Mark 10:35-45 Looking to the Future

It is now almost a year since I arrived at St Martin’s, and I felt that this marks a good time for us to look back at where we have come from as a church, and to look forward to what God has prepared for us in the future.

But before we look more specifically at St Martin’s, I want us to look at changes in church attendance nationally. Last year an in depth study was conducted of 17 thousand churches across England (these are churches from all denominations). The results of this survey have just been published, and shed some very interesting light on the state of the Christian church in England today.

The survey revealed that 6.3% of the English population attend church on an average Sunday, when this survey was last conducted in 1998 the figure of 7.5%.

But the survey did provide some good news

• Ethnically diverse churches are growing
• There are more growing churches (34% of churches recorded growth between 1998-2005, up from 21% during the 1990s), and fewer churches are declining (drop from 65% to 50%)
• Larger churches are growing (they also have younger congregations)

Church decline is not as bad as originally thought

So what is the bad news?

• The average age of those going to church has increased to 45 against a population average of 40
• 29% of churchgoers are 65 or over (12% are 75 or over) against almost half that percentage (16%) in the population generally
• People aged 65 to 74 make up one-sixth of all who attend church
• We are loosing 80,000 people a year from church

So that is the challenge facing the church nationally. But what about us here at St Martin’s? In many ways, we seem to mirror what is happening nationally, St Martin’s has been going through a long period of decline.

So what do these figures reveal?

First of all the bad news:

• Usual Sunday Attendance (USA) has halved since 1990
• USA for adults reached a high in 1997, since then we seen a decline of 39% in our adult USA
• Since 1990 we have lost 89% of our young people

So what about the good news?

• 2006 was the first year when adult USA has not gone down since 1990 (an indication that our numbers are stabilising)
• The Net (http://walsallstmartins.2day.ws/walsallstmartins/section/TheNet/)is beginning to attract a number of new families to church
• Decline is not inevitable, BUT growth will only come if we are open to what God wants (through prayer and openness to the Holy Spirit), and are prepared to face the cost of change.

Of course these statistics don’t show the whole picture. Although we have seen numerical decline, there has undoubtedly been growth in other areas of the church’s life over the past 16 years. For example, in the place of prayer life of the church, a greater openness to the Holy Spirit, more lay involvement in the life of the church, the creation of the ministry team, and seeing individuals grow in faith.

But bearing all of this in mind, we need to face up to the reality that although I believe we are beginning to see signs of pulling out of this decline, it is possible numbers will drop further, and that the challenges we face are great. Doing nothing at all is not an option, it is clear that we cannot be complacent.

So what does the future hold for St Martin’s? In one of the first sermons I preached at St Martin’s I shared with you some of my vision for the future of St Martin’s, and that was of a growing church, a church that is confident of what it believes, a church that is open to the Holy Spirit, and a church that is growing numerically, as we take the good news of Jesus Christ out into our community. This is still my vision. But if we are going to see growth what sort of church must we be like?

In our Gospel reading today we are reminded that as Christians we are called to serve others. Jesus says, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” And Jesus himself sets the example of what this means. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." As I reflected upon this passage, and what it means for us as a church, the word that came to mind was ‘Sacrifice’. If the church is to grow, we will need to be prepared to sacrifice our time, our effort, our money, and our talents, for the sake of God’s kingdom. Not only that, but we may be called to sacrifice those things that we hold dear, and to be prepared to face the cost of change, if we are to be faithfully to serving God in whatever way he calls us. This is not easy, but it is about following the example Jesus set for us. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”

So as a church we are called to serve and be obedient, just as Christ was. First and foremost we are to serve God, and secondly we are called to serve our neighbours, the community of which we are part. God wants to transform our whole society, our focus as a church isn’t primarily about filling the pews, as a Christian community, we are called to be agents of transformation and change for the whole area, seeing people being healed, relationships restored, God’s love proclaimed in word and deed, seeing God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. We could sum up this calling in the word ‘Love’, loving God and loving our neighbour, and all that this entails. We at St Martin’s are called to be a sign, symbol and foretaste of God’s Kingdom.

This raises a very important question, how well are we at doing this? If we do not take seriously our calling as Christians and as a church to serve God and his people, then there will be no future for the church. A church that lives to itself will die by itself. To give you an example of this I would like to tell you a story.

On a dangerous sea coast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-boat station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved and various others in the surrounding area wanted to become associated with the station and gave of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little life-saving station grew. Some of the members of the life-boat station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the life-boat station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in the club’s decorations, and there was a liturgical life-boat in the room where the club’s initiations were held. About this time a large ship sank off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house build outside the club where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside.At the next meeting, there was a split among the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon life-saving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-boat station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station. So they did.

They built a small hut, and brought a boat, and without any thought for themselves, would day and night go out on the treacherous sea searching for the lost. After a while, others wanted to become associated with the station, and give time and money to support its work. And then people thought that what was needed, to improve the work was a bigger life boat station…. And so history repeated itself. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but now adays, most of the people drown.

So what is the challenge facing St Martin’s? We need to make sure that we do not loose sight of why we exist. Jesus said that we are to be a servant of all. The job of a servant is follow the instructions of his master, no matter how costly that may be. That means devoting time, and trouble to those we are seeking to support.

What I feel is one of the main priorities for the coming year, is for us as a church to put prayer much higher on our agenda, so that we hear what God is calling us to do, and that TOGETHER, as a church we may faithfully serve God and our community. Yesterday I attended Diocesan Synod, and one of the items that we debated was the Diocesan Going for Growth Strategy, and in the report there was this quote. “The growth of the kingdom and the growth of the Church depends on the Holy Spirit, not on human striving. Prayer MUST be our first priority. Church members have a vital part to play, praying daily for the growth of the church and of the kingdom.”

As we look to the future, it is clear that we face many challenges as a church, but we must not be despondent, because with God all things are possible.

The Going for Growth report that was debated yesterday went on to say, “As we listen to God in prayer we can develop our vision for our own personal outreach and for the life of the church. We can also share what we think God might be saying, so that we can inspire each other.”