Rediscovering Mission (Part 3)

Last month I touched on how choice drives our consumer society as never before. Choice has been elevated to God-like status and can lead us to create our own identity through lifestyle (what suits me, feels cool, suits my lifestyle).

Through electronic networking we can communicate across the world in no time. We expect things to be instant, distance no object and mobility the norm. Within this environment the notion of parish boundary with Church at its centre is being eroded in favour of community and friendships established "through the net." Then if we think about it, globalisation influences our life as much as it does events happening on a world scale. Against this background Christendom as a cohesive body of belief and morals held by a majority of people in the West is evaporating. We are looking at a vast and new mission field that requires completely new approaches.

For the first time in many years the Anglican Church has really got to grips with the nature of the home mission task. It has published a hugely significant report and several in-depth researches under the heading Mission-Shaped Church (ISBN 0715140132, Church House Publishing, £10.95). I urge all thinking and concerned Christians to make at least one of these documents compulsory reading.

Staggering Statistics
So how does our postmodern culture translate itself into church attendance? Take a look at this 1998 snapshot survey of the UK from Mission-Shaped Church:

• Regular Attenders
  Across the denominational spectrum, roughly 10% of the population attend perhaps 5-8 times in a two-month period.
• Fringe Attenders
  Roughly 10% of the population may attend church 1-3 times in a two-month period.
• Open De-churched
  40% of the population are de-churched or lapsed church members. At some point in their life they attended church. Of these, 20% are open de-churched - people who have left church at some point, but are open to return if suitably contacted and invited.
• Closed De-churched
  20% of the population have attended church at some point in their life, but were damaged or disillusioned, and have no intention of returning.
• Non-churched
  40% of the population nationally have never been to church, except perhaps for the funeral or wedding of a friend or relation. This 40% is the national average. In urban areas this figure might be as high as 80%.

Generation Time Bomb
But wasn't there a time when everyone went to Sunday School? Not so. Research shows that in 1900 just 55% of UK children attended Sunday school. By the year 2000 this figure had declined to just 4% of the population. Here is a sobering picture. Of those who were 10 years old in 1950, who are now rapidly approaching retirement, 70% were not in Sunday School.

So the majority of even the elderly are non-churched. Depressing? Challenging? It's worth pausing to wonder, in our current climate when church going has ceased to be seen as a duty and believing has been split from belonging, how on earth religion survives at all...

So how does religion survive in our post-Christian society? The next part of Rediscovering Mission – exploring new forms of church – considers this question.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4