Is Central Churchmanship Dying Out?

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  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    A few points ...


    I'm still waiting for comments and observations about the equivalent of 'central churchmanship' in Free Church settings.

    Any takers?

    Growing up in the rural "Yorks & Humbs" I always assumed that that was represented by the typical Methodist 'Hymn sandwich with vague remembrances of Matins' that was the local conservative Methodist standby. It ran something like hymn, General Confession, Psalm, reading, hymn or canticle, reading, hymn, sermon, creed, prayers ending with the Lord's Prayer, Hymn, collection and blessing, hymn, or something very close to that. The ministers would usually wear either cassock and bands, or gown and bands, or very occasionally (usually when an easterly gale was blowing) cassock, gown and bands; lay preachers a suit, or at least collar and tie. The chapels around our way were fairly formal though.

    The odd CofS service I have been to has usually been liturgical-ish worship in the Reformed Tradition, so hymn, call to worship, general confession, prayer for inspiration, reading - psalm - reading, sermon, creed, General Prayer usually ending with the Lord's Prayer and the service ending with a collection and a blessing. I am a bit woolly on where the hymns went though. The ministers attired tended to be cassock and gown. I tended to plumb for the more formal kirks.
  • Yes, PDR, that's the sort of Methodism I'm thinking of. I've encountered it in Yorkshire and in the Peak District, but not so much elsewhere.

    As for the lack of youthfulness within Methodism in the UK, well, yes, it is rare but you can find younger folk around, particularly hereabouts where there is a strong tradition.

    I know a number of 20 to 30 something Methodists and there is even a 'youth work' and a youth worker in our local Methodist church.

    Methodism is dying out, though.

    As for 'central churchmanship' among the Baptists, that certainly exists too, and may, I'm guessing, be a feature of smaller towns and non-studenty areas.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Unless you’re wanting to be ordained, there’s not much requirement for you to be episcopally confirmed. If you’re not a communicant member in good standing with your ‘own’ denomination, then you should be confirmed, or on the way to confirmation, if you want to receive communion.
  • balaambalaam Shipmate
    @balaam, I don't know. Christian Unions are far more powerful than one might think. Even I once went to a dance party with sermon hosted by one at a very prominent Evangelical church in London.

    I know that. In the 70s I went to university an agnostic and returned Christian. But University culture was so very middle class. For the son of a fishmonger who hung around with friends on the coucil estate where they lived the culture shock was quite big.

    Christian Unions draw from who are there, mostly middle-class people. The middle-class bias of the CofE can be seen in how it prioritises its mission. I have met people who have organised missions to Oxford, and by this, they meant to the university. I was very pleased that once someone actually meant the council estates around the Morris/Rover/Mini car factory. But this was unusual and the only mission to a council estate I have come across, some people shocked and thought that the right kind of people should have been targeted instead, people who will be more influential. I call it anti-Christian snobbery. How far we have fallen from following a carpenter who had a gang of fishermen around him.

    The rural churches I spoke about are not single class, well not all of them. You can find the Consultant surgeon, who has moved out to the country sitting alongside the agricultural worker.

    Unfortunately, I can see no evidence that the Ship reflects the classless society the church is called to be. The middle-class stench of this thread is giving me nausea.
  • Jengie JonJengie Jon Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    @Gamma Gamaliel

    I'm still waiting for comments and observations about the equivalent of 'central churchmanship' in Free Church settings.

    Any takers?

    What I suspect is a fair informal hymn sandwich. That is
    • the minister will wear a suit and tie and may wear a preaching gown but definitely no cassock,
    • the sermon will be fifteen minutes long preached from the communion table,
    • hymns will include both choruses and traditional hymns with a limit of repeating choruses to two times,
    • monthly communion, service only on a Sunday morning
    • accompanied by a piano or organ may be a single guitar for choruses but NO CHOIR
    • service will last exactly an hour
    • there will be prayers recognisable as Adoration, Confession and Thanksgiving but these will be free form and the Lord's prayer will be said
    • there will be coffee afterwards

    The only young member of the URC I knew who stayed was very devoted to classical Reformed theology. Before he was thirty, he was an elder, which always sounds a bit funny to those of us who weren't raised with the lingo.


    That old! Sorry the URC has ordained elders under twenty. I think I was in my late thirties when I was finally ordained but the first time I stood I was under thirty, the person elected was younger than me being in his early twenties. It is even weirder when you realise at my last church seniority was dated from the time you were ordained and had no relationship to any other status marker including role within the Eldership and a junior elder should not criticise a senior one.

  • In the Baptist context I would largely agree with Jengie's picture. However the Minister would lead the service and preach from the pulpit, and the sermon would be at lest 20-25 minutes long. Communion would be monthly both morning and evening but never on the same day, a usual pattern would be on the 1st and 3rd Sundays.
  • @balaam: I suspect that the CofE has always tended to draw its clergy from the middle or upper classes; I would also suggest University education, certainly up to the 70s and 80s, was also largely the preserve of folk from those backgrounds.

