Church Matters - Shock Horror!
Church attendance may be in decline but people in the UK are still becoming Christians in their thousands. What can we learn from their stories? And can it really be true that the local church is a key factor? Mark Greene explores some new research.
Some things are so obvious that they need to be repeated. Some things are so obvious that they need to be repeated. A lot. Their very obviousness, their very familiarity diminishes the seriousness with which we take them. “Eat healthily and take exercise”, for example. Except that most adult Britons don’t eat particularly well and do no exercise at all. Well, when it comes to mission and evangelism the same applies, as new research conducted in Scotland makes abundantly clear.
How do people find faith today? That was the question that a consortium of Scottish denominations was seeking to ask, and they commissioned LICC’s Director of Research, Nick Spencer to help them. Altogether they interviewed 41 people who had made a public profession of faith at some point in the last two years, exploring what had led them to this decision and what difference it had made. Nick read and analysed the interview transcripts, looking for patterns, conclusions and implications, and relating the material to other published research, not least John Finney’s 1992 study Finding Faith Today.
The results have just been published in a booklet called Journeys and Stories and they make interesting reading. Because the research set out to explore people’s experiences beyond programmes like Alpha, it revealed that it was the impact of so-called ordinary Christians in ordinary, everyday contexts in ordinary church communities that made the biggest difference.
God at Work
Firstly, people’s stories reveal God at work in an extraordinary variety of ways: through everyday living, through extraordinary timing, through amazing intervention, through miraculous healing (as interviewees saw it), through a timely word, and through people whose witness was originally sharply rejected. Collectively, it’s reminiscent of the Book of Acts – Christians living out their lives, taking the opportunity to testify as opportunity arises and God ‘stretching out his hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus Christ” .... (Acts 4:30 )
Secondly, a key factor in people becoming Christians, as far as they were concerned, was ... wait for it, wait for it, steady ... relationship with a Christian! Well, there’s a surprise. So, for example, one man was helped on his journey towards Christ by his wife’s encounter with another Christian in her workplace:
“My wife... was not getting on particularly well with people at her work but this person just sort of stood out particularly and was different and my wife started to chat to her after work. ‘You seem different from the rest. Why is that?’ She said ‘Because I am a Christian and this is how we behave in the workplace’ and so on… It didn’t take much to persuade my wife that this is probably a nice lady and therefore she wanted to find out where she worshipped. From that she then started attending a church on the south side of Glasgow.”
The simple but distinctive example of a person living a different life. Or consider these other simple examples:
“When I… started off doing Counselling training… my tutor for that… [was] a huge influence on me… everything’s unconditional [with her]. She’s just so accepting. She kind of encapsulates grace for me…”
“I really saw something in Mark… he was an odd Christian in the sense that… he seemed to be a right happy chap.”
“He is my daughter’s godfather… my wife and I chose him over any member of the family, basically because I trust him, again I have the utmost respect of him.”
The Significance of the Insignificant
Now, what’s important here is not only that people who weren’t Christians saw something distinctive in other people’s lives but that those Christians were part of a usually complex process, a long and winding road towards faith. How often in our own missionary efforts do we want to see instant results, and are discouraged when we don’t? But the journey towards Jesus is usually a long one, and more like a leaf swirling in the wind than an arrow zinging straight to the target.
Instinctively, we know this to be true. Even if our own conversion happened on a particular day at a particular time and involved a definite moment of decision, we know that there was a whole host of things that happened along the way. Indeed, as we grow older in the faith, we tend to see more and more evidence of God’s providential hand in our journey towards faith. Indeed, the Christians who made a difference along the way may not have always been aware of the impact they were having, precisely because it was happening in the ordinary warp and woof of everyday life. Indeed, in some instances they might have felt that they their influence was more negative than positive.
In this way, Journeys and Stories affirms “the significance of the insignificant”. Apparently trivial actions, kindnesses, ways of living become beacons, signposts along the way, fragrances of beyond. So the report records:
“A respondent remembered noticing a Bible on a colleague’s table at home. Another was touched by the warmth with which people responded when her toddler ran screaming up the aisle after communion. A third was surprised when someone they had met the previous week greeted them again and remembered their name. A fourth noted how a minister played enthusiastically with her children for a good half hour when invited round to talk.”
