Reignite

This is sort of obvious when you say it out loud: Churches are not immortal. Churches (I mean local congregations) do not live forever. Why would they? Nothing lasts forever. And yet we often act and talk like churches should be immortal, and that if they die it is an unqualified disaster. Of course a church, like a person, dying prematurely is a tragedy. But a church, like a person, dying after a good long life may just be a fact of life. Sad, most certainly, but also in the natural order of things. And we can respond to this death with sorrow but also with gratitude. But how often do we deny this reality? How often do we assume that a church can live forever or that it should? How often do we think of church that is something somehow ancient and eternal? How often do we think our priority should be ensuring that churches live forever? Sometimes churches can be saved. Sometimes not. They just die. It's not actually death that should worry us. It's reproduction. I...

When we think about the state of the Unitarian community in Britain, as I have been doing in recent posts here, our great temptation is to come up with a list of all the things "they" should be doing. What do we mean by "they"? We tend to mean the General Assembly structures, the Executive Committee and the small number of paid staff at Essex Hall. I'm sure I have done this before now. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. It is completely unrealistic to expect that "they" can do something about the health, vitality and growth of our movement. I've realised this now. That's the truth of the matter: they can't. Let's be realistic about what the Unitarian General Assembly structures can do. They can: Coordinate the training and qualification of ministers. Provide a few other resources, and pieces of training, like hymn books, good governance, children's work training etc. Provide some publicity by mainta...

I'm reflecting on the declining (perhaps accelerating decline) of Unitarian congregations in Britain. The numbers are not good . Just over 3000 Unitarians and a drop last year of 200. You don't have to be too skilled at maths to work out that a continuing decline at that rate would give us just 15 years to total extinction. Of course statistics don't work quite that neatly. But when I look around at the age profile of many of us, it really doesn't seem impossible to be looking at death in less than 20 years. I've always said things will get worse before they get better. It maybe that this "getting worse" is really starting to bite in 2015. This may be the the beginning of the end. Unitarians may find this quite depressing. In many ways it is. It may be particularly depressing when we think of all the good work that Unitarians do on many projects. It may be disheartening, because in many ways I think Unitarianism is doing quite well. In many ways th...

Following on from my last post I am having a closer look at what the Unitarian membership numbers reveal about the state of the denomination. Comparing numbers to last year it looks like most congregations are either stable or slowly declining. The biggest decline is London Hampstead that has gone from reporting 134 members to 79 members. The Annual Report suggests this is the result of a tidying-up exercise on behalf of that congregation, which is fair enough and needs to be done. But this does rather suggest maybe a change in numbers over many more years which is now only being reported this year. This change means the combined congregations of Newington Green and Islington are now the biggest congregation with a combined membership of 87. However this is down from 92 last year, after seeing a period of extended growth. I haven't analysed every single congregation, but those that stick out for me reporting a decline are Cambridge, Croydon, Dean Row, and Eccles. But als...