted as part of the church for the first time that year. However, the vicar felt it would feel somewhat “disingenuous” to claim a growth of 50 people in just one year. She noted that the relationships within the community, which had given rise to the new congregation, had taken years to build, through community activities including a parenting course, community choir and regular coffee mornings as well as through the informal processes of living in the parish and getting to know people over several years. The new congregation itself was just the tip of the iceberg.
Many of the activities run by churches within their community, such as those listed by the vicar here, are not perceived as part of congregational growth. However, growth in relationships through these activities may be a precursor to church growth in a more recognisable sense; what we might describe as ‘pre-growth’. The point at which people began attending a worshipping congregation – and therefore register in the church’s statistics – may actually be a long way along their journey of discipleship and relationship with the church.
Statistical measures of church growth that equate the church with the weekly congregation belie the groundwork and investment in someone’s life prior to this point. Similarly, the church may in fact be growing long before its growth registers in attendance figures.
Returning to the agricultural metaphor, one interviewee illustrated this by describing the point at which a plant or crop breaks through the earth. This is not the point at which the plant actually begins growing, nor the point at which the work of the grower begins. It is merely the point at which the long term growth of the plant in putting down roots becomes visible above the ground. Similarly, the point at which church growth is visible in numbers is not necessarily the point at which the church begins to grow nor the point where the work begins.
The same imagery may be applied not only to congregational growth, but also to individual growth in faith and discipleship. The point at which a person professes to be a follower of Jesus, or a disciple, is not also a point of dramatic conversion at the very beginning of their faith story. More commonly, their journey begins far earlier and more gently, but the sustained presence and attention of the church over that time contributes to the growth that emerges.
Some forms of church social action by their very nature encourage longevity of relationship. Involvement in parent and toddler groups, for example, typically lasts several years because children progress through them. A parent with multiple children might have been in a sustained relationship with the local church for 5-10 years by the time their youngest child reaches school age, or longer still if there is a church primary school in the parish.
In three different case study parishes, campaigning work to keep local primary schools open when they were threatened with closure was described as an important piece of social action. None of them was a church-affiliated primary school, but the church and its members recognised the shared community institutional identity and the importance of sustaining it. Through this, the church can retain social capital in a place. If the church was formative in their childhood, people remember it fondly and come back for occasional offices. One case study vicar has been in the parish for seventeen years and now finds himself marrying couples he knew as young children in the toddler group when he arrived, or baptising the children of children he had baptised over a decade earlier. This is particularly apparent in communities with relatively little population churn; it is important that the specific local church was the significant point of engagement, not just the church at large.
Perseverance, not only longevity, is therefore a contributing factor to growth. It is paramount that the church is actively present in a sustained way for its community, over time, not just that it remains there. As the previous section highlighted, the nature of the church’s presence is as influential as the fact of it. The sustainability of this presence ought not to be taken for granted, and is perhaps a laurel on which the Church of England as an institution has rested too easily for too long. It is vital not to be naïve about the challenge of sustaining ministry, including in a financial sense.
As attendance figures continue to decline, there are implications for the financial and physical sustainability of the church. In 2019, 25% of parishes counted 14 or fewer people in their usual Sunday attendance (note 4). Even with a more optimistic view than the narrative of inevitable decline, this is a significant proportion of parishes that are teetering towards a congregation size which cannot justify or sustain a building or independent presence. The parishes in this size bracket are disproportionately rural, representing a large number of old, isolated church buildings that are as much of a burden as they are a blessing to the church.
There are clearly some significant challenges to the resourcing and financing of ministry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, several dioceses placed numbers of diocesan staff and in some cases even members of the clergy on furlough, in order to make financial savings. One diocese has already announced plans to reduce its stipendiary clergy by almost 25% in the next 18 months, bringing forward reforms that were planned to take four years in an indication that the pandemic had put pressure on already squeezed diocesan finances (note 5).
Previous research found that growth is correlated with stipendiary clergy (note 6). It is easier to grow a church with a full-time incumbent vicar and the leadership an individual can provide to the whole community is invaluable, but it is paradoxically harder to resource this level of ministry without sufficient congregational growth to fund it. This represents a challenge for many dioceses, which are forced to square uncertain finances with the need for ministry. Once again, the economic situation ahead is likely to be challenging, and the Church of England is not immune from that – nor from the difficult decisions it may necessitate.