    However I think one aspect one shouldn't overlook, at least at the Evangelical end of Anglicanism, is the immense influence of Ernest Nash who ran the "Bash" camps in the 30s and beyond. These were confined to public school boys with the deliberate intent at creating a "Christian elite" which would influence both the Church and society as a whole. Many notable clergy got their first training there and ++Justin is a direct descendant of that ethos. Read more in Pete Ward's "Growing Up Evangelical": http://tiny.cc/58qu8y (start at p.36).
  • TheOrganistTheOrganist Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    balaam wrote: »
    But you can find central churchmanship in the Cof E. It is in the country parishes where one priest is in charge of four or five churches where getting thirty to a service is a good thing. Finding two musicians to go around the five churches is hard. But these small numbers are not the CofE's failure but its success. Church attendance per head of population is higher here than in urban areas, despite the urban areas having large traditional churches and even larger Evo ones.

    Yes, central churchmanship is being squeezed in cities and towns but is alive and well where mega-churches fear to tread, out in the countryside.

    But the problems start to appear in the countryside when you get incoming clergy who are rabidly evangelical and who have been taught that the way to do things is through amplified praise bands, mens' breakfasts (and the like), and over-long sermons on abstruse parts of the Old Testament - the coup de grâce is often the bringing-in of "helpers" or "missioners": invariably townies, they have no experience of, or time for, the traditional MotR country churchgoer who is a stalwart of the PCC, the NFU and the local rugby club, goes to church because he was brought up that way, and would rather die than have some worthy cleric try to get him to discuss his beliefs or faith.

    My own (where I play, not where I live) parish has benefited greatly from local parishes having gung-ho incumbents forced on them who have done away with Matins, made Harvest Festival all about pollution, don't mark Remembrance Sunday, and won't do 2.30pm Baptisms. We have Matins, a once (soon to be twice) a month Evensong; we celebrate Plough Sunday and Rogation, and at Harvest our farmers bring their offerings to the altar because in a rural parish it really means something; Remembrance Sunday is properly and solemnly celebrated (as have been the Golden and Diamond jubilees of HMQ) and we understand that afternooon Baptisms mean cousins and friends with their own farms can come and still get home in time for evening milking.

    I've thought for a long time now that rather than putting deacons into large urban parishes they should be sent to rural parishes with multiple churches: it would teach them about taking services where it really is two or three gathered together in my name and expose them to the BCP's all sorts and conditions of men, rounding off a few rough edges in the process.
  • Baptist TrainfanBaptist Trainfan Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    Two thoughts.

    1. Aren't baptisms supposed to happen with normal worship services, according to Canon Law? Baptism isn't a private event; it seems a little strange to be children to be "welcomed into the family of the Church" if said family has met earlier in the day and all gone home!

    2. I read a sermon preached many years ago at an Ordination service by George Carey when he was still Bishop of Bath and Wells. He made the point that the vast majority of those being ordained had come from large, thriving, Evangelical (and, I guess, probably suburban) churches and would experience a huge culture shock when they found themselves as Curates in out-of-the-way rural parishes. Hopefully Vicar training has improved since then but I think his point still stands, especially if few candidates for ordination come from a rural background.
  • Two thoughts.

    1. Aren't baptisms supposed to happen with normal worship services, according to Canon Law? Baptism isn't a private event; it seems a little strange to be children to be "welcomed into the family of the Church" if said family has met earlier in the day and all gone home!

    2. I read a sermon preached many years ago at an Ordination service by George Carey when he was still Bishop of Bath and Wells. He made the point that the vast majority of those being ordained had come from large, thriving, Evangelical (and, I guess, probably suburban) churches and would experience a huge culture shock when they found themselves as Curates in out-of-the-way rural parishes. Hopefully Vicar training has improved since then but I think his point still stands, especially if few candidates for ordination come from a rural background.

    While it is preferable that they happen within a "normal" service, in the case of our baptisms many of the regular congregation are there too because they know the family. Besides, our priest finds baptisms within the liturgy irksome... :neutral:

    Your second point, I'd say that things are, if anything worse when it comes to ignorance of the countryside and rural life.

    I'll leave the bit about many ordinands being Evangelical for another time...
  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    @Gamma Gamaliel

    I'm still waiting for comments and observations about the equivalent of 'central churchmanship' in Free Church settings.

    Any takers?

    What I suspect is a fair informal hymn sandwich. That is
      . . .
    • the sermon will be fifteen minutes long preached from the communion table
      . . .
    That's really interesting. Why was the sermon preached from the communion table rather than the pulpit?

    BTW, and FWIW, the long-standing norm among my tribe was for everything in a standard Sunday service to be led from the pulpit (or pulpit and lectern in churches with both) except for celebration of the sacraments themselves. But over the last decade or two, there has been a move away from that. In particular, it seems to have become increasingly common (but not universal) to lead certain parts of the service from the font and certain parts from the table, and to use the pulpit only for the readings and the sermon.

  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    balaam wrote: »
    But you can find central churchmanship in the Cof E. It is in the country parishes where one priest is in charge of four or five churches where getting thirty to a service is a good thing. Finding two musicians to go around the five churches is hard. But these small numbers are not the CofE's failure but its success. Church attendance per head of population is higher here than in urban areas, despite the urban areas having large traditional churches and even larger Evo ones.

    Yes, central churchmanship is being squeezed in cities and towns but is alive and well where mega-churches fear to tread, out in the countryside.

