What does your Church do, that you really wish they didn't?

[Sausagenbacon]

I'm obviously not going to do a flounce on the basis of this, but..
We used to have hymn numbers in the service sheet (there's no boards). But they've stopped doing that, in the aim of inclusion. Instead, the hymn numbers are announced during the service.
Which is ok, except when we stand to offer one another a sign of peace.
So the clergy say 'you may now offer each other a sign of peace, and the next hymn is xx'
Written down, it doesn't sound that bad, but it actually feels like an interruption in a lovely part of the service.

@ObieJoyful I am please you left because you don't agree but I am sure that church as a general concept of the family of Christianity is a worse place without you in it. Is there a different church near you where you could pray for and stand alongside inclusion of gay couples?

What the SDF fund is doing is identifying a certain strand of church and giving them lots and lots of money. On the ground it is clear that the resource churches do not share their resources with anyone else. There are some notable exceptions but they are usually not in the charismatic evangelical mode that gets most of the cash. Their growth is predominantly transfer growth as with all that money they can do children's work, families work and youth work really well and it pulls families and the under 45s from the surrounding doing churches. Once a resource church comes to town it hollows out neighbouring churches who didn't get the funds and staffing.

What you won't get from the resource churches is a funeral if you don't go to their church. They don't do hospital visits or go into the care homes because they are focused on the young.

Those in the HTB (Holy Trinity Brompton) model are mostly against same sex marriage but they won't tell you that. They also prefer their leaders male and married. The wives are usually joint leaders of the church but with no licence (lay or ordained.) The worship leaders are usually male as well. There are exceptions of course, but the number of ordained women leading resource churches in the charismatic evangelical mode is very small. Their worship is of course fantastic.

More people in the UK go to rural churches but you wouldn't know that from the support from the centre. The focus is on urban and young. There is a huge revolving door in these places as they are brilliant with new believers but struggle with the questions of deepening faith. Rather than point people to the small church down the road with great community engagement and a mature congregation, those with questions are left thinking they have lost their faith when, in reality they are just leaving a stage behind.

I really wish that resource churches would resource. That they would work with those of us who are over 45. That there was transparency about what they believe about same sex marriage and the ministry women. That a hope for 2025.

Their growth is predominantly transfer growth as with all that money they can do children's work, families work and youth work really well and it pulls families and the under 45s from the surrounding doing churches. Once a resource church comes to town it hollows out neighbouring churches who didn't get the funds and staffing.

I've agree this is an issue. It can be that one church is doing things well, and naturally pulling people in. There can also be an aspect that for things like youth, having numbers is better.
But sometimes it feels like a church is trying to dominate simply to prove they are better rather than providing a valuable resource.

Years back, we were in a large church when they announced they were funding a second children's worker from the next year. I queried why. The children's work was not by any means too much for one person, and yet one of the poorer local churches had a huge youth group, but no funds to pay a worker. I felt that the Christian model was to provide funds for their desperately needed youth worker, rather than indulge ourselves in another.
So I asked this in a "ask a question" after a service.

They didn't answer the question. They answered the question "can we afford a second children's worker" which wasn't what I asked at all. Tbf I don't think they could have answered my question without self-reflection which they wouldn't have liked.

I had similar feelings when the richest church in the area announced they "must" replace their "dangerously in dis-repair" chairs and "urgently needed replacing".
I said they weren't anywhere near needing to be replaced but some of the other local churches were in need. Apparently the best way to off-set this was to give the "dangerously in dis-repair" chairs when they'd got new ones.
Apparently my point that if they were so dangerous we had to replace them immediately, they surely giving them to another church was frankly irresponsible, was being unfair because they weren't that bad...

I agree with that as a business model. It just should not the Christian model.
Local churches should be supporting and complementing each other, not seeing each other as rivals.

@mostlydrinkstea thank you for articulating so well the conclusion I have fairly recently come to.
This is happening in our church- massive focus on young people and numbers, a second youth worker, severely lacking in pastoral care or support for older members of the congregation ( and there are plenty of us) and a huge reduction in the social activities and community for all. It's Alpha course or nothing at the moment.

I'm deeply saddened and walking what feels like my own course with Jesus.

