Living Faith

This is about encouraging and enabling clergy and lay people to deepen their enjoyment of God, and to recognize God's presence in everyday life.

John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford

Our diocese has a new vision, Living Faith, (well, relatively new) and this year St Michael's will be focussing on "Sustaining the Sacred Centre".  There are three priorities that we are looking at - one is the use of clergy time - where should it best be put to use whilst still giving us time to sustain our own sacred centres.  A small group have already suggested that this should be focussed more on looking to the future and work is in progress to look at what the implications of this are.
We are also looking to interview some of the congregation so that we get to know each other better, and to ask what sustains their sacred centre as a way of showing the many different ways that people do this.  Finally we have gathered a list of resources for private prayer and are making the Diocesan Prayer Leaflet available and encouraging people to try something new.

England is too narrow for Christianity!

Churchgoing in the US has recently been reported by Gallup (h/t http://thewoundedbird.blogspot.com/).  After considerable statistical analysis (cor - look at those low numbers on the West and North East coasts) I have come to the conclusion that Christians are averse to the sea - at least on East and West coasts - so with England being such a narrow country in that respect it is perhaps no surprise that churchgoing is so low here!

Just compare - 15% of the English got to church monthly - 22% in London (pages 5 & 6 http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/News/Final%20churchgoing%20report.pdf) whereas in America Vermont, with fewest (mostly) weekly attendees has 23%.

[We are ignoring the fact that only 5% of French people are estimated to attend church on the grounds that it doesn't fit our thesis!  Much as ACNA supporters claimed General Synod support which was not in fact there http://anglicanfuture.blogspot.com/2010/02/general-synod-member-brian-lewis-on.html]

Count Your Blessings - 27 Feb

Get ready for Mothering Sunday! Flowers are a lifeline for the women at Las Hortencias carnation nursery in Honduras. In 2007 a gale destroyed the nursery’s plastic roofing, threatening all they’d worked for. But Christian Aid funded a new storm-proof roof reinforced with wire mesh. £11 could buy 10 metres of mesh. Visit www.christianaid.org.uk/lent today to find out how you or your church could buy life-changing gifts like this for Mothering Sunday.

Well, I think I am going to pass on this one - they are getting my money at the end of Lent for "Counting my Blessings" and it is not possible to give every time someone asks.

Would you preach differently if there were an abuser or victim in the congregation?

My unit estimated that 70-80% of people on the sex-offenders' register attend church. Most sex offenders are never even reported, so those on the register are only the number reported and convicted. It would be nice to think they were seeking redemption, but that simply is not the case.  Third Way Magazine

The above caught my eye on the Church Times Blog.  I shook me up a little.  As part of my training I had been on the appropriate Diocesan courses, and we had talked about how to deal with a sex offenders in the congregation, but I had assumed that this was the exception.  Our diocese has 969 registered sex offenders (source here p2), which is not the same as paedophiles, which means that potentially 775 are church attenders - with  just over 800 churches that means that, on average, there is 1 registered offender in each.  Of course, there are likely to be many churches that would not attract an offender for the wrong reasons - so those churches with large children's ministries may well have more than one registered offender attending.

The article also included:

The NSPCC figure is 1 in 6 children suffer from abuse - that is all abuse, not just sexual - but those are just the reported cases.

This didn't surprise me as a while ago I read this excellent report on Childhood Sexual Abuse:

Current estimates of prevalence, from random surveys in communities, suggest that, when CSA is defined as sexual contact, ranging from fondling to intercourse by someone at least five years older than them, between one-fifth and one-third of all women, have been sexually abused either as a child or as an adolescent.

So, in this diocese it is quite likely that there will be an abuser in the congregation - and an almost racing certainty that there will be someone who has been abused.

If you preach will that change what you say on these topics?  It certainly gave me pause for thought.

Count Your Blessings - 26 Feb

Poor people in developing countries spend 50-80% of their income on food. Give 5p for every £1 you have spent in a supermarket in the last week.

Mmm - I don't go every week and haven't visited one in the last week - though my daughter did for me - so that will be 20p.  Lucky for me it wasn't the week before - that could have been a fiver.

How long does it take to get to know you?

Vicar "plans to visit all 9000 homes in his new parish during Lent to get to know his new flock."  Church Times

 This is a tricky post to write as I am fully supportive of the concept of getting to know parishioners (note - not congregation - though I don't mind getting to know them too).  But, and I am afraid it is a but, I don't think this is the way to do it.  After all, with 9,000 homes it averages 6 minutes per home, and that assumes working 24 hour days for the 40 days of lent (I figure he needs to take services on Sunday).  If we get a bit more realistic and assume he can spend 8 hours a day for the 40 days then simple maths says that it becomes 2 minutes each - and that is ignoring time between houses - lets hope he doesn't have any of those large houses where it would take 2 minutes to walk down the drive!


If we get a little more realistic then not everyone will want to talk to him!  (I was talking to a priest one day about wearing a clerical collar - I assumed that wearing one on the train might lead to more space around me.  Not at all - she described it as a "nutter magnet").  And in the hours available, assuming that he gets away in 30 seconds from those who are out or not interested, it gives 250 hour long conversations.

When I started writing this post my assumption was that it was an impossible thing to do, and having read "If you meet...", which among other things suggested to me that the days of mass clergy visiting were over because of other priorities, I wasn't sure it was realistic.  Having crunched the numbers it now seems a better idea, but one which would realistically take a little longer than lent to carry out properly.  One for my kit bag when I move on methinks.  It feels like the kind of thing that you can do when you are new, before the congregation realise the interregnum is over!

Just found that it might be 10,000 parishioners, not 9,000 homes! http://www.cofeguildford.org.uk/  Makes it more conceivable still.

Count Your Blessings - 25 Feb

A survey conducted by the Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union found that agricultural yields almost halved in farming households affected by HIV. Give 5p for every year of your life you took more holiday leave from school or work than sick leave.

OK - so I think that would be all of them - 2.35 (not letting how old I was when I started counting - though it puts a lower limit on my age!).