    But the problems start to appear in the countryside when you get incoming clergy who are rabidly evangelical and who have been taught that the way to do things is through amplified praise bands, mens' breakfasts (and the like), and over-long sermons on abstruse parts of the Old Testament - the coup de grâce is often the bringing-in of "helpers" or "missioners": invariably townies, they have no experience of, or time for, the traditional MotR country churchgoer who is a stalwart of the PCC, the NFU and the local rugby club, goes to church because he was brought up that way, and would rather die than have some worthy cleric try to get him to discuss his beliefs or faith.

    My own (where I play, not where I live) parish has benefited greatly from local parishes having gung-ho incumbents forced on them who have done away with Matins, made Harvest Festival all about pollution, don't mark Remembrance Sunday, and won't do 2.30pm Baptisms. We have Matins, a once (soon to be twice) a month Evensong; we celebrate Plough Sunday and Rogation, and at Harvest our farmers bring their offerings to the altar because in a rural parish it really means something; Remembrance Sunday is properly and solemnly celebrated (as have been the Golden and Diamond jubilees of HMQ) and we understand that afternooon Baptisms mean cousins and friends with their own farms can come and still get home in time for evening milking.

    I've thought for a long time now that rather than putting deacons into large urban parishes they should be sent to rural parishes with multiple churches: it would teach them about taking services where it really is two or three gathered together in my name and expose them to the BCP's all sorts and conditions of men, rounding off a few rough edges in the process.

    When I first started out on the ordination journey I was hoping to spend my working life in rural multiple church parishes. The reaction I got from the diocesan powers that were when I expressed a preference for rural ministry and traditional liturgy was somewhat the same as one might get if one admitted to having leprosy. I was packed off to a suburban parish to be re-educated and learn how to use a fish fork before they would even consider sending me to a selection conference.
  • Besides, our priest finds baptisms within the liturgy irksome... :neutral:
    So would I, But that isn't the point, surely.
    I'll leave the bit about many ordinands being Evangelical for another time...
    I think it's inevitable as these tend to be the churches that are flourishing and attracting younger folk.

  • Baptist TrainfanBaptist Trainfan Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    But over the last decade or two, there has been a move away from that. In particular, it seems to have become increasingly common (but not universal) to lead certain parts of the service from the font and certain parts from the table, and to use the pulpit only for the readings and the sermon.
    In my last church the norm was to do everything from the lectern except for the sermon. (I used to be "snibbed into" the pulpit until folk realised I was unlikely to make a dramatic gesture and fall out backwards!)

  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    balaam wrote: »
    @balaam, I don't know. Christian Unions are far more powerful than one might think. Even I once went to a dance party with sermon hosted by one at a very prominent Evangelical church in London.

    I know that. In the 70s I went to university an agnostic and returned Christian. But University culture was so very middle class. For the son of a fishmonger who hung around with friends on the coucil estate where they lived the culture shock was quite big.

    Christian Unions draw from who are there, mostly middle-class people. The middle-class bias of the CofE can be seen in how it prioritises its mission. I have met people who have organised missions to Oxford, and by this, they meant to the university. I was very pleased that once someone actually meant the council estates around the Morris/Rover/Mini car factory. But this was unusual and the only mission to a council estate I have come across, some people shocked and thought that the right kind of people should have been targeted instead, people who will be more influential. I call it anti-Christian snobbery. How far we have fallen from following a carpenter who had a gang of fishermen around him.

    The rural churches I spoke about are not single class, well not all of them. You can find the Consultant surgeon, who has moved out to the country sitting alongside the agricultural worker.

    Unfortunately, I can see no evidence that the Ship reflects the classless society the church is called to be. The middle-class stench of this thread is giving me nausea.

    As a working-class student currently on Universal Credit and living in a hostel, you are making enormous assumptions that are just not true. The assumption that all students are middle-class intellectuals makes life for the many many working-class students much harder - all the universities I have attended have had large working-class populations. This is especially common in universities with large nursing and teacher training departments, which is common in newer universities.

    I brought up university chaplaincies because they tend to be MOTR in order to cater for everybody. That's it. It's you who have come on this thread and made huge assumptions about what students look like, how they're never poor or working-class or in need of support, and that we all need to make patronising missions to council estates when nobody has asked people living there if that's what they want. I agree that we need more working-class clergy but you are doing working-class people an enormous disservice. None of my friends living on council estates would want missionaries anywhere near them! Why the assumption that working-class people are too stupid to go to university? Are we just of no importance unless we fit your assumptions? Maybe actually ask working-class people what they want.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Also, having lived in urban, suburban *and* rural areas - I have never experienced a church (of any kind) not marking Remembrance Sunday. As in, as someone who would prefer not to (for myriad reasons), my usual strategy has been to escape to the local Quakers for the morning because it's otherwise inescapable. Certainly in my experience, evangelical suburban churches get as jingoistic as anywhere else - Roman Catholic churches do it the best, ime, out of the mainstream churches.

    Yes, Harvest Festivals (another secular event I would prefer churches not to mark) are going to be discussing environmental issues or food poverty in most churches. Climate change should be a pressing issue for all churches however - there's nothing about farmers presenting their offerings (which I appreciate the meaning of) that means we can't also say how in 50 years we might not have a planet to celebrate the harvest of.

