I HAVE spent quite a lot of time listening to the small and quirky stories of what happens in smaller churches, the ways in which there is such life and creativity, imagination, and vision that far too often go unseen, unmarked, and uncelebrated. It prompts the question whether growth is really the desire, or whether “big and rich” has infiltrated our dreams for the Church.
I heard from a priest who has been in their context for just under a decade. Theirs is a church community that has been quietly and stoically working for the well-being of their church and wider community. They looked at and saw their local community, and focused on what the Lord was asking of them: to serve and bless the place in which they live. Just as Jeremiah instructs the exiles, they chose to seek the welfare of their “city”, knowing that it was in its welfare that their own was to be found (Jeremiah 29.7).
They set up a toddler group for the families in the area, many of whom have children with extra needs. They sought funding for a well-being community café to offer nutritious and low-cost meals. The people who come to these services, which are a blessing, are wide and varied, from different socio-economic backgrounds, faiths, and experiences. The majority will not attend church on Sunday morning, but some have.
This church community has experienced more than 300-per-cent growth in the time that the priest has been there. It is still a smaller church. The congregation are living well, seeking to live and flourish in the dying structures in which they find themselves, structures that do not see them. No one is asking for their “growth strategy”. Why is this? Is it because, in all likelihood, they are in a context where they will always be smaller, even as they grow, live, and flourish? Does it reveal our institutional obsession with “big and rich”?
ONE of the stories that made me weep was of a young woman who showed up at the monthly community meals that the priest offers at home. A handful of people come to this meal, not the same handful every month. A sign is put out on the pavement, and whoever comes comes. One evening, a young woman from a different background of faith arrived on the doorstep.
As she ate her meal, she weepily said that she had been in that area for three years and did not have any friends, and that this meal was a place of friendship. There was something divine in that encounter. And yet this woman is unlikely to become a worshipper on Sunday mornings any time soon. As the priest said, “Where do I count her in the statistics?” To which I replied, “She doesn’t count.” She doesn’t count. What an indictment of our current system, when that story, that person, that divine encounter, does not count!
There is a real risk in living well as a smaller church. That is the risk of doing something that will inevitably cost money and does not make money. In the story above, the priest has to be constantly searching for grants to fund the worker who makes the meals in their community café. Even when the initiative will make money, there is risk.
IN MY own parish we have taken the opportunity of leasing our space to a nursery. Although the nursery is an external body that is leasing the rooms, and therefore helps with the financial insecurity that we live with by providing income, it is also an organisation that is consistent with our vision and values for our particular context.
It is serving the babies and children in our area, and seeks to make their lives better. There is much potential for isolation for parents with young children. The nursery connects them with a wider community and helps them to work and bear the weight of the cost-of-living crisis. It is true that having the nursery does make money and significantly helps us in “paying our way” within the institution of the Church.
To set up this initiative, however, the outlay of more than £4000 was almost prohibitive. More than £2000 of this cost was towards legal fees incurred because it is a Church of England building and requires specific paperwork to allow this to even begin; more than £1000 of this cost was because the Church of England paperwork required an official valuation of the property before it was leased; and the rest was works that were needed before the nursery started. It feels like double jeopardy: we are financially insecure because we don’t have these initiatives, and we cannot start these initiatives because we are financially insecure.
As a smaller church, we decided that the financial risk was worth it, and that we had enough cashflow and grants from the Church of England which covered £1700 of the cost; and so we were able to take the risk. The process of setting this up was vulnerable to things’ falling apart after this money was spent. Initially, for example, what if the valuation suggested a rental cost that the nursery was unable to afford? Then the processes of getting the lease drawn up and the paperwork done were so alien to the nursery that I was not sure that this was going to happen: it could easily have been more than £4000 spent for no return.
Most of the time, smaller churches are aware that there is a financial question that lingers over their existence. We are grateful for the resources that we already receive from the wider Church. We know that we need to think creatively to be able to take part in the mission to which God is calling us. But it is hard when the anxiety of the institution constantly schools us in being miserly. We are taught to save our life, by holding on to the small amount of money that we have. Ironically, we will lose it if we are not brave. Generosity breeds generosity, but it is a risk, and, for smaller churches, we are not encouraged to take it.
This is an edited extract from Bruised Reeds and Mustard Seeds: The gift of the small church by Jody Stowell, published by Canterbury Press at £12.99 (Church Times Bookshop £11.69); 978-1-78622-677-8.