However, longevity cannot lead to complacency, nor does it mean ministry is immutable. It is easy to think that because the church has always been here, it always will be, but this is not inherently the case. In one rural parish, many long-standing members of the congregation spoke about how they had felt they didn’t need to engage in a community listening process encouraged by the diocese, because they had been there long enough to know the community well already. However, it transpired that some of their impressions of the parish were years out of date and they were surprised by how much they learned. The congregation had become disconnected from the parish community and found it helpful to take stock of that.
There are different timelines of growth and discipleship to recognise. In some contexts, while the church is an enduring presence, its involvement in individuals’ lives may be more short-term by virtue of their circumstances. In student ministry, for example, time is of the essence and the church might ‘only’ have three years to disciple someone within the congregation. Similarly, and in an even shorter term, specific churches engaging with asylum seekers and refugees might only have contact with someone for a matter of months before they are moved on to live somewhere else. In both these contexts, the church is seen as “the people who stay and stay and stay, and disciple and disciple and disciple,” regardless of how many people pass through the congregation and move on. In these cases, creativity in discipleship is important. One church leader spoke about having adapted their baptism preparation course to allow it to be completed in under six weeks – the amount of time an asylum seeker would typically be in the parish before being rehoused.
The longevity and perseverance of the church is not necessarily at odds with the transience of individual lives. The church’s long-term presence in a place means it can embody the soul of the place in a way other institutions might not. For transient populations struggling with an entry point or connection to community, this sense of stability and home might be essential for them however long they are there. The emotional security this engenders then makes them more likely to engage with the church elsewhere, making the church an enduring presence in their lives. The hospitality and acceptance individuals receive from one particular church can make them more disposed to join another church when they move on. This can lead to the growth of the church at large, but requires a more expansive view of growth in order to reflect that.
The value placed here on longevity should not be seen to undermine the potential of Fresh Expressions, new congregations or church plants to grow in places the church has not been embedded over the years. There is a level of faithfulness in having kept something going for a long time that is a different dynamic to the equally significant faith of starting something new. Within the mixed ecology of the church, both are valuable and both have their place.
Case Study
Bosede is a 47-year-year old single mum with a 17-year-old daughter. She received support from St John’s Church in Hoxton when she and her daughter became homeless, and is now exploring the idea of ordination.
“My dad died and I lost my job. Because I lost my job, I lost my flat. We went to a homeless hostel. It was awful. It was degrading. I was sad. It was depressing. I don’t know how I survived that, but I did. I was worried for my daughter.
We went into the hostel in the January and I never forget that day in March. I was in church and someone offered to pray with me. Then I got a call immediately saying that I could view a flat. Everyone screamed! We moved in on 1 April 2015.
I am grateful to everyone who prayed for me during that time. Today, I’m happy and I can say that it was a miracle. My daughter talks about it too and says it’s our miracle flat. She’s studying for her A levels now and I couldn’t be more proud.
Now, I’m helping people who are going through what I went through. My vicar leads them to me if they have housing problems, or someone needs prayer. God prepared me ahead of time for that.
I’m exploring the idea of ordination. It’s taken me almost ten years to make up my mind to do that. But now, I’m in the process. It’s scary, but I pray it all goes well.”
Reprinted with kind permission from Growing Good: Growth, Social Action and Discipleship in the Church of England, Theos and Church Urban Fund 2021
Note 1: Paul Bickley, People, Place and Purpose: Churches and Neighbourhood Resilience in the North East (London: Theos, 2018); Note 2: Institute for Government, Local Government Funding in England, (2020) available online at: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/ local-government-funding-england; Note 3: Based on data from 2018 provided by Church of England Research and Statistics; Note 4: Church of England Research and Statistics, Statistics for Mission; Note 5: Hattie Williams, ‘Chelmsford diocese set to cut 60 stipendiary posts in the next 18 months’, Church Times, 9 June 2020, available online at: www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/12-june/news/uk/ chelmsford-diocese-set-to-cut-60-stipendiary-posts-in-the-next-18-months: Note 6: Church Growth Research Programme, From Anecdote to Evidence.
Main image from Upsplash; Other photos by Clare Kendall
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 does ‘perseverance’ mean in your community?
• Where and how does your church/congregation enjoy the benefits of its long-term commitment to the community?
• Where and how might you seek to develop this further?
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.