Jesus' People. Steven Croft

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      Finding the compass

      Jesus said to him: ‘I am the way.’ (John 14.6)

      Navigation is difficult. Every time I attempt to drive through Reading or Watford I get lost. One night I tried to find my way out of London. I drove for an hour and ended up more or less exactly where I set off. One evening in Wales I took a wrong turning, went 40 miles out of my way and ended up being very late for a conference of Welsh archdeacons (something you do only once in your life).

      It was at that point that I invested in a Sat Nav system. We have had our moments, my Sat Nav and I. It has a strong preference for short cuts down exceptionally narrow country lanes (especially in the dark). But on the whole I always know exactly where I am and most of the time it takes me to my destination.

      The Church, too, urgently needs its aids to navigation in the present climate. Where will we look for that perspective and direction?

      Everyone inside and outside the Church in Britain agrees that we face real questions. The relationship between Church and society has changed rapidly over the last hundred years or so. That change has been accelerating in the last 25 years and shows no sign of slowing down. Some of the symptoms of that changing relationship are there to see in the way our society chooses to live its life. Sundays are no longer protected days for rest and worship. The Christian voice is no longer the dominant one in the framing of our laws. Most people are far more aware than they were of other world faiths. Church attendance over most of the last century was in significant decline.

      There is more recent evidence since the year 2000 that the picture is changing: the decline is slowing down overall. New patterns of church attendance are emerging, with more people attending on different days and fresh expressions of church emerging alongside traditional worship. It’s possible to discover many different places and traditions where there is real growth again. Large numbers of people still claim some kind of allegiance to Christian faith in census returns and opinion polls, but many local churches struggle to keep going with small and ageing congregations and fewer ministers to go round.

      A goldfish finds it very difficult to see the water in which it swims. In the same way, it is extremely difficult to understand a changing situation in which we are caught up and to read it well, with a good sense of perspective. As I have travelled the country over the last five years listening to how people read this changing situation, I have found two very different accounts being presented to me again and again of where we are and how we arrived. One focuses on failure and the other on change. I have come to the conclusion that the first is deeply flawed and the second much more hopeful.

      Have we failed?

      The first account says that all of this change is happening because the Christian Church in Britain has failed and is failing. We must bear the responsibility for shrinking congregations and declining influence in society.

      This is the story that is told back to the Church by the media again and again. The Church is in massive decline and it is all our fault. It is also a story that the Church tells back to itself again and again with disastrous consequences. The failure story saps strength and morale from God’s people. It does so in one of two ways, depending on where we lay the blame.

      Blaming others

      The first way is when people lay the blame on some other group within the life of the Church. It is all the fault of the senior church leaders, says one group. It is all the fault of the liberals or the catholics or the evangelicals says another. If only everyone was ‘like us’, then this decline would never have happened. It is because we have been too tolerant and lax, say others. It is because we have not been tolerant and loving enough, say a different group. One party argues that the decline is because our worship is not modern and accessible. Another group argue that the same decline is because our worship is too contemporary and accessible and has lost all sense of mystery.

      What is the end-product of all this blame? It is, of course, to increase bitter division in the Christian community. At the very moment when the Church most needs to be united, we blame one another for the mess we are in and become further divided. Picture an army on a field of battle surrounded by an enemy who has no need to attack at all. Different sections of the army have turned their fire on one another. Hardly anyone is even aware that they are in the midst of a wider conflict at all, which profoundly affects the future of our society. The main object seems to be to point the finger and blame everyone else within the Church as effectively as possible. As we do that, it is no surprise really that the Church becomes a deeply unattractive community to those outside.

      Blaming ourselves

      The second route we take is, in its way, even more corrosive. If we follow this route we lay the blame for the ‘failure’ not on other people but on ourselves. The decline is because we ourselves are at fault in some way. We have not loved enough, preached well enough, prayed long enough, organized effectively enough, worked hard enough to have prevailed and seen off the minor difficulties the Church faced in the twentieth century. If we had been as faithful as our ancestors, Britain would still be a deeply Christian country and our churches would all be full on Sundays.

      Here the focus is entirely on our own efforts. How foolish we are. When the disciples are caught in the storm on Lake Galilee no one argues that their failure caused the wind or the rain. They do not waste time and energy blaming one another for poor weather forecasting. To have done this would have sapped strength and energy when they needed it most. They do what they can from their own resources to fight the storm, and when it proves too much they turn to exactly the person we need to turn to in our present tempests: the one who is sleeping in the boat.

      When we blame ourselves, the acid of despair takes hold in the heart of the Church. At the very moment when the Church most needs the strength of Christian hope and assurance of God’s grace and love, we find in our hearts nothing but despair. Our eyes turn away from God and the world and turn inwards. Despair and cynicism sap strength for new life and growth and the possibility of new things.

      One of the most powerful images in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is the picture of Theoden, King of Rohan, when we first meet him. His strength has been sapped by the lies of his servant, Wormtongue, who is an agent of the evil wizard Saruman. Wormtongue’s half-truths have fed the despair in the heart of the once mighty king and convinced him he can no longer lift his sword in battle and that he is powerless against the forces around him. All he can do is retrench and retreat. There are those who offer similar counsels to God’s people today.

      Is the failure narrative true or false?

      The failure