Going to a declining church

[halfnhalf]

I live in a small village, and have gone fairly regularly to the local C of E church. We started going as a way of meeting people, but have never felt part of the church there and we have become embedded through being on rotas and doing readings, also singing in the choir.
My problem is that, although I am a Christian, I just feel as though I'm going through the motions there.

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people are going to the church, and, small as our contribution is, I feel we would be leaving them in the lurch if we left. Also, they really need a second church warden - part of me feels I should roll up my sleeves and volunteer. What puts me off is, apart from the fact that I don't want to do it, is the feeling that it's a lost cause. Can a 'failing' church be turned round?

Sorry if this is rambling, but I would like to know if others have ever felt like this, and what they've done about it.

Yes, it can be turned around.

You may benefit from a group such as CPAS coming in to help.

Hi halfnhalf,

Yes churches can be turned around and regularly are. However, you'd need a lot of energy and determination as a church as well as an individual (especially churchwarden!) to get there.

Why are less people coming to church? Did other people also feel they don't belong? Is it that you aren't family friendly, too high/too low, people can't follow the service, dull music/too lively music? There are so many things that can change and in such small ways but make a big difference.

My church are currently advertising for a new vicar and we've said we'd like to get more young adults in-to me that means families and no-one even considered that cleaning the creche and taking out the broken books/toys might help... I've been quietly cleaning, binning and replacing (including the shocking move to get rid of the crayons which mark everything and replace them with washable pens...) and when we had a baptism a few weeks ago, parents who didn't normally come commented on how nice and friendly it is, plus how useful/nice the creche is. It's not a big thing and won't make people come, but if they tell someone else how nice it was, you never know.

Another thing we're doing is a Christmas Fair to show we're 'still there'. Is it worth doing a village fair?

For what it's worth, I think belonging comes from ownership. But whatever you do, don't offer to do something unless you really want to or you'll never escape. I now go to a few weekday Mass's at my church just so I get some religion!!

Hope that helps and good luck making your decision.

I was in your position (except in a catholic church) about two years ago. I'ld been going to the church for a few years, was on various rotas, children as altar servers, but it felt a bit depressing - everything was falling apart, several families had left and we had a succession of prominant parishioners dying.

I prayed about it - and the answer seemed to be that if I wanted things to change I had to make them change. I couldn't do everything myself but my role seemed to be to get communication going. I started tea and coffee after mass, revitalised the newsletter and took over the web page and e-mail group. Once people started talking I often heard 'wouldn't it be good if we could...' , or 'wasn't it nice when we used to...', so I bounced groups of people into having meetings with our pp and getting these things started again - I'm supporting everyone else as much as I can but to build the community we need everyone to contribute.

It's taken a couple of years but things are turning round and I've found friends in the parish who I didn't know before who also want to turn things around. We've restarted our annual fair, coffee mornings, day trips and people are working on organising a parish pilgrimage. Recently a few new families have moved into the area, visited our church, and then come back again the next week (wasn't happening before - we only saw new people once then they disappeared.

So it can be done - we pray a lot - but it has been amazing how once we start things off the right person to take over appears.

I should add that initially a lot of people told me all the things were impossible in our parish and couldn't be done. You may need to be pretty determined. Also in our parish I think our priest felt a little threatened by it to start with, and we had a slightly shakey relationship for a while, but I just kept focused, found allies, and remembered to apologise and patch things up when we fell out!

Wow itsalongstory that's inspiring! we also have a v small church in village which I wanted to support, but it wasn't meeting my/our spiritual needs. we now commute some distance to a different church.