Interesting - as someone who works part time as a mission apprentice in a resourcing church, this is not my experience at all. We do children's ministry in our church as we have a lot of children attending our services, but the work we do in the community is more based on older people - lunch clubs, craft groups, food pantry, drop in cafes. We also do a lot of work with refugees. We don't have much outreach to families and youth in terms of messy church, youth work and toddler groups as there just isn't the demand in our area. Other resource churches in our city do a lot of work with homeless people and people struggling with addictions.
We do visit care homes - we have a pastoral team who visit one care home in particular every week, I was singing carols there last week. We also visit members of the congregation who are in hospital and housebound. We hold regular afternoon teas for the older members of the church and the community.

Funerals - if we are approached by a family who want to have a funeral in our church we would never turn them away - why would we want to?

the number of ordained women leading resource churches in the charismatic evangelical mode is very small - this simply isn't true in our group of churches, we have two women curates, two women lay ministers and several women who lead and preach on a regular basis, myself included. As a mission apprentice I train with other MAs from other resource churches in the city and the number of women Vicars, curates and leaders in those churches that I am familiar with is high. We consider ourselves an evangelical church.

Our church is a wonderful melting pot of different ages and nationalities - as an evangelical church we are always looking at how we can spread the good news and welcome more people into church and once they are here, how can we make this a place where people feel part of a family and want to stay, people of all ages and backgrounds. We are not just focused on the young and trendy.

Their growth is predominantly transfer growth as with all that money they can do children's work, families work and youth work really well and it pulls families and the under 45s from the surrounding doing churches. Once a resource church comes to town it hollows out neighbouring churches who didn't get the funds and staffing. - this isn't something I recognise from the resourcing churches I am familiar with in our city. Looking at our church growth over the last two years, most of our growth has been from people new to church or people that have moved into the area, not people who have chosen to come to us from another local church. Funnily enough, we have a couple of families who attend regularly, whose first contact with us was through us holding their loved ones funeral in church.

As I understand it, resourcing churches are churches that are interested in church growth and that doesn't mean that they want to get their own church as big and rich as they possibly can at the expense of other churches - it means that once they get to a point where they can comfortably lose some of their income and congregation, they will start thinking about a church plant and sharing what they have gained. So a group from the church will take what they have learned from being part of a resource church and use that to plant a new one or revitalise one with a dwindling congregation. Over the last few years our church has planted into the city centre nightclub church I mentioned above and also into a church with a small elderly congregation that was about to be closed down by the diocese, which is now thriving.

How many leaders of resource churches in your area are women? The model nationally is of male CEOs with women in other posts. Your area @NannyR may be the exception of course. Out of curiosity I did a trawl through the Resource churches a few years ago go and the number of women in overall charge was very small.

If you are part of the CofE then the parish system means that your church should be doing funerals for anyone in the parish who asks for it. Also baptisms. Even babies if the parents request it. I spent an afternoon with one of the large HTB plants once. Most of the people from the pews I spoke to didn't realise that their church was part of the C of E. Most of them didn't know what a priest was which was a bit embarrassing as I was there in an official capacity and wearing a clerical collar.

When I worked in a big city it was made clear to the local funeral directors that the resource churches were not interested in doing funerals for anyone other than their own. I know this because the funeral directors told me. They stopped asking those churches and I ended up taking a fair few funerals as a result.

There are different models of ministry. Resource churches do what they do well. They are essentially congregational and not parish churches. A bit of cash to support us out in the countryside would be nice but there is a sense that we are not important. Which is a shame really.

I can only say that my experience of worshipping in and working for a resource church, and knowing what I do of other resources churches in the city and diocese, seems to be very different to your experience @mostlydrinkstea. I feel our churches are doing a good job and it's sad that all churches that are recieving the funding are not working to the same standard.

We are nothing to do with HTB and everyone at our church is definitely aware that we are a CofE church.

I've never heard of a vicar referred to as a CEO before, I'm not sure of exact numbers but whenever I go to a training session or meeting, women wearing dog collars are equal in number to men. The leader of the city centre nightclub church is a woman.

There would be no point in our church putting all it's resources into young people as our youngest member is 60.
Old people die and are never replaced.

