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Measuring success in the Church - do the numbers count?
How do we measure success in the Church? Should we even be using the word 'success'? Are churches failing if they're not growing? And do numbers really count? Vicars are often faced with questions such as these and long-standing minister Alan Bartlett knows all about these challenges. Alan has been an Anglican priest for 25 years and is now working as a CMD Officer in Durham. In this extract from his new book Vicar he reflects upon his own experiences of measuring success in the Church and gives advice to those who may be feeling a bit overwhelmed with all this talk of numbers.
Success?
I was sitting in a warm comfy state during the sermon in a College Eucharist. We had a kind visiting preacher, a senior church leader from Cumbria, and it was one of the sheep parables. He was good on sheep, as one might hope for a minister from the Lake District. Then he stopped, took off his glasses, and leaned over the pulpit. ‘The Church is a very anxious institution. That makes it very dangerous. Be careful of it!’ He put his glasses on and went back to talking about Herdwicks. I sat slightly baffled and glanced around. Other people were also slightly un-nerved. Had that really just happened? Did we just hear that warning? We had done, and they were wise words and have stayed with me ever since.
In an anxious Church, what is the true measure of success?
Wise friends have queried my use of this word, ‘success’. Surely we ought to be asking about ‘fruitfulness’ or even that old chestnut, ‘faithfulness’. They are right of course. But vicars are ‘hearing’ this language of success. Are our churches growing? If not, are we failing? So, in a Church where this question is more prominent, what is an Anglican measure of success?
One of my former vicars once joked with me: ‘You know why vicars build things? It is so that they leave something tangible behind them when they go!’ Having been a vicar, I now get the point. The combination of planning and delivering many one-off events alongside much work with people, who come and go, left me wondering sometimes what I was achieving. It all seemed rather ephemeral. So of course I did some tangible building work! But I remember often asking myself that painful question: ‘what have I done of lasting value this year?’
Numbers Count
I wonder if there is a legacy of snobbery about numbers in the C of E? ‘Of course we don’t count numbers here. So crass. “Bums on seats.” Rather, it is all about depth and influence!’ I understand that numbers are a crude measure. I also understand that there are fields where numbers grow easily and fields where the soil is harder, especially when it comes to encouraging people to institutional involvement with the Church. The gap between the numbers game in the UPAs and in the suburbs has been real for at least 170 years. It is just the case that is easier to grow large congregations in university cities than in pit villages. The C of E has normally shown wisdom and grace in recognising this; though the current financial pressures make us increasingly vulnerable to numerical success shaping clergy deployment. If we are after big numbers will we send our clergy to Easington, for example. Thank God we still are…
But numbers do count. There are some simple equations in church life. More committed Christians = more Christian action. Whilst we might be suspicious of the quality of faith behind the churchgoing culture of the Victorian era, that level of resource enabled a colossal impact on Victorian Britain, mostly for good. The frequent lament in many of our parish churches is: ‘we could do so much more if only we had more people.’ There is sometimes no shortage of vision but there is a chronic shortage of people. We urgently need ‘more labourers for the harvest’. We need not be bashful about seeking new Christians.
We have already noted our bashfulness about introducing people to Jesus Christ and how that is so painfully at odds with our personal experience of receiving life through Jesus. We have also already noted Temple’s assertion about the Church being for its non-members and the problematic nature of this when it is interpreted as constraining our hope that others too will come into the mutuality of this relationship with Jesus Christ. But above all, we live as disciples of Jesus and point to his loving God: we do not sell a message or invite people to join a club.
Sometimes the C of E and its vicars are their own worst enemy. I don’t under-estimate the challenges of being a vicar and nor should we under-estimate people’s wariness of the Church and religion and therefore that evangelism can be stony ground. But there are easy wins. We had organised a workshop to reflect on Anglo-Catholic church growth in London. It was an excellent and encouraging presentation but the most exciting part was the reaction of our northern clergy: ‘It’s not rocket science. We can do this!’ Warm appropriate welcome. Accessible but not thin worship. Good relevant parish groups. Living faith at the heart of it all. Growth can result from seeing differently and then doing differently, even if only a little. I was lamenting to a youth worker about our lack of young people’s work. He looked back at me and said: ‘What have you been doing in school with your confirmation class? You have been enabling a group to bond and to go on a spiritual journey together. Build on that!’ I had been so fixed on the process of preparing the young people for confirmation that I had not seen what was being achieved by way of building ‘church’. So in time these young people were encouraged to help create a new style church youth group. ‘It’s not rocket science!’ And whilst it is not as automatic as a mathematical equation, I am convinced that good quality parish work which flows from a healthy local church life does produce numerical growth. This is still possible for our parish churches. Numbers are a part of success.
This book celebrates the tradition of English Anglican ordained pastoral ministry; it also affirms the value of vicars’ ministry and way of life, and the great gift they have for relating to our communities and churches. Yet, the questions must be asked: how can we be better equipped to make prudent decisions about the way church ministry has to evolve now? How can we meet the evident need in our parishes for an institutional church?
