Skip to main content

Back to Church Sunday

Apparently today is Back to Church Sunday. Hmm. Not the most amazing evangelical idea.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's a good idea to contact people who are on the periphery of the church and give them a personal invitation to pop back in sometime. It's certainly something worth doing at the start of a new ministry. It's something I'm planning on doing very soon.

But I don't really see the need for a national campaign. It doesn't seem the best use of resourses, and the best way to empower local congregations for evangelism.

For one thing it doesn't really address the legitimate reasons why some people might have left the church in the first place. Spirited Exchanges is one place to engage with those issues.

Plus it's not very ambitious. It's only aiming at the 'churched' who have drifted away rather than a genuine missionary engagement with the unchurched western culture.

Plus it's a very "come to us" strategy, rather than a "go to them" strategy. How about getting the church back into the world, rather than people back into the church? How about local congregations finding ways to be in genuine dialogue with the world outside? That's the key.

Comments

uni-talian said…
People aren't going back to the CofE is because they don't "get" it. The only thing that is keeping their rolls up is the part-privatisation of the education system.

Shame there aren't any Unitarian schools!
Here's Ekkelsia's take on Back to Church Sunday http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/7836
Anonymous said…
It's a fair bit after "Back to Church Sunday" when I write this (6 Jan 2009) but I find the name of the day and some of the ways it's been publicised a bit discomforting. It's as if the people in the campaign's target group were somehow wrong for leaving the church: they're at fault, and now they're given a one day amnesty to be welcomed back, because the Church was right all along.

It reminds me of a Church I spent several years in, which spoke frequently of the "worth of souls" yet allowed very little room for local members to shape the character or direction of the organisation. Because of this experience, I find the basis of "Back to Church Sunday" quite misguided.

Incidentally, I hear of no one referring to "Back to Church Sunday" beyond September.

Popular posts from this blog

Radical?

When I started this blog nearly 4 years and nearly 300 posts ago one of the labels I used for it/me was "radical." Perhaps I used it a little unreflectively. Recently I've been pondering what radical means. A couple of things have made me think of this. Firstly this blog series from my friend Jeremy, which explores a distinction between "radical progressives" and "rational progressives." There is also this definition of radical, liberal and conservative from Terry Eagleton quoted at Young Anabaptist Radicals : “Radicals are those who believe that things are extremely bad with us, but they could feasibly be much improved. Conservatives believe that things are pretty bad, but that’s just the way the human animal is. And liberals believe that there’s a little bit of good and bad in all of us.” What interests me is finding a way to express the tension I feel sometimes between myself and the wider Unitarian movement. One way to express this is to say I tend

What does it mean to be non-creedal?

Steve Caldwell says "The problem here isn't humanism vs. theism for theist Unitarian Universalists -- it's the non-creedal nature of Unitarian Universalism" This is a good point. We need to think much more deeply about what it means to be a non-creedal religion. The first thing I want to say is that there is more than one possible understanding of non-creedalism. The Disciples of Christ are a non-creedal church, they say here : " Freedom of belief. Disciples are called together around one essential of faith: belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Persons are free to follow their consciences guided by the Bible, the Holy Spirit study and prayer, and are expected to extend that freedom to others." Quakers are also non-creedal and say here : Quakers have no set creed or dogma - that means we do not have any declared statements which you have to believe to be a Quaker. There are, however, some commonly held views which unite us. One accepted view is that th

What is Radical Christianity?

Radical Christianity is about encountering the God of love . It is first and foremost rooted in the discovery of a universal and unconditional source of love at the heart of reality and within each person. God is the name we give to this source of love. It is possible to have a direct and real personal encounter with this God through spiritual practice. We encounter God, and are nourished by God, through the regular practice of prayer, or contemplation.  Radical Christianity is about following a man called Jesus . It is rooted in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish prophet living under occupation of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. It understands that's Jesus' message was the message of liberation. His message was that when we truly encounter God, and let God's love flow through us, we begin to be liberated from the powers of empire and violence and encounter the  "realm of God" - an alternative spiritual and social reality rooted in love rather th