@NannyR My point is about the senior leader not the staff. The vast majority are men. There is a lot written about the leadership dynamics that go alongside the size of churches. Big churches have a CEO leader model. The differences between the culture of large and small churches can be found here seniorpastorcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Tim-Keller-Size-Dynamics.pdf. And many other places.

It would be wonderful the gifts of small churches could be celebrated by the centre. But from the ground it feels as if it is not.

I'm back at work tomorrow. A rural vicar of multiple churches with no staff, no ordained or licenced lay support, no admin, no verger, no children's workers, youth workers, mission enablers or church wardens and only some wonderful dedicated congregations to share the love of Christ in our villages.

Bless you in your ministry.

We are not a huge church, approx 90 each Sunday and our churches certainly don't have a CEO leader model - just a vicar who (jokingly) says that it's his aim to have the whole church involved in running their church, so he can spend his week playing golf and just turn up for an hour on Sundays!!! But seriously, we have a core team who make the big decisions in the church - that consists of eight people - clergy and lay ministers, three men, five women.

I think rural vicars do an amazing job with so little support and trying to keep churches going across multiple sites in difficult circumstances. Thank you.

Hate shaking hands with folk beside me.

Me too. I usually pretend I'm looking something up in my bible and hope they'll realise I don't want to join in.

My vicar thinks men can become women and is actively campaigning politically within and outwith the CofE on this. I'm seeking a new church due to this but also she deleted me from the WhatsApp prayer group with no warning because I stopped attending services regularly

I wish mine didn't burn incense.

Surprised by this as well. Our church sermon is usually about 45mins and its never long enough is the general complaint. What's the point of going to church for a less than 30 mins sermon? the sermons must be dead boring if so.

That's probably because they put no resources in to attract the youths. In a round about way they have killed any interest from the younger generation.

Not wanting to shake hands seems to come up a lot on here as an unpopular thing. Why? Isn’t it rather unchristian to be so horrified by a handshake with a fellow member of your congregation? Or is this where the standoffishness of a certain strand of the UK population clashes with the whole ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ thing?

Different churches have different congregations and what they need/can cope with is different.

When I was a student we went to a big student church where the sermons were typically 45 minutes to an hour, often of very heavy theological stuff.

If you preached that at my parents church, where the majority of the congregation is over 70, with many who left school at 14-16 and struggle with basic reading, then you might as well do it in another language.

They have a 10-15 minute sermon which is much more around practical things they can do.
The minister also has to leave the church at the end of the service and go to the next village to do their service, so there's time restraints too.

If you look at what Jesus preached in the Bible, although we have a sense that he preached all day at times, what is remembered in the Bible are short sections. Yes, he may well have expanded on them afterwards, but what was recorded and passed down are things like the Prodigal Son - short stories with a meaning.
So he may well have preached all day, but the sense we get is that it wasn't one long homily about a single issue, it was stories and meanings, and another story and another meaning, and answering questions from the crowd. Not simply him standing there and talking.
He talked about what the people needed at that time.

For me I have no issues shaking hands.
But if we're talking about "the peace", I have no issues with what it was originally intended for - which is to make your "peace" with your fellow church people before communion, so you can take it with the right frame of heart.

However I don't think it's used like that now, and I just find it forced and a bit fake. I suspect the majority of people wouldn't even know that was the reason.

I've been in churches where everyone goes round and shakes hands saying "peace be with you", which is actually pretty meaningless. It's a bit like saying "bless you" after a sneeze.
I've been in churches where everyone goes and hugs their friends (and any randomer that gets in their way) I've been in churches where it's just used as a time for general conversation with the people near you.

It can be quite intimidating as a visitor (will you get everyone wanting to come over and quiz you on why you're there or will everyone ignore you and you sit there like a lemon while they talk to their friends?) and can be worse if you're vaguely known (I used to find it really difficult at dh's parents church because he was inevitable pulled into the music group, so I was on my own, and I was neither the interesting newcomer they had to be welcoming to, nor regarded as a friend they wanted to greet enthusiastically.)

The church that did it best, to me, was the one that gave a short time to "talk to the people around you". They didn't really do handshakes, but also people didn't move around so you didn't feel either you were left on your own while everyone talked to their friends or being mobbed as people made a beeline for the people they wanted to talk to.
The minister often broke it up by saying something along the lines of "continue your conversation over coffee, which all are welcome at...."

