I spent the better part of January in the UK, as a part of Epicenter Group's coaching work this year with 26 British pastors. From London to Wales to Scotland and down again to Cornwall and Norfolk on the southwestern and southeastern coasts, Beth Estock and I saw almost every kind of ministry setting. People have asked what we learned. Here are some observations:
(1) The cultural similarities between the USA and the UK are clear:
the biggest difference is that the British are about thirty years ahead
of us in terms of secularization. (I define secularization simply as
life lived without much regard for organized religion.) The relevance of
organized religion to Oregonians and to people in Down-east Maine is
about the same already as what you see in the UK. They are also about as
multi-ethnic as we are in the USA, but with a different ethnic mix of
people.
(2) This felt like a trip to our Future: I first
traveled to London with my dad nearly four decades ago. At that time, we
found churches in decline but still with a lot of pulse. Spurgeon's
Tabernacle (Baptist), for example, still gathered 200 people for Sunday
night service back then. Southwark Cathedral Vespers on Sunday gathered
a good crowd of neighborhood people and a youth choir. The British
church then was a lot like the American church now. Fast-forward, and
the churches are closing, one after another. Only about one percent of
young adults relate to any church. Methodist churches once grew large in
the UK, larger than the Church of England in many communities. Today
those big buildings are decrepit and being sold off. As they grew older
and smaller, the churches formed ever-larger circuits, so that today a
pastor might have seven congregations in order to provide one pastoral
salary. One or two of the seven might have 30 or more in worship, with
the rest in single digits. The average age in these churches is often
past 80! Not a misprint. Obviously this cannot go on much longer,
before it all collapses. Perhaps half the churches the UK will close this decade
- and there would be even more closings were there not endowment to pay
for clergy to run empty buildings in many places. UK 2020 is where most
of the historic American denominations will be in the year 2050 based
on current trends.
(3) Some current British faith leaders wish they could have taken a trip to the future back in 1980 and seen what was coming
in order to shock the status quo and to have taken action to create
more relevant ministry. They are glad that we Americans have a chance to
learn from their experience and to lead differently than they led.
(4) The church still works for a small fraction of people in the UK in two kinds of places:
first, in the places where there has been less demographic change, such
as their heartland (which they call the Midlands). Many churches have
closed in the Midlands, but it seemed to be one part of the country
where new churches have a decent chance to take root and thrive. The
other place is any neighborhood with first-generation immigrants from
countries where church was an important part of their lives. Many
London suburban churches are virtually all black, with cultural roots in
West Africa and the Caribbean. However, these latter churches are
rarely growing as their adult children secularize and the communities
around them change.
(5) In the past decade there has been notable renewal within evangelical circles
of the Anglican communion and other groups in the UK, but this renewal
has not nearly been able to keep pace with the people dying and leaving
the church. The Fresh Expressions movement started in England, as did
Alpha and other initiatives that are currently finding some traction in
the USA. But memo to American church leaders: Fresh Expressions and Alpha did not change the death spiral of the British church.
(6) Clear away all this bramble of institutional church, and you will see green shoots coming up virtually everywhere!
In fact, the green shoots tend to do better when the old church
breathes its last - so that the culture and anxieties of yesterday's
church no longer blocks the way of the new! In so many places, we saw
innovation happening, and new ways arising for gathering, serving,
worshiping and partnering in community. It became clear to us
that the massive energy steered toward helping the existing institution
survive into its late geriatric years has sabotaged new forms of
ministry for many years. We can hope that as the old thing collapses that the work of innovation and birthing new ministry may grow a bit easier.
(7) Laity run circles around clergy as nimble innovators.
As a rule, they are less bought into the dying ecclesial regime and a
bit more independent of clerical oversight and the endless meetings
required of clergy. This reminds me of what the Chinese church learned
after Chairman Mao shipped off all the pastors to prison camps in the
1960s. They learned that a church, freed from a clergy-centric
addiction, thrives!
I came away from the trip with a sense that some sort of Spiritual
Awakening is coming to the West, perhaps in my lifetime - and with a
deep sense that it will be very different than past awakenings. In
Spiral Dynamics terms, think forward to Turquoise, rather than looking
back to double down in Blue.
What a marvelous and interesting season to be in ministry!
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