The parish system: game over? – Opinionated Vicar

From Anna Norman Walkers presentation to the recent symposium on the future of the parish system:

"In the Diocese of Exeter we have 607 churches, many of which are listed. Over 200 of them attract less than 20 to Sunday services, and 124 attract less than 10. The average age of a committed member is 65..... It is time, I believe, to allow some aspects of parochial life to die and trust God for resurrection rather than resuscitation.

Opinionated Vicar blog

16 thoughts on “The parish system: game over? – Opinionated Vicar”

  1. A Lutheran pastor in rural Virginia was perplexed by the scorn of his Baptist and Presbyterian colleagues for what they called the “mere externals” of religion. They, in turn, were perplexed by his perplexity about what they took to be obvious. He cited the scriptures; so did they. Subtle disputation showed this mutual incomprehension to be, at bottom, a difference in their traditions’ understandings of saving faith.

    For the Reformed (at least those following Calvin), one does not have the faith that saves unless one knows that one will persevere. Nothing outside the self can support this certainty about perseverance, which is knowledge of the self itself, so externals are indeed unhelpful to saving faith. In fact, they do nothing (at least nothing good) unless one already has this certainty. As many anguished Puritans were to discover, the consequence is that one can unfeignedly believe everything that God has revealed and still lack saving faith.

    For Lutherans (at least those following Luther closely), one has the faith that saves when one trusts God’s promise to save. Full stop. However, only what is outside the self can support this trust, which is knowledge of the presented promise, so externals are essential to saving faith as the object of that knowledge. As the sometimes anguished Luther himself pointed out, saving faith itself does not deliver one from the fear that one will not persevere. But in such bouts with ‘anfechtung,’ the “externals” bear witness to the promise of God who does not lie. “Baptismus sum!,” he would yell, throwing an inkpot at the devil.

    The reader will decide which view is right. But whatever view one takes of the nature of saving faith, one’s view of small congregations that struggle in quiet places will be affected.

    http://afkimel.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/clinging-to-externals-weak-faith-and-the-power-of-the-sacraments/

  2. “People do seek a sense of permanence and continuity, but this is to be distinguished from a connection with Christ…” — David

    “But all these communities know that at their heart they have a little medieval church where the rumour of God is kept alive, and where they gather on high days and holiday, and significant life moments to discover afresh that they are loved by God. Without it they would be so much the poorer in terms of their identity as people, because they would not, for the most part find that connection with Christ elsewhere, and in truth they might well not even look.” — Simon

    Many years ago, I interviewed an Anglican Benedictine who had left a snowy monastery near the Great Lakes for a tiny congregation on the rural coast of Maryland. After years of offices according to the use of Sarum, he had felt a call to preach in the world. When he told me that most of his ministry there was with farmers and fisherman well beyond his dozen ‘cradle Episcopalians.’ I was intrigued.

    How did he reach out to them? “I didn’t. They just walk in here and start talking. People around here are pretty sure that, just because this is the oldest church in the county, it is their church.” How old? “Well the building was a chapel of ease in the seventeenth century, but I think it’s the bones in the churchyard that call to them.” The bones? “The names on the headstones are the names in the newspaper. Almost everyone who lives here has an ancestor out there.”

    If they think that this is their church, what does that mean to them? “They have no clear idea what that means– most have never been to church. Not baptised, and certainly not confirmed. They just get into some mess in life that they think Jesus would do something about, and they look for Him.” Why do they look here? “Apart from the bones and the building, I don’t know. There are other churches out here. All clergy meet some ‘characters’– it’s our professional privilege– but I am clearly the most privileged in that way, though I have the smallest congregation by far.”

    For example? “A man knocked on the door one night and said he figured that, if Jesus lived anywhere in the county, He would live here. It was the first thing out of his mouth.” He sounds like a character from a Flannery O’Connor short story. “He was following an intuition in his search for God. People doing that often say things that sound odd but are in some sense true. After all, Jesus does live here.”

    What did he want? “He wanted forgiveness for being a terrible father. He had always had a vicious temper, and his family had run from it. After a long search, he could not find them. He was sure that they would never forgive him. As a last resort, he thought might.” Did he know anything else about Jesus? “No.”

    He paused. “But he was like Zacchaeus. How much did Zacchaeus know about Jesus? Obviously, he had never read the New Testament. Yet he climbed that tree because as though his life depended on it. Because it did. We recite the psalms day after day, to become more like him. They clean us out. They free hearts that are tangled in their own pretenses to be simple again before God… Monks really work at this, but you can find this simplicity in almost any sort of life. I have found it often here with people who work with their hands and struggle against the weather. They are not more ‘spiritual’ than other people, but they seem to have fewer illusions of control and fewer distractions from their hearts.”

  3. (Corrected)

    Here beginneth a cautionary tale.

    The parish system in the item seems to be the one that I see out the window here in greater Boston: wealthier parishes subsidise poorer ones. But in this quite liberal diocese of Massachusetts, the wealth comes not from successful Evangelical evangelism but from mature endowments, rich parishioners, and the regional ‘catchment’ enabled by light rail and fast roads. And the poorer parishes here have not only never had those advantages, but are filling today with new constituents from abroad– Brazil, El Salvador, Iraq, etc– who barely speak English, so that the parishioners would have to become trained missionaries to say much at all to them.

