A new burger bar in our nearest town is offering a brunch burger, beef, bacon, egg, tomato for a tenner on a Sunday Morning between 11 and 1.
For an extra pound instead of the set drink you can upgrade to a Bloody Mary!
Hail Mary full of Vodka!
Well, that should give the churches a run for their monies, it should have the same impact on morning attendance as The Forsyte Saga had on Evensong!
Directly opposite the bar, (situated in the Old Post Office, the new post office is in W H Smiths if you need a stamp, but not on Sunday), is a redundant church which is now an antiques emporium with a cafe and jazz on Fridays.
Further along the street another redundant church has been converted into flats.
It is a depressing litany of closure, failure, redundancy and decline.
A few nights ago I had a dream, in the dream I was revisiting a parish I knew, somehow in the dream I was aware that the parish was in Bolton where I served my second curacy, as I was preparing to join the procession from the vestry, (in the dream I had been invited to preach at the special service), I was told by the vicar that there was a good crowd, at least thirty people in Church, my response was to express the opinion that thirty was not a good crowd or even a good congregation, the last time I had attended worship in that church there had been three hundred in the congregation.
So far this year, apart from the mid-week services at the Cathedral, I have been asked to lead worship in three different churches, two in Scotland and one in Cumbria, it is the same story over and over, as a seventy year old retired clergyman it often feels as though I am the youngest person in attendance and average congregations are struggling to make it into double figures.
And yet the hierarchy insist on business as usual.
I like to read the notices, it helps me form a picture of what is happening, the last church, with a congregation of nine, had, according to the notice board paid over £10, 000 to the diocesan central fund and, next to the egregious notice from the Bishop (by Divine Permission etc) suspending the benefice yet again, was a notice advising that a faculty was required to undertake various maintenance works to the church exterior which were urgently required following the quinquennial survey.
Even though the decline of the church is rapidly approaching the precipitous and possibly irreversible the church in Cumbria is developing a concept of ecumenical mission communities under the title 'God for All' and has recently advertised two jobs at £38k per job: God For All Fresh Expressions Enabler and God For All Evangelism Enabler.
In the supporting blurb that accompanies the advertisement for these posts a support group will share a responsibility for ensuring that within five years everyone in Cumbria will have an opportunity to discover more about God's purposes for their lives.
This group will apparently be characterised by being: dynamic, light touch, risk taking, discerning, strategic, enabling, hard working, playful, creative, serious, prayerful and pragmatic.
Clearly the genius at work here had not only a Bible but a Thesaurus on his or her desk.
But what happens next? if it works then presumably all the redundant churches and suspended benefices will be reinstated? If it doesn't work what will the next desperate throw of the dice look like?
It feels to me that the hierarchy of the church need to be invited to join their own twelve step programme, get themselves a reality check or check themselves in for counselling. It all feels just too desperate that somehow you can gamble yourselves out of trouble with one more throw of the dice or spin of the wheel.
The image of the church is increasingly of a corporation or business which has retained its head office, the car park is still populated with late registration, top of the range cars, each senior executive has his or her own office, board meetings are held regularly and bonuses agreed. But out in the real world the factories are empty or idle, the warehouses full of old products gathering dust or have been turned into starter units for the new generation of the self employed, the transport fleet has been outsourced and the workforce largely laid off.
What in essence has happened and what shows no signs of letting up is the erosion of the broad basis of the ecclesia.
As a friend of mine and I once commented, the whole edifice is an inverted pyramid balancing ever more precariously on one hour on a Sunday Morning.
And as those who meet on that one hour spend more time in maintenance, rushing as it were from the CD player because there is no organist or the organ is no longer playable, to take up the collection, serve the bread and wine to the retired clergyman to bless and break because the living has been suspended and you share a priest with five or six other parishes, so the mission of the church becomes survival hoping against hope that nothing more gives way, that no one else dies and that the supply of retired clergy continues.
It used to be that the thought was 'As for me and my and my family we will seek justice and walk humbly with our God' sad to say that today it is far more likely that we will order the burger and upgrade our drinks.
