Church growth, young people and silver bullets

I’ve been in my job serving three small rural churches for thirteen years. The population of the benefice is c. 1700.

I can’t say revival has broken out. But by God’s grace the churches have held on while pubs shut down around us!

Sometimes my four kids have been the only young people in church.

Last week the official statistics showed that we had 11 under 16s at one service. And one of my children had been to the earlier service. And some regulars were missing.

Of course things are still small and fragile but we’re enormously grateful for this little uptick / mind-blowing % growth.

For quite some time, 25% or more of the Church of England's congregations have no children attending regularly. On average, nine children attended each service across all Church of England churches in 2016. And the pandemic hit some places hard. Habits of church going were hard for some people to recover.

 

The Church of England has published ‘Youth and Children Growth research - Research amongst churches which have grown in their under 16 Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) 2014-2019 - Sample: 217 churches - Jan-April 2022.  

The Vicar gets a lot of credit (p11)! They also conclude that that “growth resulted from an active, intentional choice, as opposed to something that happened organically.” (p12). 88% of growing churches agreed that there had been an active choice to engage more in youth, children and families work in your church in the past five years. Well, okay, I’m not sure how much that really tells us. Only 11% said the growth had been organic growth over time (not a result of specific changes). (2% of churches didn’t know). (p12) People are likely to credit their actions with working after the fact, aren’t they?

“When asking churches which, if any, changes have taken place within your church community, the top answer was Increased emphasis in working with families (57%), followed by changes in church style or programme (51%), new church leadership (50%), Increased investment by adults in the wider church (43%) and employing a youth, children’s or families worker (42%). However, when asked about how important that decision was in contributing to the growth of youth and children’s attendance in your church, 82% of those that had employed a youth, children’s or families worker rated it as’ very important’ in contributing to the growth of youth and children’s attendance in your church, with 74% rating increased emphasis in working with families as very important and 64% rating both changes in church style or programme and increased investment by adults in the wider church as very important.” (p13)

We’ve worked really quite hard at church growth over the years. We did a diocesan course about it. We’ve worked on our welcome. We’ve used a special prayer for church growth and we often pray about it at our monthly benefice prayer meeting. We’ve had two benefice missions with outside teams, and all sorts of one off and regular events, courses, holiday clubs, initiatives and Mission Action Plans – some of them multiple times. We did Messy Church in the village hall on a Sunday at 4pm for a few years. We have had a youth group. Toddlers is sometimes at capacity. I could go on, but I can’t say we have any single silver bullet.

Inevitably some people move away and some people become too ill to come to church any longer. So you need to grow to stand still. We have seen a few new people at all three churches in recent times. Mostly they have just turned up, been welcomed and kept coming back.

We can’t see people’s hearts or predict the long term, but it’s humbling to think that we can’t manage or control church growth. None of this is to say that we shouldn’t plan nor do X or Y, but the Spirit moves wherever He pleases, sometimes through our careful organisation, maybe sometimes despite it.

Perhaps that also means we should try not to be too anxious or obsessed about numbers. Of course we want as many people as possible to know, love and follow Jesus. But numbers aren’t everything. Our job is faithfulness. Naturally we long to be fruitful. But fruit is God’s job.

It turns out that the Bible is right. If there is to be any growth, God gives the growth. And we give thanks for all those who have planted and watered. Only eternity will reveal what fruit was good and lasting. Much growth might for the moment be unseen or elsewhere.  

In the meantime, I’m immensely grateful, in particular, for the flexibility and perseverance of our children’s Sunday Club leaders. Well done to them for preparing each week when there might be no customers and coping if the size of the group doubles!