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Twenty-five years ago, Churches and Churchgoers (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977)was published. Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley subtitled their book, Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700. This book worked with statistics in detail recording the decline and growth in church membership and attendance. Secularisation was an important overriding force in decline.
The Church Growth Movement did not see decline
as an inevitable, but as a challenge to be reversed. In
1970, Donald McGavran published Understanding
Church Growth (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids). This was
fully revised in 1980. In 1981 Winchester Cathedral
celebrated its 900th Anniversary by Grow or Die (SPCK,
London) advising the Church of England to make use of
statistics and research for Church Growth.
Whereas secularisation is no longer usually considered as the real explanation for decline, Church Growth Thinking has not yet reversed the statistics of decline which seem inexorably downward. However, Bob Jackson’s book some twenty years later than Grow or Die has the backing of the Archbishop of York, David Hope and Canon Robert Warren, Springboard Missioner. Hope for the Church (CHP, London, 2002) is full of Church Growth Thinking and Church Statistics properly used in support of advice to parishes and dioceses.
Grace Davie’s three books, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Blackwell, Oxford, 1994), Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates (Oxford University, 2000) and Europe:The Exceptional Case: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World (Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 2002) make the case away from secularisation as an explanation for trends. Believing without Belonging is a slogan which well fits the facts of the 2001 Census which shows overall 71.7% of the population claiming to be Christians, while not actively belonging according to Church Statistics. Grace Davie also makes a strong case for noticing that developed countries do not necessarily become secularised. The United States of America is not following Europe!
Rowan Williams, as the Archbishop of Canterbury may well inspire us to share in a fresh Vision of Jesus present with us whoever we are and active wherever we go!
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