church in the country

Date: 07 March 2012 23:59:17

Forty blogs of Lent

14

Size is not everything. There are towns and cities up and down Britain with one or more mega-churches. Churches with congregations in the hundreds. It is tempting to look at these and think, "To be a successful church we have to do what they do." Have a soft rock accompaniment to hymns and a constantly changing set of modern songs. Plus all the technology of sound and light systems and video projection. In contrast rural churches are tiny, they have congregations measured in tens. On top of this Anglican vicars in rural areas have many churches, a church in each village of an extended parish is not unusual. They often take at least 3 services on a Sunday preaching at each one. On top of that the style of worship is traditional. Worship by organ or piano rather than rock band is the norm. It looks like rural churches are not successful at all. Until you look at the communities. There is a higher proportion of the population attends church services in rural areas than there is in urban areas, even in cities with a mega church. So what should we do? Kick out the rock bands and bring back the organ to urban churches? Not really. It is the traditional urban style church that is not doing very well. Where people have a choice of church there is a tendency for them to go to the more showy mega church (though cathedrals, which are showy in a different way, are seeing an increase in congregation size too.) I think it is more to do with community. Rural communities know each other better than urban ones. In a small village you know the people in your street. In a city you may know only one ore two of them. In a city people make there contacts from a wider area, they make their friends from people with like minds, or from where they work in another town. I think that that is the problem in urban areas, it is harder to talk about what you believe in when the community is less tight knit. It is easier to talk about faith to people we know than a gospel campaign to those we don't. I'm not against modern style worship, it is a style I prefer to the traditional, and whatever the answer to church growth in large towns and cities I am sure that mega churches have their place.