I think if I had my way, then I'd drop the peace as a thing, but maybe have a time of reflection instead.

Isn’t it rather unchristian to forget that we are all made differently by God, and that some people find interacting with others a real struggle? This may be down to being neurodiverse/anxieties etc.

So, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself, unless you have to touch their hand for a second because it’s uncomfortable’?

Touching someone, or being touched is never compulsory, and even Christians are allowed boundaries!

@MargaretThursday A longer service doesn't have to be one long homily about a single issue with no stories or anything meaningful, that is more of a reflection of what goes on at your church. A well written & rehearsed sermon will include all of that however short or long and appeal to all ages. If everyone is tired of the sermon after 30mins that says a lot about the kind of sermons being presented.

It's not about being tired of it, simply a case of how much people can take in in one go. Concentration, thoughts.

Think back to the last sermon you heard. What was your take out from it?
What do you remember? Could you make what you remember last twenty minutes if you were telling someone about it?

Ten minute of good sermon that people take something back and want to do something different, is better than an hour where people don't really take anything positive away.
And that isn't saying that no one takes anything away from a longer sermon, simply that a shorter one may be right for that congregation.

When I was a student, we had the main meeting and what were called "apologetic" talks, which were talks on single issues "Is Christianity a crutch for weak people?" for example. These were designed to take other people to that had questions about Christianity.
The main meeting had over 200 people, but the apologetic talks were typically less than a dozen attending.

In both my first and second year the CU president used to do an appeal from the front, asking people to come to the apologetics and bring friends.

The one in my first year did it in such a way, I felt like not coming to the main meeting either because I'd clearly failed. The five minutes while he talked about it made me just cringe and want to creep out in shame.
The one in my second year in just a couple of sentences made me want to run out of the door that minute and tell as many people as possible about these wonderful talks and get people along because they were so exciting.

Guess which one got me (and others) asking people (and sometimes succeeding) to come?

My point is that there isn't a right/wrong sermon length, so criticizing a shorter sermon is not correct. It may be correct that in your church a longer sermon is right. It is not necessarily right for the church up the road. It may not even be right for some of your congregation, but they may put up with it because of other things.

Different people need different things.
Me and dh have very different taste in sermons. From experience, if he's rejoicing in the main Spring Harvest speaker, then I probably will find one of the alternative speakers suits me better. Times I have really loved a speaker, and he's chosen to go to an alternative one.
Yes there have been ones we've both loved, and ones we've both not got on with, but on the whole we have different tastes. It doesn't mean that one is right, and one is wrong, or even the speakers neither of us have liked are bad. It means they don't suit us at that time.

I'm also reminded of a story a preacher I respect a lot told about when he was young.
He had a friend who was asking a lot of questions about Christianity but generally was very sceptical. He kept inviting him to different talks. Wonderful speakers, brilliant talks. And they'd get to the end, and he'd think, "he must be convinced by that" and turn to his friend who would say, "well, maybe, but..."
Then one time he invited him to a talk. It was dreadful. The speaker rambled, he couldn't even work out what point he was making, and it was he said the worst sermon he'd ever heard.
At the end the friend grabbed his arm and said with sparkling eyes, "now I understand what you mean. Please pray with me now. I want to give my live to Jesus."

The preacher told this story to say do not judge what God can use to convince people. He never found what it was that person had found in the talk that convinced him, but he said he knew that whatever it was came from God.

In the same way that different churches may do different worship, different ways of doing the intercessions, different ways of Bible studies etc. churches do different lengths of sermons. And they all can be right for the people attending that church at that time.

My point is that there isn't a right/wrong sermon length, so criticizing a shorter sermon is not correct. It may be correct that in your church a longer sermon is right. It is not necessarily right for the church up the road. It may not even be right for some of your congregation, but they may put up with it because of other things.

I did not criticise your sermon length so please don't make things up. I said i was surprised people were fed up after 30mins, infact it was you that described a longer service in a very critical way and i explained that if it's prepared properly it shouldn't be as wearing as you described, It is not the length of the sermon that matters but the content.