    There are indeed a lot of evangelical ordinands, and lots of evangelical young women. Of course they're going to be from large suburban churches because that's where the numbers are. I sympathise greatly with the issues faced by rural areas - I don't think rural ministry would be right for me, partly just because I can't drive for medical reasons so living in the countryside would be pretty impossible for me. But I can recognised how rural training for ordinands would help a lot.

    I think 'what are evangelicals getting right that we aren't' is a fair question for all non-evangelicals to ask of ourselves.
  • This (all of it!)

    My mother's village in Norfolk (together with several others) was served for many years by a Vicar who grew up in and understood the county very well. He was quietly evangelistic and had an excellent ministry.
  • Jengie JonJengie Jon Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Jengie Jon wrote: »
    @Gamma Gamaliel

    I'm still waiting for comments and observations about the equivalent of 'central churchmanship' in Free Church settings.

    Any takers?

    What I suspect is a fair informal hymn sandwich. That is
      . . .
    • the sermon will be fifteen minutes long preached from the communion table
      . . .
    That's really interesting. Why was the sermon preached from the communion table rather than the pulpit?

    BTW, and FWIW, the long-standing norm among my tribe was for everything in a standard Sunday service to be led from the pulpit (or pulpit and lectern in churches with both) except for celebration of the sacraments themselves. But over the last decade or two, there has been a move away from that. In particular, it seems to have become increasingly common (but not universal) to lead certain parts of the service from the font and certain parts from the table, and to use the pulpit only for the readings and the sermon.

    Remember I am trying to describe a middle style. The historic normative as far as I can tell in this country is that of leading from either the lectern or communion desk and then preaching from the pulpit. I have seen this in URCs and CofS and I think Baptist and Methodists as well but that would only be in traditional style worship places today. The other extreme which you can find in either Evangelical churches or some experimental liberal churches is an informal wandering around the stage or maybe everything from the lectern. I wanted to strike a balance between these two and the leading from the communion table seemed to me to be a compromise position. However, I also understand that a certain type of Reformed churchmanship, following Barth, actually thinks this is a better arrangement. Their idea is to keep prominent in the congregations mind the symbolic link between Word and Sacrament.
  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Jengie Jon wrote: »
    @Gamma Gamaliel

    I'm still waiting for comments and observations about the equivalent of 'central churchmanship' in Free Church settings.

    Any takers?

    What I suspect is a fair informal hymn sandwich. That is
      . . .
    • the sermon will be fifteen minutes long preached from the communion table
      . . .
    That's really interesting. Why was the sermon preached from the communion table rather than the pulpit?

    BTW, and FWIW, the long-standing norm among my tribe was for everything in a standard Sunday service to be led from the pulpit (or pulpit and lectern in churches with both) except for celebration of the sacraments themselves. But over the last decade or two, there has been a move away from that. In particular, it seems to have become increasingly common (but not universal) to lead certain parts of the service from the font and certain parts from the table, and to use the pulpit only for the readings and the sermon.
    Remember I am trying to describe a middle style. The historic normative as far as I can tell in this country is that of leading from either the lectern or communion desk and then preaching from the pulpit. I have seen this in URCs and CofS and I think Baptist and Methodists as well but that would only be in traditional style worship places today. The other extreme which you can find in either Evangelical churches or some experimental liberal churches is an informal wandering around the stage or maybe everything from the lectern. I wanted to strike a balance between these two and the leading from the communion table seemed to me to be a compromise position.
    I'm afraid I'm more confused now. So preaching from the communion table is a somewhat hypothetical compromise between preaching from the pulpit and wandering, rather than something that actually would be the norm in a MOTR/middle-style URC/Nonconformist service?

    However, I also understand that a certain type of Reformed churchmanship, following Barth, actually thinks this is a better arrangement. Their idea is to keep prominent in the congregations mind the symbolic link between Word and Sacrament.
    Yes, which is why here, it has become common to lead certain parts of the service from the font, certain parts from the pulpit and certain parts from the table—to underscore the links.

  • Preaching from the pulpit has become more and more seen as over hierarchical (six feet above contradiction). Often when the pulpit was used for preaching, the other parts of the service were taken from the communion table. The result is that the simplest thing is to just lead worship from the communion table and not go into the pulpit.
  • Got it. Thanks.
  • balaambalaam Shipmate
    Pomona wrote: »
    balaam wrote: »
    @balaam, I don't know. Christian Unions are far more powerful than one might think. Even I once went to a dance party with sermon hosted by one at a very prominent Evangelical church in London.

    I know that. In the 70s I went to university an agnostic and returned Christian. But University culture was so very middle class. For the son of a fishmonger who hung around with friends on the coucil estate where they lived the culture shock was quite big.

    Christian Unions draw from who are there, mostly middle-class people. The middle-class bias of the CofE can be seen in how it prioritises its mission. I have met people who have organised missions to Oxford, and by this, they meant to the university. I was very pleased that once someone actually meant the council estates around the Morris/Rover/Mini car factory. But this was unusual and the only mission to a council estate I have come across, some people shocked and thought that the right kind of people should have been targeted instead, people who will be more influential. I call it anti-Christian snobbery. How far we have fallen from following a carpenter who had a gang of fishermen around him.

