Church Growth Part 1 - The case for the micro-local analysis

Church growth is a hot topic of conversation at the moment, especially as the Church Growth Research Programme has recently published data outlining the findings of its research into the growth of a variety of forms of church including Fresh Expressions and Cathedrals. I come to the conversation having also read several texts relating to the topic recently including David Goodhew's (ed) book on Church Growth in Britain 1980to the Present and having on an informal basis observed and heard testimony on what is going on locally in the town where I live, Milton Keynes.

This is going to be the first in a series of posts exploring the topic.

Informally listening, reading and observing, but using the skills gained whilst doing my own research into single parents in Evangelical churches, three points have become clear:

Firstly, that social characteristics play an important part in the discussion of church growth. That is one cannot argue, as post-modernists tend to, that we are now so diverse gender, class and ethnicity are not key variables we should be examining. The evidence from a range of studies shows whilst there is a diverse mix and the niche label applied by some critics may be too simplistic in many groups the nature of what is being done who is becoming involved does relate in some way to social characteristics.

Secondly, that there are still blind spots and areas of invisibility which the research is failing to address which are relevant in contemporary society.

Thirdly: the relationship between churches and congregations is not as simple as it used to be. A church which is growing may have within it congregations which are declining and a church which on first glance appears to be declining may actually be growing. The definitions of church which we have been using and traditional ways of understanding the measurement of church attendance may need to be changed.

I want to take these in reverse order in this series of posts. Today I start with the relationship between churches and congregations.

I recently sat in a meeting where people in our local Area were sharing what their churches were doing. One church which I am familiar with, as a local preacher, ended up with contributions being given by three different people.

It started with the church steward who spoke in a tone which seemed, to some extent, tinged with disappointment whilst trying to acknowledge the hope within what she was saying. The main Sunday morning congregation appears to be struggling but there are other congregations using the church. She talked of another denomination using the building on a Saturday for their services.

Next the minister of the church rose and spoke about the Ghanaian congregation which had begun in 2011 and is looking to be formally recognised in their own right from the beginning of June this year. This is a growing and vibrant congregation and in response to recognising the reality of life for this congregation they are looking to extend their hours to accommodate shift workers and to raise the money for a mini-bus to allow those for whom transport is an issue to be collected.

Finally another minister spoke about the way this church building is known to the homeless of the town as it is one of two venues used by a local housing charity.

This is clearly a growing and vibrant church, but within it the dominant congregation, (I use dominant here in terms of being the congregation which has or has had most responsibility for maintenance and so on), has seen decline over recent years. To see the full picture of growth one has to take a holistic approach and go beyond traditional denominational boundaries and beyond the understandings and experience of the congregation which has been seen as the dominant one. It also requires one to rethink classifications of white majority and black majority churches. This church has both a white majority congregation and a black majority congregation within it.

This need to look at the whole picture also applies when looking at churches which contain both inherited church congregations and examples of Fresh Expressions. Whilst page 69 of the church growth report on Fresh Expressions identifies that "only 43.7% use churches" to meet in it has to be recognised that within the Fresh Expressions looked at that represents over two-fifths and just under a half. This is a sizeable number of churches which have mixed congregations and who may be experiencing a mixture of trends according to the congregations and initiatives being referred to within the same building. Again, this was something the meeting where we were listening to each others stories reflected upon in the context of a minister who was talking about discussions going on in her building about "what is church?" and "who are the church?" It is also an area we need to recognise tensions may exist where those who are part of the dominant congregation expect there to be a cross over between the Fresh Expression and the inherited congregation and become disillusioned or slightly resentful when this does not occur.

Within this there is also the interesting issue of some Fresh Expressions and other congregations using buildings which are no longer in use for regular worship. One example, locally, is a historic church which has limitations on its use but which is being used for occasional one off events for the community by the Community (Pioneer) Minister. Another is a former Wesleyan Chapel which is now being refurbished by a new church which is not part of any traditional denomination. The descriptions of growth in Church Growth in Britain show this re-use of churches is one way in which some Black Majority Churches have been able to find space.  When we are looking at how many churches have closed we need to be more ready to ask how many buildings are no longer in use by any congregation?

This last point brings me on to a point which is made in different ways by both Church Growth Project reports regarding statistics and the way it is becoming difficult to gather adequate data in an increasingly complex situation.

So, I would argue as others have, that not only do we need to take a both a global and a local approach, "glocalized" approach to identifying church growth, as Goodhew argues, but we need to drill down even further and look at the micro-picture within churches themselves.