A Mini Sermon
The English Churches are wilting away- and have been through the course of my lifetime. One of the charities Ailz and I support is The Churches Conservation Trust- which owns and maintains over 350 historic church buildings for which the Church of England has no further use. It is continually adding to its collection- as building after building becomes unviable and is declared redudant.
There are, of course, evangelical congregations that buck the trend. I think of them as mushrooms- rising in the night and gone within 24 hours- which may be unfair- but they lack roots and depend on charismatic leadership and the whipping up of a kind of fervid religiosity human beings find it hard to sustain.
The Society of Friends- though it's not exactly a Church- and I prefer to think of it as something else- is wilting along with the rest. Yesterday, at our Area Meeting, we discussed the future of a local Meeting that is down to a membership of three and occupies a building it doesn't have the wherewithal to make economically viable. We also looked at the plight of a neighbouring area which may have to shut up all its Meetings because it cannot find enough trustees to maintain its charitable status. All the propoosed solutions to these related problems- barring a great spiritual revival- entail an acknowledgement of failure and a shrinking of resources.
The Society of Friends has been of some use in the world but it may well be that its usefulness is coming to an end. Less and less do people seek their salvation in institutions. If we lose our infrastructure there is nothing to stop us continuing to meet and function as Quakers in one another's homes or random public buildings or even the open air- as happened in the 17th century when the movement was getting underway. Call it a return to roots. On the othe hand a loss of resources is a loss of resources, if we close a building we're unlikely ever to replace it- and the fewer buildings we have the less easy we are for people to find- and the fewer we're likely to attract.
In the meantime, we carry on doing what we do because it seems worth doing even if it has no long term future. Longevity is no virtue. Change and decay in all around I see.
So off I go to Meeting. I'll be making sure the Meeting Room is set up for worship, that people are welcomed, that worship proceeds as it should, that needs are met, that community is fostered. I'm an Elder now (that status was confirmed at Area Meeting yesterday) and all these things I've been doing for love I'm now also doing as a duty. I shall carry on carrying on. There is no such thing as The Future- and no such thing as The Past either- but only the present moment- and we need to live in this eternal present as intensely as we can.....
There are, of course, evangelical congregations that buck the trend. I think of them as mushrooms- rising in the night and gone within 24 hours- which may be unfair- but they lack roots and depend on charismatic leadership and the whipping up of a kind of fervid religiosity human beings find it hard to sustain.
The Society of Friends- though it's not exactly a Church- and I prefer to think of it as something else- is wilting along with the rest. Yesterday, at our Area Meeting, we discussed the future of a local Meeting that is down to a membership of three and occupies a building it doesn't have the wherewithal to make economically viable. We also looked at the plight of a neighbouring area which may have to shut up all its Meetings because it cannot find enough trustees to maintain its charitable status. All the propoosed solutions to these related problems- barring a great spiritual revival- entail an acknowledgement of failure and a shrinking of resources.
The Society of Friends has been of some use in the world but it may well be that its usefulness is coming to an end. Less and less do people seek their salvation in institutions. If we lose our infrastructure there is nothing to stop us continuing to meet and function as Quakers in one another's homes or random public buildings or even the open air- as happened in the 17th century when the movement was getting underway. Call it a return to roots. On the othe hand a loss of resources is a loss of resources, if we close a building we're unlikely ever to replace it- and the fewer buildings we have the less easy we are for people to find- and the fewer we're likely to attract.
In the meantime, we carry on doing what we do because it seems worth doing even if it has no long term future. Longevity is no virtue. Change and decay in all around I see.
So off I go to Meeting. I'll be making sure the Meeting Room is set up for worship, that people are welcomed, that worship proceeds as it should, that needs are met, that community is fostered. I'm an Elder now (that status was confirmed at Area Meeting yesterday) and all these things I've been doing for love I'm now also doing as a duty. I shall carry on carrying on. There is no such thing as The Future- and no such thing as The Past either- but only the present moment- and we need to live in this eternal present as intensely as we can.....