« Back to Issue 40

The Questions People Ask

By Alun Brookfield.

Back in the 1990s, it was Willow Creek. We all got excited about Seeker Services. They seemed to offer an opportunity for congregations who had access to the relevant skills to put on a form of church which would bring people in. I'm not sure how many followed through on Willow Creek's structure of church organisation, nor how many did the initial foot-slogging to find out what kind of church people in their neighbourhood might be interested in attending, but for a while, Willow Creek offered hope in a Decade of Evangelism.

Then came the church-planting movement, telling us (correctly!) that the most effective way to grow the church was to establish new congregations rather than keep adding to existing ones. The logic was irresistible - new congregations grow faster than old ones, so, rather than putting effort into getting an existing congregation to grow, why not start a new one? Much more fun, much more likely to get you an invitation to speak at Spring Harvest and promotion to a better paid ministry.

It also seemed that we needed to develop 'church without walls' taking the Christian faith to where people were, rather than expecting them to come to us. Rather than the hard work of getting new people to enter what, for them, was the alien world of 'church', why not take church to them in their pubs, clubs, work and leisure environments. Indeed, such was the power of this movement that, by the late 1990s, some were prophesying the end of the parish system and the local church within a few short years of the beginning of the new millennium.

Then, just as we were beginning to make these things happen, along came Alpha, offering an apparently simple way of getting new people into old churches and congregations. Suddenly, we could do mission from within our comfort zones. We had something we could invite people to come to, and, in many places, they would actually say 'Yes' to the invitation. It seemed to hold the answer to all our problems, without having to significantly change our ways of doing church, and we forgot about church planting, seeker services and church-without-walls (or perhaps, to put it more charitably, they became absorbed into the Fresh Expressions movement).

Here in our valley, we've just re-discovered them without realising that was what we were doing. We've had to - doing nothing is a luxury we can't afford.

Of the one hundred or so adults who attend the three churches in our semi-rural Welsh valley parish, only about ten (if that!) are under the age of 50. Most are over the age of 70. There is a small Sunday School in one church and an even smaller Friday evening children's club in another. There is also a tiny, fledgling youth group consisting entirely of girls aged 11-13.

Fast forward 20 years from now, and the scenario, if nothing were to change except the passing years, will look very bleak. By then, most of the over-70s will have either gone to their reward or be too frail to attend, much less run, the churches. The children will have grown up and probably moved away to find work. The remaining congregation will consist of perhaps half a dozen 50-70 year olds and a diminishing group of very elderly worshippers. If that scenario plays out, two of the three churches will be closed (along with all the non-conformist chapels) and the congregation in the one remaining Christian congregation will probably be unable to fund the cost of running the church building and will therefore be making plans to close it.

And, by the way, there will be no parish priest, because the Church in Wales will not be able to provide and pay for a priest for a parish as small as this (approximately 2,500 people). There may be a parish priest four miles down the road in another part of the valley, but he or she will be trying to serve the spiritual needs of 20,000 people across a 'parish' 14 miles long and three miles wide.

Are we discouraged by this disaster scenario? Not on your life! These congregations are working hard to find ways to re-evangelise the parish, because that's what we need to do. Let me tell you of two ventures, both of which are about creating and finding new congregations and about trying to be church-without-walls.

First, and thinking of the really long term, we realised that we are running out of 'returners', because very few people in the area of our parish under the age of about 50 are able to return to church because they've never been there in the first place. Hardly anyone (perhaps 5% of the under-50s) had been to Sunday School, and even fewer had ever attended church regularly as an adult. So we realised how important it was to find some way of giving people the option of being returners in the future.

The Early Bird

So we started the Early Bird Service, a half hour service on Sunday mornings at 9.00am for children and their parents. The programme of songs, stories, prayers and activities was planned to engage both generations in spiritual things in a fun way. Those who came loved it and kept coming back, but, with a small population, we were unable to generate the 'critical mass' for the service to develop its own momentum. So after six months we abandoned it.

But we still weren't discouraged. We realised that during those six months we'd built up a lot of expertise which we could use in different ways. So we offered all four schools in the parish the option of a monthly Early Bird Assembly, led by trained volunteers. They jumped at the chance and we'll be starting in September 2007. The great advantage of this is that almost every child in the parish aged 5-11 will get a regular diet of Early Bird content, hopefully sending them on to secondary school in due course with a fund of Christian knowledge and experience which will give them the option of re-connecting with the Christian faith at a later stage.

Holy Joe's

Second, we decided to ask our tiny group of church-connected people in the 20-40 age group what 'church' needed to be like for their generations. They told us that it would need to be:

      informal and comfortable;

      no singing;

      OK to arrive late, leave early or go and get another drink;

      interactive, not led from the front;

      plenty of opportunity to ask questions and get honest answers;

They also said that they wanted me as Vicar to be there (even though I'm a long way outside the target age-group!), but not in uniform (no dog collar); and they wanted to be able to have a say in the content and to lead it as appropriate.