    The rural churches I spoke about are not single class, well not all of them. You can find the Consultant surgeon, who has moved out to the country sitting alongside the agricultural worker.

    Unfortunately, I can see no evidence that the Ship reflects the classless society the church is called to be. The middle-class stench of this thread is giving me nausea.

    As a working-class student currently on Universal Credit and living in a hostel, you are making enormous assumptions that are just not true. The assumption that all students are middle-class intellectuals makes life for the many many working-class students much harder - all the universities I have attended have had large working-class populations.

    Where did I assume that all students were middle-class intellectuals? What I said was, "son of a fishmonger who hung around with friends on the coucil [sic] estate." I was a working-class student.
    This is especially common in universities with large nursing and teacher training departments, which is common in newer universities.

    I brought up university chaplaincies because they tend to be MOTR in order to cater for everybody. That's it. It's you who have come on this thread and made huge assumptions about what students look like,

    Where? I pointed out that I was a working-class student.
    how they're never poor or working-class or in need of support, and that we all need to make patronising missions to council estates

    Patronising? Now you are making assumptions. I was continueing on what I said on page 1. "Where are the Hungry being fed, strangers welcomed, naked clothed, sick tended and prisoners visited?

    In a modern setting where are the soup kitchens? Where are the food banks? Where are Street Angels helping drunk young people get home? Where is Christians Against Poverty active. These are largely Christian led. It is here where you find Christians, and it is here you find Christ, on the other side of the counter."

    I am not talking of the kind of mission that comes for a week, says "Accept Jesus and everything will be OK," then goes away, leaving the poverty. The mission I am talking about lives among the people, shares their hurt, listen to their needs and their likes. I was talking of real self-giving mission, not evangelistic hit and run.
    when nobody has asked people living there if that's what they want. I agree that we need more working-class clergy but you are doing working-class people an enormous disservice. None of my friends living on council estates would want missionaries anywhere near them! Why the assumption that working-class people are too stupid to go to university? Are we just of no importance unless we fit your assumptions?

    What assumptions?
    Maybe actually ask working-class people what they want.

    The middle-class I was complaining about was that one that would rather reach the privileged than help the poor, that is not so much condescending to the working-class as ignoring them altogether.

    At least thank for pointing out what universities and Christian Unions are like now. Things have clearly improved a lot since my time in the early 1970s.

  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    The 'middle-class stench' certainly suggested that you assumed everyone talking about university was middle-class. But apologies for misreading.

    I don't think Christian Unions have improved - they're still extremely exclusionary and unwelcoming to everyone who isn't 'the right kind of Christian'. They may have more working-class members but not a lot has changed in terms of doctrine.

    Around here there are no Street Pastors and things like food banks are mostly run by the local authority or Citizens Advice - churches may contribute but the majority is done by the council or other local govt. I have to say that when I was using food banks, I had a much much better experience using services not based in churches - even with charitable outreach, churches have limits. As you say many churches who do get involved are evangelical, which can cause some issues. I once went to a food bank in an evangelical church where the volunteer was visibly uncomfortable when she realised I was transgender (she initially assumed I was going on behalf of the name on the form) and that was quite upsetting to experience at an already stressful time. I do feel less safe and less confident of being treated well when I have to use a church charity for something.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Puzzler wrote: »
    ....
    I am interested in what makes a church change.
    Is it gradual?
    Is it a change of incumbent?
    Are the changes decided by the PCC for specific reasons, ie after a series of discussions?
    Or merely rubber stamped by the PCC after the incumbent has imposed his/ her practices?
    What happens when the new incumbent radically changes the churchmanship?
    Do people leave?
    Does the new style attract new people?

    In my place, the new incumbent announced to the PCC that he was in charge and could do what he liked, that he intended to change it from high church to low church, having already imposed his own preferences. ( no vestments, no Gospel procession, cutting musical responses, truncating the liturgy, more extempore prayer, not robing, cutting out the crucifer and choir procession, alienating the organist so he left, introducing a worship band.....and that is before we get on to his sermons.)
    He said if we didn’t like the changes we should leave. There is no other Anglican Church in this small town.
    It was not a high church, just MOTR with a strong musical tradition. All changes were introduced by him, mostly without consultation, and rubber stamped by the PCC in the interest of attracting new young families. Several people have left, or stayed but are deeply unhappy, few new ones have joined, apart from those who have come to live in the parish, one new young family have stuck in 18 months.

    I am genuinely interested in others’ experience of change of churchmanship and what effect that has had
    .
    The incumbent has primary responsibility for how worship is done, but certain changes require the consent of the PCC.

    The wise incumbent seeks to carry the congregations with them in making changes. He or she explains what they are proposing, why it is a good idea, and seeks to persuade and win over the PCC etc.

    The foolish incumbent takes the line that 'what happens on a Sunday morning is my business. I know best. I have a vision but I don't need to explain it since it's obvious. Anyone who doesn't catch it, is resisting the Lord. If the congregation don't like it, they are wrong, stupid, stubborn, insubordinate. This is a matter of respecting and accepting God's appointed shepherd. If anyone doesn't agree good riddance'.

