Rural Church Futures (i) - Getting our Bearings

A Wobbly Three-Legged Stool


Leg 1 - The Recent Past Through Rose Coloured Spectacles 
In living memory,  each of the churches in our rural group of parishes had competent organists,  robed choirs and their own vicar!  At Harvest Festival there were displays of produce, flowers everywhere. The flowers and decorations at Easter and Christmas were lavish and the pews were full!

Leg 2 -  The Medieval Church (as imagined since the Victorian restorations*) 
The churches were full and thriving!

Leg 3  -  The Present Reality
150 years on from the Victorian restorations,  usual Sunday attendance is less than 2% of the population. The weight of Church structures - both buildings and organisational structures - are becoming too heavy for the remnant to carry.

Wobbly? I'd say! Time to take bearings! 

*  So widespread were the restoration/remodelling of church buildings in 19th C - placing organ and choir stalls in the chancel with the altar in a sanctuary beyond - that most churchgoers consider this inherited pattern to be the ancient norm. In reality things like organs, surpliced choirs and the stalls to seat them, stained glass windows, vestments and altar hangings and practices such as lay people making their communion every week, are a romantic reimagination of a medieval past.

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