Tag Archive for 'growth'

Being local

Published
by
Graeme
on February 1, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 2 Comments

Challenging questions seem to be taking centre stage in my thinking these days. One such question, well really a scenario with a question attached, was posed to me about a week ago and it went something like this:

The Salvation Army in the UK has well over 700 centres in the UK that it needs to find leaders for. Given the fact that many cadets currently in training are interested in planting in new areas, and the number of actively commissioned officers is falling, what should the Army do about this situation?

Well after my initial response I’ve continued to think about this and the more I think about it the more I realise there is no simple answer. Firstly, we need to ask why those people who are offering for officership would rather plant new corps than lead old ones. I think the answer the that particular question is a simple one and that is because, in Geoff Ryan’s words, “They suck!”

Now before anyone hits the roof, I know that is something of a generalisation and that there are a considerable number of corps around this territory who certainly do not suck. They are seeing people come to the Lord. They are reaching out into their communities with a gospel of hope. They have a vibrant worshipping community, both traditional and contemporary.

However, if we are truthful, there are corps out there that really do suck! Some have the focus on the wrong thing, and by the wrong thing I mean anything that isn’t Jesus. Some are so busy doing they have forgotten that being is the important thing. Some are so disconnected from the community that surround them they wouldn’t be missed if they were to vanish tonight without a trace!

Let’s be honest, we all know corps that fit that description and who would want to lead that sort of corps these days?

Why are our corps dying like this? What is it about the make up of Salvation Army corps that is leading so many to be in terminal decline? I’ve come to the conclusion that the real issue is community, or rather lack of community!

Let me ask a few questions! Firstly, how many of the people who come to the corps/church you attend on a Sunday live within a ten minute walk of the hall? I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I went to a corps when the answer to that question was over 50%. We’ve become a commuter church!

How big is the area that your corps has in its district? Now my understanding is that the Salvation Army operates in a similar way to the Church of England. I was told soon after I arrived here that my ‘patch’ goes from a place approximately 2 miles north of my hall to somewhere that is about 15 miles away south-west. No-one really seems to know how far east we go, but I’m guessing that the patch is at least 150 sq miles in size with 3 decent sized towns, several major villages, and quite a number of smaller villages. Obviously no-one is expected to cover that sort of area as some sort of super-officer, but even by being appointed to a town as a whole the focus could possibly be too wide.

A couple more questions for now! How many houses are there within 10 minute walk of your hall? How many people live in those houses?

Once upon a time each corps was split up into the ward system. In reality this was an early attempt at cell church by the Army. This has pretty much fallen by the wayside these days, partly due to the busyness of life, but also due to the fact that few people seem to live close together any more.

The Salvation Army has become like many other parts of society; fragmented. We need to become more community minded, and I don’t simply mean by reaching out to the community around our buildings and calling ourselves community church!

We need to immerse ourselves into the communities where God has placed us, not only individually but as a church as a whole. If no-one attending the Army is a credible witness in the community around our buildings, because no-one attending lives there, then how will our corps grow?

…and another thing!

Published
by
Graeme
on January 23, 2008
in Mission
. 0 Comments

Joe Noland (see Slightly Irregular links to the right) highlighted an interesting article dating back to 2000 which he recommends as important reading for “every discerning Christian leader”.

On my Assessment Conference last year I had to read the first chapter of Eddie Gibbs’ collaboration Ian Coffey, ‘Church Next’. Having read that 1 chapter I’m not surprised that Gibbs used his installation speech as Chair of Church Growth to send a challenging message to the Church about changing the way we think about Church Growth!

Persecution

Published
by
Graeme
on December 6, 2007
in Ramblings
. 0 Comments

A few months back I wrote an article about the perceived persecution of Christian’s in the west, particularly off the back of a series of incidents that were being put down to an anti-Christian bias in the UK. It was originally published at theRubicon and you can click here for the original article.

What prompted this post? Well the reason is simply that I went to the Army’s UK website this afternoon only to find a poll which posed the question:

Is there ‘widespread Christianophobia’ in the UK?

At the time of writing it seems that out of the 91 respondents so far 58% think there is! However, I’m convinced that this perceived ‘persecution’ of Christians is once more a clever ploy to detract us from the real radical nature of our faith. It is far easier for us to subscribe the loss of the traditional privilege that the Church has enjoyed in the UK and Europe and look upon it that as persecution. It means that the fault is everyone else’s and not the Church’s!

There is also an element in which it is almost totally over the top to point to situations like that of a teenager being unable to wear a ring denoting her commitment to sexual chastity or the policy of an airline to stop crosses being worn as jewellery and call them persecution. This is especially true when compared to the sort of persecution suffered by early Christians and far too high a number of Christians in some countries today.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that the situation in Post-Christendom Europe is harder for Christianity than it has been at any point in the last maybe 1,500 years. I also believe that it is entirely possible that real persecution has begun to rear its head. I’m just not sure that Christianophobia exists in the West in any sort of widespread way, although it does in other areas of the world that have been the victims of aggression perpetuated in the name of God by people calling themselves Christians and who are supported by too many churches. One thing I do suspect though is that Churchophobia might exist in abundance in the West, but this is not the same thing.

Is there a fear or hatred of the Church? I think there might be, but seeing as it has for too long been an instrument of the state used for control and expansion, rather than a counter-cultural force seeking to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven, this is hardly surprising. Given the tacit approval of abusing priests and even officers (tacit in the fact that rather than defrocking or sacking authorities chose to move them and keep things quiet) and its inability at times to stand up for the right even when totalitarian regimes were destroying whole people groups, it is at least partly understandable that the church is seen at best as hypocritical and at worst as downright evil by some.

I’ve not even touched on the fact that the church seems to grow in accordance to the persecution it faces, so this may suggest that persecution is actually an important principle in church growth that few church growth specialists seem to factor into their material!

In conclusion it is clearly true that our influence is declining but is this all bad? My original article posed a number of questions and they bare repeating here.

So what are we to do? Are we to continue to lament the loss of the historic privilege and influence that the Church has enjoyed? Or are we to embrace the radical nature of the Christian way and forge ahead in the new found freedom to show Jesus’ culturally subversive message to a fallen world? If we choose the latter option I suspect that we will be more attractive to a world full of people searching for something deeper and more real than the world offers, even when we speak what at face value many would deem to be unpalatable by the world’s standards.