    The opposite also doesn't work, which is a congregation, or key members in it, thinking that as they are there for the long term, whereas vicars come and go, they can make big decisions on their own initiative and expect the vicar not just to go along with them but to do so with enthusiasm.
  • PuzzlerPuzzler Shipmate
    Thanks for picking this up, Enoch. I agree with your comments.
    I am still hoping to read of others’ experiences of change of churchmanship, for better or for worse.
  • PuzzlerPuzzler Shipmate
    Regarding Churches doing charitable work, I do think people may be wary of approaching them in case they get Christianity pushed down their throat along with the food parcel.
    Far better IMHO for Christians to get involved in local charities already being run successfully.
  • The local church hosted both the credit union and the food bank and has ended up moving both into neutral places - the credit union into the library and the food bank into what used to be the church hall, as some people wouldn't use those services inside the church. The same volunteers are still involved.

    That same church runs a coffee morning on Mondays - market day, serving cheap coffee and providing a place to sit and chat. A group of people use that regularly, but the book stall that's run alongside does a much better trade on dry sunny days when it is set up outside than it does inside the church.

    That church also hosts art exhibitions, concerts, a tree festival, keeps the doors open for people to come in and pray, explore or just sit quietly and has a tiny garden outside with benches that is heavily used at lunchtime.
  • PDR wrote: »
    When I first started out on the ordination journey I was hoping to spend my working life in rural multiple church parishes. The reaction I got from the diocesan powers that were when I expressed a preference for rural ministry and traditional liturgy was somewhat the same as one might get if one admitted to having leprosy. I was packed off to a suburban parish to be re-educated and learn how to use a fish fork before they would even consider sending me to a selection conference.
    A fish fork??? I need smelling salts.
    Pomona wrote: »
    <snip> I have never experienced a church (of any kind) not marking Remembrance Sunday. As in, as someone who would prefer not to (for myriad reasons), my usual strategy has been to escape to the local Quakers for the morning because it's otherwise inescapable. Certainly in my experience, evangelical suburban churches get as jingoistic as anywhere else - Roman Catholic churches do it the best, ime, out of the mainstream churches.
    Nothing jingoistic about our marking of Remembrance Sunday at all. But in a small rural place every name on the Roll of Honour is of someone with some family still in the village; for those killed in more recent conflicts (The Falklands, Afghanistan, etc) there are parents, siblings or children in the congregation. And by some quirk while we have many farming/ market gardening families, we also seem to have a lot of young people who join the armed forces.
    Yes, Harvest Festivals (another secular event I would prefer churches not to mark) are going to be discussing environmental issues or food poverty in most churches. Climate change should be a pressing issue for all churches however - there's nothing about farmers presenting their offerings (which I appreciate the meaning of) that means we can't also say how in 50 years we might not have a planet to celebrate the harvest of.
    First, what about the example of Sukkot? It can (maybe should) be argued that Harvest Festival is a Christian descendant of this; I certainly don't think it can be successfully argued that it is a secular event. As for discussing food poverty, which type do you mean? Do you mean the food poverty that means people cannot afford/ manage to provide themselves with food, or the real food poverty which means that we are ever more reliant on imports of basic foodstuffs from countries which have their own issues with poverty and food supply. Personally I think the church falls down on the job when it comes to discussing the moral issue of countries like the UK importing out-of-season vegetables from countries where people are hungry - green beans from Kenya, potatoes from Egypt, broccoli from Zimbabwe spring to mind. The argument that this trade improves things by giving the growing country foreign exchange doesn't address the issue that our luxury items are grown on the most fertile agricultural land, and that the ludicrous standards set by our supermarkets lead to waste of the "wrong" food on an obscene scale. I don't recall any great speeches on that issue recently by anyone in a clerical collar, only by someone from the NFU.
    There are indeed a lot of evangelical ordinands, and lots of evangelical young women. Of course they're going to be from large suburban churches because that's where the numbers are. <snip> I can recognised how rural training for ordinands would help a lot.
    There are also many less than Evangelical would-be ordinands who are turned down by selection boards time and again. When the diocesan bishop and the DDO are both evangelical, when the board is mainly (sometimes entirely) evangelical, the chances of someone more at home in a, say, liberal catholic tradition getting passed are slim indeed.
    I sympathise greatly with the issues faced by rural areas ... I think 'what are evangelicals getting right that we aren't' is a fair question for all non-evangelicals to ask of ourselves.
    This just sounds out-and-out patronising. How about, "What could we Evangelicals learn from MOTR/ Liberal Catholic churches?" The feeling is overwhelming that movement is all expected to come from one direction. Yes, Evangelicals may make a lot of noise (how they do love an over-large sound system) but there are people from other traditions bringing people to Christ whose experiences are at least as valuable, yet who are being bullied at every turn.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Well I'm a non-evangelical in a strongly evangelical diocese, so it's not like I'm unaware of that. But also, on the whole it's evangelicals who have lots of people in their churches and MOTR/liberal catholic do not. Obviously it's not all about bums on seats, but bums on seats are also a necessary thing for healthy growth. Of course evangelicals have things to learn from other churches, but if they have people in their church under 70 and in double figures, it seems only sensible to look at why that is. It's not patronising, it's taking the problem seriously. There isn't any point in having things to teach people if we can't get people to show up in the first place.