Out of that discussion came Holy Joe's, a 'service' for 20-40-year-olds which meets in the function room of a local pub every Sunday night at 8.00pm. Here's how it works:

      At about 8.00pm, everyone gathers round a large coffee table, having first collected a beer or other drink from the bar downstairs. There's usually food on the table, but there's also a large candle and a number of small tea-lights. Music (not usually religious and chosen by the young adults themselves) is playing quietly on a CD player in the corner. People are chatting to one another, and there's usually a fair bit of good-natured teasing going on. A box of paper and pens is always on the table so that attenders can write questions, comments or suggestions.

      The large candle on the table is lit, a signal to everyone to finish their conversations because the more structured bit of the evening is about to start. Silence falls (except for the background music) and sheets of paper are distributed with a simple form of Evening Prayer printed on them.

      The Office of Evening Prayer is said together, sometimes led by me, but often by someone else who volunteers for the job. Halfway through the Office, we pause for prayer and people are invited, if they wish, to light a candle as a prayer-symbol (they don't have to tell the rest of us what the candle symbolises) or to pray silently. At a suitable time, Evening Prayer concludes.

      Then the fun starts as we try to answer the questions which were put in the box last Sunday - more of this in a moment.

      Finally, the 'formal' part of the evening concludes with a simple form of Night Prayer, which we all say together.

So far, apart from myself and my wife and two young women from our traditional congregations, a total of ten new people have attended Holy Joe's - these are people who have never or almost never attended a traditional service in any of our churches. In just one month of operating, we have therefore grown what is virtually a completely new congregation, ranging in age from 16 to 35. Our only disappointment so far is that it is an entirely female congregation. Perhaps we should call it Holy Jo's, and reserve the other title for a similar, but all male, congregation!

But perhaps the most striking thing about Holy Joe's is the questions which this generation of young people ask. I was expecting to be asked questions about what Christians believe about various aspects of moral behaviour; or some fairly straightforward questions about Christian beliefs. Perhaps we'll get onto that, but that's not what we're getting so far. Here's a flavour of the sort of the questions these young women are asking:

      Why in the prayers do we say that we sin?  What is a sin?

      Did God create everything, including evil?

      Regarding the supernatural, is the life after this watching us; do our loved ones become part of Jesus to look after us?

      If there is a God, why is life so confusing with so many doors of opportunity?

      Does God control our destiny or is it of our doing?

      Do we live in heaven now?

      If God is real, why do bad things happen to good people?

      "Life is a gift from God - only he decides when it ends."  If I gave you a gift you wouldn't expect to give it back to me, so why does God take back the gift of life?

      In terrible times, sometimes we lay ourselves on God and let him carry us, while some times someone may turn from God and lose their faith (whether for a while or always). Why do you think/feel this happens?

      In a service we attended, during the Apostles' Creed we said "…was crucified, dead and buried, and he descended into hell."  Explain!

      What does God look like?

      If we are equal in the eyes of God, why can't women be Pope?

      If God is everywhere, what is the point in building a church?

      If God is real, then why do people need sex changes - why weren't they born the sex they feel they are?

      Are all the different religions really all the same?

      With many religions having similar stories to those that appear in the Old Testament (i.e. Noah's Ark), are these stories actually religious or are they more an account of actual events of the time?

      In light of the most recent terrorist threats, what do they really want to achieve?  Where did the divide start, and can we really forgive their actions?

      Just wondered … is it OK / should we tell others that we pray for them or keep it private with God?

We found these questions profoundly challenging, because I don't think that I've ever preached a sermon on most of these subjects in nearly 35 years of preaching (lay and ordained). Come to that, I don't think I've ever heard a sermon on any of them. I wonder how many readers of Ministry Today have offered their people answers to these issues. If ever I was arrogant enough to think I was scratching where people were itching, these young adults have demonstrated to me how misguided I was.

In all honesty, I don't feel terribly well qualified to answer some of these questions (indeed, I'm not sure they actually want tidy answers - just a safe space to explore them), so I normally throw them out to the whole group for their comments, then try to summarise the discussion and keep it focussed. Mary and I try to keep only a light hand on the tiller (an excellent discipline for those of us who are accustomed to having all the answers!).

We haven't publicised Holy Joe's in the area because we don't want it to become another religious club for middle-aged and older people - there are enough such clubs already. Once we find our feet a little, we'll start making its existence public, but for the moment, it's growing on a basis of personal invitation, so I guess we may be doing something right.

Is Holy Joe's the future? I don't know, but I do know that it's making its own contribution to building a future for the Christian community in our parish. I also know that it's providing an 'access point' for a group of young adults to travel the journey of faith which our traditional acts of worship do not provide for that generation.

I also know that it may well not be the way to keep our buildings open, unless we can persuade the present older congregations to radically adapt and alter the buildings, but I do know that I have no intention of trying to persuade these young adults to join the 'traditional' congregation. If they choose to come, that's fine, but if they'd rather 'do' or 'be church' differently, I'll be encouraging them to do so, not least because they are at least two generations removed from the existing churchgoers.

I still recall hearing Bishop Graham Cray at Greenbelt ten years ago saying that alternative worship is not a way of getting people in until we can teach them to worship properly - rather it is a foretaste of the way we'll all be worshipping in fifty years from now. With a bubbling of excitement in my heart, I find myself wondering if he'll be proved right.