One of the principles of communication is this: everything communicates. So it is that everything we do communicates – for better, for worse.
Church Matters
Little things matter and people matter and people gathered in church communities matter as well. Rather more in this study than in Finney’s work fourteen years ago. As Nick Spencer put it:
“One of the strongest messages to emerge from Journeys and Stories is that living as a community of believers – a community which is welcoming, accepting, inviting, joyful, enthusiastic, encouraging and loving – is the most powerful testimony possible. It constitutes a significant contribution to people’s journeys to God, a compelling invitation to a banquet, perhaps even a sign that the kingdom of God is here.”
Of course, it shouldn’t surprise us that church communities can make a difference. Jesus, after all, says this:
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, by your love for one another.”
In other words, the quality of relationships in the church has evangelistic power. The selflessness and generosity of our relationships is a sign to the world of the truth of the message. In fact, it is part of the message. So the key question is this: is the way we do things in our Christian communities likely to make the stranger feel welcome and accepted, encourage and loved? And if not, what can we do about it?
Still, given all the criticism that the church has received over the last century, we may be surprised that people who don’t know Jesus might actually find something to really like in our churches. Nevertheless, it’s clear that the power of a loving community in operation is not to be underestimated in an increasingly fragmented world where more people live on their own than at any time in human history, where most people have less time for friends, and most people actually have fewer friends, and where the number of contexts where people of different ages meet is being steadily eroded. In sum, in a lonely culture, a community of warm people is a rare and, therefore, all the more precious a phenomenon.
The question is this: if it’s true that the relationships we already have with people who don’t know Jesus are so important, what are we and our churches doing to ensure that we make the most of those contacts? The answer to that question might be “very little”.
We tend not to pray for people’s relationships at work, at school or at the school gate – regularly and corporately. On the other hand we do tend to pray for the people in an Alpha group. In other words, when there’s a programme the people of the church mobilises themselves behind each other but when it’s just everyday living in the world, we don’t. Nor indeed, are we focused on training and equipping each other for our everyday contexts in the world. That was what our Imagine research revealed in no uncertain terms. (See www.licc.org.uk/imagine) But we should be.
Of course, there is a splendid opportunity for the liberation of pastors and people in this research. As one Church of Scotland pastor put it:
“As a professional clergyman, I was really liberated by the idea that we are not the frontline person, we are really not the best-placed person to do that.”
He is liberated from carrying the burden of a mission he cannot possibly fulfil. And, in turn, the people are liberated into recognising how their everyday life can count for God. Nevertheless, with liberation comes a new set of duties. Pastors must work hard to equip their people. And the people must take seriously their opportunity in the everyday.
Anita Roddick once said:
“If you ever think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never been to bed with a mosquito.”
If everything we do communicates, how much more important it is to bring everything before God and ask him to touch it with his Spirit. If everything we do communicates, how much more important it is for us to invite others to join us in prayer for the people we meet in the everyday and for the way we do the everyday things we do.
But you’ve probably heard this before. And perhaps you’ve found a way to put it into practice. If you have, fantastic. But if you have, you are a rare bird and a member of a rare flock. Overall, I wonder whether the church in the UK is not so focused with programmes and initiatives and the gleam of the new that we have neglected the basic but vital principles that this research reminds us of: God works through relationships, through the people we meet, and through exposing the people we meet to other people who know and love the living God.
What would happen if we started taking that reality seriously?
What would happen if we started taking that reality seriously in our own lives?
What would happen if we started taking that reality seriously in someone else’s life?
I think, that under God, amazing things might happen. Utterly amazing wonders of grace and transformation.
Journeys and Stories by Nick Spencer and Peter Neilson costs £5 and is only available online or by phone from LICC 0207-3999-555
Journeys and Stories. Why do people become Christians today? A workshop and teaching day on contemporary mission. London 24th April at LICC and Manchester 11th May
This article was first published in Christianity magazine and is reproduced by kind permission.
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