    Evangelicals taking over is a worry for me, but I think a large percentage of the problem is self-inflicted. I think admitting that is the first step to recovery.
  • ThunderBunkThunderBunk Shipmate
    edited June 2019
    Will someone tell me what is so damned terrible about being middle class or educated? The inverted snobbery really does reek. As does the pro-Evangelical bias.

    Without a captive audience and a very ready source of funding, Evangelicals are just as stymmied as everyone else. In evidence of which, I cite the HTB plant in front of my nose.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Pomona, I don't understand your comments against Harvest Festival. St Sanity is a parish in suburban Sydney, so next to no local produce beyond domestic lemon and cumquat trees. But we observe the Festival each May, with people bringing bags of groceries, with a bit of fresh produce from the greengrocer's for show. After the last service, the display is packed away and taken to a charity for distribution to those seeking assistance. The service itself includes the usual sorts of prayers of thanks for harvests generally as well as remembrance of those to whom the donations will be given. What is wrong with that?
  • That's much the same sort of thing we do at Our Place in September - the groceries go to the local Food Bank, and the fresh produce is auctioned off during coffee-time after the Mass! Proceeds from the auction usually go to a charity like Water Aid, or something similar.
  • Similar thing here: the church has links with a homelessness charity, sends volunteers to work kitchen shifts. Harvest isn't pretty piles of produce, it's a collection of goods for this charity, so tins of veg and fruit, bags of rice and pasta, clean clothes and bedding, washing things. This homelessness charity provides a place for those living on the street:
    • to eat - breakfast of cereal and toast provided at 10am, cooked lunch at 12:30pm, tea at 4:00pm of cakes and biscuits, cups of tea
    • to wash - showers and washing machines go continuously while they are open;
    • an address for mail or to apply for jobs;
    • support for job and home seeking - some of their employees are ex-clients;
    • medical support - weekly visits from chiropodist and hairdresser, dentists available.
  • Will someone tell me what is so damned terrible about being middle class or educated? The inverted snobbery really does reek. As does the pro-Evangelical bias.
    It is also a hypocritical smoke-screen, bearing in mind the schooling of virtually all of the leading lights of CofE evangelicalism. Off the top of my head I can think of the following: Eton Nicky Gumbel, Justin Welby; Rugby John Stott, David Urquhart; Maidenhead College Eric Nash ("Bash"); Dulwich College Nick Page; Merchant Taylors Pete Broadbent; and many more went to "good" grammars and thence to Oxford or Cambridge.

    For myself, I don't think it sensible or fair to blame people for a choice of schooling made by parents; however, I think it is mealy-mouthed to attempt to hide one's schooling ("...went to school in X ", X being the name of a town or borough) or hint at a place paid for under the Direct Grant scheme. For pity's sake, if you were fortunate enough to receive a good education, own up to it.
    Pomona wrote: »
    Obviously it's not all about bums on seats, but bums on seats are also a necessary thing for healthy growth. Of course evangelicals have things to learn from other churches, but if they have people in their church under 70 and in double figures, it seems only sensible to look at why that is. It's not patronising, it's taking the problem seriously. There isn't any point in having things to teach people if we can't get people to show up in the first place.
    But "bums on seats" is precisely the yardstick for "success" that is used by TPTB.

    As for the demographic, in areas like ours there are far more people moving in over 60 than under. In fact the Church Commissioners have been responsible for bringing about the greying of our population with their decision to sell-off farm cottages to weekenders and/or retirees, with the result that many of those employed on our farms live in local authority housing miles away, commuting each day. If a parish has a demographic gap, they cannot be expected to have a thriving Sunday School or youth group.

    Interestingly, some of the farming diaspora now come back to us on a regular basis because they find what is on offer in the towns unappealing - "its like those American churches you see on TV" was a comment made recently of a supposedly thriving plant in a nearish town.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    ... First, what about the example of Sukkot? It can (maybe should) be argued that Harvest Festival is a Christian descendant of this;
    I don't think it can be. Harvest Festival was a nineteenth century development. It did not exist through all the centuries when England was an almost wholly agricultural country, dependent largely on what it grew and herded within its own territory. It only came in during the transition through the industrial revolution, and possibly as an ecclesiastical response to some of the social dislocation that made to all the assumptions until then as to how the world worked.

    There was a church ecclesiastical calendar before that. There are traces of it in the left hand column of the lectionary. A lot of it, though, seems in practice to have withered after the Reformation.
    I certainly don't think it can be successfully argued that it is a secular event. ...
    I agree. It's about thanking God for the harvest and was invented by the CofE.


    There's a separate interesting thing about Sukkot. Ancient Israel had three pilgrim festivals. Christianity took over and assimilated its interpretation of Passover (Holy Week and Easter) and Weeks (Pentecost/Whitsun). It never seems to have adopted its equivalent of Sukkot/Tabernacles.

    In terms of the journey of Israel, rather than the agricultural year, Passover is the deliverance from Egypt. Weeks is the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai. Tabernacles is the entry into the Promised Land. The Booths are so that people will remember the days when their forefathers lived in tents in the wilderness.

