IN OUR detailed reports this week on the General Synod’s meeting in York, whatever readers may think of the Synod, it is at least evident that our Established Church’s interests are not narrow — and that the people who draw up the agenda put considerable effort into ensuring that the Synod’s business — despite the time-consuming duty of legislating for the Church and dealing with the consequences of its failings — should not imply that they are, either. The ethical debate sparked by an MP’s Bill intended to aid people suffering at the end of their lives; the perspectives of overseas speakers, including the Archbishop in Jerusalem; the address by a senior serviceman — these items dealt with matters of wide interest to thoughtful Christians.
But there are, of course, readers who will turn with relief to the presentations on church growth and Thy Kingdom Come (Synod). At last, they may say, the Synod is spreading “good news” about the Church’s main job of gathering in a harvest of souls from the English nation. But there are two sides, if not more, to any story. The successes reported from places that have received strategic grants, like the accounts of highly publicised prayer initiatives (never as important as the regular everyday prayer that is the Church’s pulse), must be set alongside the challenges and setbacks that many clergy and laity encounter despite years of prayer and even great ingenuity in using limited resources. Today, Lammas Day — an ancient observance still provided for in Common Worship — is a reminder of rural congregations often hard-pressed to maintain their worship and buildings, not on any convenient bus route from a university full of young people, but still trying to offer God what they can from what they have.
Numbers really are not everything, as the BBC documentary about the Jesus Army has proved once again. What matters is quality, not quantity; and stories in this week’s news, such as that of the Cwm Rhondda chapel in Wales and the response to the flagstone theft at St George’s, Tyldesley, are reminders of the good will in communities towards churches precisely when they do struggle. Parishes are often able to draw on this when ministry has taken care to be rooted and responsive. Aspects of modern life can be cited by Christians to support the notion that they are now strangers amid the alien corn. But the C of E has many centuries of post-Constantinian evangelisation and inculturation behind it. It is not a missionary agency pure and simple, but part of the Body of Christ, having its share, too, in the hem of his garment. All kinds of people will connect to it, often in a way that does not pass the test imposed by the narrowly, dogmatically, or fervently religious; but they will, and what is deemed to be the best should not be made the enemy of the good.
