Just Motoring Along
Simply keeping a church on the road is not terribly difficult. You can run the Sunday services. You can keep your various midweek activities going. You can do something special from time to time. And you can at the same time steadily decline.
I have been writing about the Resourcing Church recently. Millions of pounds been set aside for these extraordinarily ambitious ventures in Swindon and Bristol.
Where will that money come from?
These churches will be financed largely by the General Synod through its Strategic Development Fund, partly by the diocese of Bristol and partly by Holy Trinity Brompton. The aim is to purchase an iconic building and employ up to seven paid staff. It is an attempt to bring a new kind of church to Swindon.
Whatever else you may say about all this, it is clearly the fruit of ambitious leadership. Our bishops were not content to watch the Bristol diocese gradually decline. Archbishop Justin is determined to do all he can to provide a new trajectory for the long term future of the C of E.. They knew it was never going to be easy. But they wanted to act.
Is it right to spend all this money on one or two churches?
One reason for investing so very heavily in a Resourcing Church is that it might resource the local churches around it (Like St John’s Haydon Wick). However big a resourcing church gets, the vast majority of Christians will still worship in churches in their local areas.
Local churches need leadership too
At local level that is provided by the PCC. We must not imagine that the PCC is a committee that needs people to sit on it, so that we can tick a box. It is the body in the church most equipped to turn vision into reality.
It doesn’t matter how big or how small a church is, its PCC is crucial to its future. Looking back over the years, things would have been very different for us had our PCCs lacked vision.
Vision is a big part of PCC Membership – but it is not the only part. Having a vision is no good unless it can be turned into reality. That is why we need different kinds of people. We need the completer / finishers. We need the analysts. We need the administrators. We need people who, if they don’t come up with visions, know to make them happen. It is once again time for us to appoint new PCC members and appoint churchwardens. We encourage you to pray very much for the appointment for this new team, and consider whether your self should become a part of it.