    I've frequently speculated that the reason why Christianity has never adopted its interpretation of Tabernacles is because we're still in the wilderness. We haven't reached the Promised Land yet.
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    Harvest festival is relatively late. However, the agricultural cycle was observed in other ways such as Plough Monday, Rogationtide, and Lammas. To what degree these survived the Reformation varied from place to place, but the Elizabethan Injunctions refer to the Rogations processions and make provision for them. The old custom of celebrating Communion (back in the days of quarterly communion) either the Lord's Day before or after Michaelmas was not unconnected to the fact that it was more or less after the Harvest.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Will someone tell me what is so damned terrible about being middle class or educated? The inverted snobbery really does reek. As does the pro-Evangelical bias.

    Without a captive audience and a very ready source of funding, Evangelicals are just as stymmied as everyone else. In evidence of which, I cite the HTB plant in front of my nose.

    Where did anyone say that being middle-class or educated (one doesn't automatically mean the other!) was bad? I don't think wanting a socially mixed Church suggests those things, nor is that inverted snobbery. I don't see much evidence of being pro-evangelical on this thread either. I'm certainly not, just pragmatic.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    As someone who was a recipient of food bank parcels very recently, I'm quite aware of where offerings at Harvest Festivals go to. But such donations can be made year-round, they're not exclusive to Harvest Festivals. I just see the Harvest Festival as being made-up like Back To Church Sunday, and just a bit odd when you could just celebrate a saint's feast instead. I'm sure in many churches both are observed, but I have definitely come across churches where Something Sunday takes precedence over an actual saint.
  • Well, you'll be pleased to know that we've moved Harvest Festival to 22nd September this year, so as to keep St Michael and All Angels on the 29th!

    We usually have HF on the last Sunday in September, but Father NewPriest is keen on celebrating the saints whenever he can...
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    September 29th is definitely going to be St Michael and All Angels here. It is an opportunity to ditch green on a Sunday in the second half of the year and therefore not to be passed up!
  • I don't think the comment about inverted snobbery was aimed at you, Pomona. There were examples further up thread.
  • edited July 2019
    (to pick two themes in the posts immediately above and in the interests of full disclosure, I was an Assisted Place boy at a minor public school, and I am also a terrible inverted snob. Having failed socially with the rich kids I took my ball home, and I've never brought it out again :smile: ).
  • Well, you'll be pleased to know that we've moved Harvest Festival to 22nd September this year, so as to keep St Michael and All Angels on the 29th!

    We usually have HF on the last Sunday in September, but Father NewPriest is keen on celebrating the saints whenever he can...
    Of course, celebrating saints isn't part of our tradition, though we do it from time to time (not necessarily at the "right" time!) and I do make a point of focusing on All Saints.

  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited July 2019
    Yes, we sometimes transfer saints' days if it suits us to do so - the saints don't mind, AFAIK.

    Some Anglican churches I know of, which only have one mid-week Eucharist, will use it to celebrate whatever red-letter day may fall that week.
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    The general rule here is

    (1) Major Saints' days on a Saturday or Monday are moved to the next convenient weekday.
    (2) As far as possible red letter days are observed on the day, but see rule one.
    (3) If rules 1 & 2 don't work then - Thursday!
    (4) Any legitimate opportunity to celebrate a saint on a Sunday will be taken.

    Most of our saints' day celebrations are far from grand. Just the faithful few who turn up any time I crack the door open, me, and a said celebration of HC.
  • I remember showing up at my old Orthodox parish on a very snowy Sunday, and there were maybe 10 people there. The priest joked, "Hm, must be a feast day!"
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    edited July 2019
    I think my own church is the US version of Central to Low in that we use the BCP traditional rites as written, with the ordinary of the Eucharist, and the Canticles at MP/EP sung when we have an organist for those services. Chanting tends to be confined to major feats and Christmas-tide and Easter-Ascension-Pentecost. No bells or incense; about 50-50 surplice and stole/eucharistic vestments for communion.' Dirty great stone altar enforces eastward facing celebration - much to my relief - and there wouldn't be all that much for folks to watch anyway. I am trying to move it slightly higher - I think - but this is Virginia...
  • I think at one time simply having an east end altar would be considered high church...
  • angloidangloid Shipmate
    Certainly a stone one. Some of the most nosebleed places over here have a crude carpenter's bench where one might expect a marble construction. Carpenter's bench is indeed appropriate, but it is usually only seen on Good Friday and covered by elaborate brocade the rest of the year.
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    Oddly, the Lutheran congregation that we shared with used to celebrate their Eucharist on a free standing, bench-like, wooden table in the middle of the chancel, then had everyone troop past it to receive at the Communion Rails. Not sure what I felt about that other than I thought it was a mess. When I saw the wooden table out there I always had a strange urge to turn it lengthways and leave them my copy of the Everyman's reprint of the 1552... I resisted though. Theologically our furniture was the wrong way round as my Eucharistic theology is more that of Bucer and Calvin, and there's is that of the Concordia.

    I would like to give the altar the full (length) frontal treatment, but the congregation like looking at the carving, so they are delaying getting a proper frontal. In return, I am trying not to whinge about a nakkid altar. We will see how long we manage to last.
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