Hail Mary full of Vodka ......
For an extra pound instead of the set drink you can upgrade to a Bloody Mary!
Hail Mary full of Vodka!
Well, that should give the churches a run for their monies, it should have the same impact on morning attendance as The Forsyte Saga had on Evensong!
Directly opposite the bar, (situated in the Old Post Office, the new post office is in W H Smiths if you need a stamp, but not on Sunday), is a redundant church which is now an antiques emporium with a cafe and jazz on Fridays.
Further along the street another redundant church has been converted into flats.
It is a depressing litany of closure, failure, redundancy and decline.
A few nights ago I had a dream, in the dream I was revisiting a parish I knew, somehow in the dream I was aware that the parish was in Bolton where I served my second curacy, as I was preparing to join the procession from the vestry, (in the dream I had been invited to preach at the special service), I was told by the vicar that there was a good crowd, at least thirty people in Church, my response was to express the opinion that thirty was not a good crowd or even a good congregation, the last time I had attended worship in that church there had been three hundred in the congregation.
So far this year, apart from the mid-week services at the Cathedral, I have been asked to lead worship in three different churches, two in Scotland and one in Cumbria, it is the same story over and over, as a seventy year old retired clergyman it often feels as though I am the youngest person in attendance and average congregations are struggling to make it into double figures.
And yet the hierarchy insist on business as usual.
I like to read the notices, it helps me form a picture of what is happening, the last church, with a congregation of nine, had, according to the notice board paid over £10, 000 to the diocesan central fund and, next to the egregious notice from the Bishop (by Divine Permission etc) suspending the benefice yet again, was a notice advising that a faculty was required to undertake various maintenance works to the church exterior which were urgently required following the quinquennial survey.
Even though the decline of the church is rapidly approaching the precipitous and possibly irreversible the church in Cumbria is developing a concept of ecumenical mission communities under the title 'God for All' and has recently advertised two jobs at £38k per job: God For All Fresh Expressions Enabler and God For All Evangelism Enabler.
In the supporting blurb that accompanies the advertisement for these posts a support group will share a responsibility for ensuring that within five years everyone in Cumbria will have an opportunity to discover more about God's purposes for their lives.
This group will apparently be characterised by being: dynamic, light touch, risk taking, discerning, strategic, enabling, hard working, playful, creative, serious, prayerful and pragmatic.
Clearly the genius at work here had not only a Bible but a Thesaurus on his or her desk.
But what happens next? if it works then presumably all the redundant churches and suspended benefices will be reinstated? If it doesn't work what will the next desperate throw of the dice look like?
It feels to me that the hierarchy of the church need to be invited to join their own twelve step programme, get themselves a reality check or check themselves in for counselling. It all feels just too desperate that somehow you can gamble yourselves out of trouble with one more throw of the dice or spin of the wheel.
The image of the church is increasingly of a corporation or business which has retained its head office, the car park is still populated with late registration, top of the range cars, each senior executive has his or her own office, board meetings are held regularly and bonuses agreed. But out in the real world the factories are empty or idle, the warehouses full of old products gathering dust or have been turned into starter units for the new generation of the self employed, the transport fleet has been outsourced and the workforce largely laid off.
What in essence has happened and what shows no signs of letting up is the erosion of the broad basis of the ecclesia.
As a friend of mine and I once commented, the whole edifice is an inverted pyramid balancing ever more precariously on one hour on a Sunday Morning.
And as those who meet on that one hour spend more time in maintenance, rushing as it were from the CD player because there is no organist or the organ is no longer playable, to take up the collection, serve the bread and wine to the retired clergyman to bless and break because the living has been suspended and you share a priest with five or six other parishes, so the mission of the church becomes survival hoping against hope that nothing more gives way, that no one else dies and that the supply of retired clergy continues.
It used to be that the thought was 'As for me and my and my family we will seek justice and walk humbly with our God' sad to say that today it is far more likely that we will order the burger and upgrade our drinks.
Hail Mary full of Vodka ......
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