Ship of Fools: St Michael & All Angels, Beckenham, England
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Ship of Fools: St Michael & All Angels, Beckenham, England
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The associate vicar left some time ago, and the parish is now in interregnum, along with its nearby sister church of St James, Elmers End. AFAIK, a sung Mass is held each Sunday, but using each church alternately.
Never mind - though it's a shame that St Michael's former website has disappeared, as it had some good photos of the very simple, but beautiful, interior of the church post-restoration.
There are one or two recent pics on the church's Twitter page, if you care to Google *St Michael and All Angels, Beckenham* and click on Images.
St Michael's has been linked with a neighbouring church for some years (I don't know if it's an official *United Benefice*), whose priest retired last Easter. I understand that the job of one priest to look after both churches is to be advertised shortly, as a full-time stipendiary appointment, which of course adds up to a fair amount of £££ from each of the two.
We’ve got 20 on the electoral roll, and a congregation of 15(ish) regulars in a village of 200.
One service with a priest per month, one service with a lay reader per month, and we pay 100% share - about £18,000 per year - to the diocese.
Some things just appear to defy gravity. That and lots and lots of hard work with fundraising events.
You seem to buck a national trend; you've got 7-10% of the village attending.
2% is closer to the average.
Beckenham and Our Town are both full of churches, so there are more people attending worship than just those being mentioned. Perhaps in a more rural area, there is much less choice, so to speak.
AIUI/IIRC church attendance as a percentage of population is much higher than 2% in rural areas. It’s 2%, as you say, *nationally*
This may, obviously, reflect the demographics of the parish(es) concerned, but, as people get promoted to glory, many more rural churches will inevitably become unviable. Urban churches have more chance of being taken on by another denomination, or by another faith.
Hmm, not completely convinced. Our village, and some of those around it, are at a tipping point where the generation that moved in in the 1970s are dying/moving away/downsizing, and they are being replaced by young families buying the houses. Again anecdotally, this is actually injecting young families into the churches, because the sort of people with young families that are wanting to live in remote small villages have in their number the sort of people who want to go to the church. My own family is one of them - but just looking at the baptismal roll, from being basically static at 1-2 per year (if that) post about 1990, the last 5 years have gone through the roof.
In fact (we're currently in interregnum) the benefice profile probably needs a re-write in terms of how well it reflects the reality of now, rather than the reality of the last 20 years.
Obviously that won't happen everywhere, so more churches will as you say become 'unviable' but I'm hopeful that it won't be nearly as many as the pessimists project. I can see where our 15 parishioners might come from for the next 30 years, let's put it that way.
The rural church is (in some places) on its knees - but in some of those places that represents a genuine improvement!
which is sort of my point - I think we're at a tipping point; some will collapse, the number tipping back to growth might be a surprise.
I'm less sceptical because in our neck of the woods I'm watching it happen.
Nenya - Ecclesiantics and Mystery Worshipper Host