M ost of us, if we're really honest, have a kind of love-hate relationship with change. If it's a matter of losing something that has become very familiar and well-loved, we don't like change. Yet at the same time we are always hungry for novelty, something new and interesting to stimulate us, and we become easily bored with the same old thing. This is the dilemma we face in so many parts of our lives, and it's one of the reasons why the Church gets criticism from both sides: on the one hand, it's blamed for being boring and old-fashioned, while on the other, for constantly trying to be trendy and changing the good old ways of doing things.
Western society itself has seen enormous change during the past few decades. In the UK there are many more households than there were 35 years ago, but they are smaller, on average 2.4 persons compared with 2.9 in 1971. Far more people in the 35 to 49 age group are in work, and many of these are working longer hours than they would like. We are much more mobile, even if the actual meaning of that is spending longer sitting in queues of traffic. Increased figures for divorce, cohabitation and marrying later in life have led to great changes in the family. The way we spend our leisure time has also changed, with many sporting activities taking place on Sundays, while the biggest change in leisure activity has been the number of hours we spend watching TV: for adults, the average is nearly three hours a day. The overall effect of all these changes is that we live in a more fragmented society than ever before.
People everywhere feel the need for something to hold their fragmented lives together. But even though the local church used to be one of the main centres for building and maintaining community, people nowadays are not looking to the traditional churches. They simply don't think in terms of 'the parish', the local community that the church was chiefly concerned with. Instead, they look to various other networks built around work colleagues, sport and leisure interests or other hobbies. Some of these new networks aren't even based on real face-to-face meetings, but on electronic communications via the Internet.
A number of recent reports have considered new ways in which we can be and do church, in order to meet the needs of this changed society and culture. Some of them sound quite odd to those of us who have grown accustomed to the ways that have been handed down to us. It's good to remind ourselves of two things. The first (and less important) is that even what we are doing now is hugely different from what we started with - we have already changed 'what was handed down to us' in enormous ways, only it happened so slowly that we don't notice all that much. But second (and much more important) Jesus never started a church. He sent people out to share the Good News of the Kingdom of God, with everyone they met. The church is only the way that Jesus' followers have found of organising what should be more like a motorway service station, than a retirement home. It's where we get the rest, nourishment, and resources we're going to need for the next expedition.
The church of today and tomorrow needs to be much more consciously mission-shaped. If it concentrates on church, it will lose sight of its true mission. But if it puts mission first, then whatever is needed by way of church will fall into place automatically. There will need to be a 'mixed economy' of parish churches and network churches, to meet the new opportunities of our time. Naturally I am committed to, and more at home with, the parish church model. I have always thought of it as being the heart of society. But we all need to remember what the heart is and does. It is a pump which sends oxygenated blood all round the body, without which the body dies. Christians need to keep coming back to church, like blood to the heart. But not so they can stay there. They come to be oxygenated again, filled with God's life and power, and then pumped out into the world so that they can do the real work of the Kingdom. Which is nothing less than sharing God's life with everyone they meet. That is what will give the world new life, and keep it alive.
Published in the Marston Times, August 2004