    Just around the corner from this laptop, there is a church whose vestry (= PCC) comprises nearly all the able adults who attend it. This dozen people can scarcely maintain the building in which they worship, yet they have found a niche hosting tiny Anglican congregations from Haiti and the Sudan. These newcomers worship in Creole and Dinka, and barely speak any English, so they have not attempted much evangelism to the general population. Indeed, they themselves are being subsidised by the diocese and are too poor to give anything to maintain the building or support the clergy. (The Sudanese do contribute in another way: they are the best liturgical dancers in the diocese, and its worship would not be the same without them.) The vestry’s commitment to preserving the building for the elderly, a few young families, and those fleeing dire poverty and persecution seems reasonable.

    Nevertheless, I have watched a bishop scold them during a confirmation reception for their lack of evangelising zeal. Perhaps she had Acts 2 in mind? To remedy this defect, she sent them an American vicar who was fluent in Spanish. That might have been more successful if the neighbourhood’s new language were not Brazilian Portuguese. Undaunted, she then sent these descendents of English shipwrights an expert in African-American gospel music to help them reach out to the modest black population. A few congregants liked the catchy rhythms, but their black neighbours are from West Africa, not the United States, and attend a mass in Yoruba at the nearby Roman Catholic church.

    Most likely, the eucharist tomorrow will begin about fifteen minutes late, and only about a dozen will attend it. Yet when widows die, their dispersed families fly back to the church for a Prayerbook service that means more to them than some grotesque creation of a ‘funeral home.’ And as babies carried out of Haitian earthquakes and Sudanese violence get older they are being confirmed, along with an occasional American child, by a bishop they know in a rite their parents remember. The vicar is liberal enough to observe Evolution Sunday every year, but apart from leading worship, her main ministry is exploring right and wrong with juveniles in jail who have never met an adult who takes their consciences seriously. With the bishop’s blessing, she prepares the immigrants to take responsibility for the church as the dozen able souls dwindle. Lately, she has dreamed of a church music school there like the famous one in Port-au-Prince.

    Through it all, a mechanic among the scolded vestry has exercised his gift for faith healing on the boiler, the roof joists, the chipping paint, the building inspectors. etc. Indeed, the building has just been retrofitted at great expense to accommodate wheelchairs, as the law requires, although nobody can remember the last time one was seen there. The treasurer’s financial statements may not be strictly reliable, but she has somehow paid the bills– winter heat for the building; pension payments for the vicar; honoraria to a student organist; summer camp fees for all the children. And so at each Yearly Meeting the parishioners hear that their building remains serviceable for another year, and that the budget is simply impossible to balance without a miracle.

    Now it is rumoured hereabouts that everything is better in the Church of England. The bishops are all wiser; the congregations are all larger; the financial support is more generous; the stone buildings last centuries without any upkeep. And among the church’s Evangelicals, things are said to be better yet. The mission is always clear; zeal for it never flags; evangelism is always feasible; large buildings and budgets everywhere reflect its invincible effectiveness. Above all, there are no sticky new situations that take years of trial and error to sort out.

    And yet, England is such a diverse place, that some trace our own diversity to the four shires. Although the grass is always greener across the pond, I cannot help but think that, somewhere in the realm, there must be a few messy places that are a bit like the one around the corner from this laptop.

    • Tell me whether this is fair. The Church Commissioners control a stock market and property portfolio worth £6.1 Billion (2013). That fund has generally grown at about 5% above the Retail Price Index from £2.4 Billion in 1994.

      Last year was a fantastic year for the CC. In the First Church Estates Commissioner’s words:’Everything that could go right did go right.’ The fund grew by 15.9%

      Staff remuneration for the CC ranges from 10 staff earning between £60k – £70k and approx. £330k at the very top. Their contribution to the Archbishops Council in 2011 was £37.4M.

      Some years ago. it was agreed that the Church Commissioners’ funding for episcopal ministry would be a fixed percentage of the overall distribution to their beneficiaries. Over 2011 – 2013, the funding was increased by 2 per cent for Archbishops and 4 per cent for bishops. The total sum contributed to the Bishops’ Office and Staff Costs was £17M in 2011 and £20M in 2012. This grew to £31.2M in 2013 (Source: The Church Commissioners annual Report 2013).

      The Church Commissioner contributed £41.2M to the Archbishop’s Council in 2014 compared to £37.4M in 2011.

      By comparison, the 44 Dioceses coughed up £28.5M for the Archbishop’s Council. That was a proportion of the Parish Share that goes to the National Church.

      All of this is dwarfed by the £121M in Church Commissioners’ Pension payment to ensure that all Anglican ministers up to 1998 ordination can enjoy a final salary pension of approx. £13k and a ‘lump sum’ of £39k.

      I can truly empathise with the struggle of churches that can barely keep the lights on. There’s no quick fix, and, yes. I am my brother’s keeper wanting to support neighbouring churches.

      Nevertheless, instead of expecting, on the basis of improved attendance and a poorly devised affluence factor, that growing churches should give more year on year, its the final salary pension scheme that has raided the till. Why not ask the bishops to run their offices much more efficiently, so that more can go to genuine mission? Why not expect some community engagement project to be self-funded? Why not expect the Church Commissioners to give the dioceses a break by giving significantly more to the National Church than they did in a bumper year?

      On, no. But that couldn’t possibly be fair, could it? It’s so much easier to remind just the laity who can only look forward to their index-linked pensions (if that) about the theology of giving. That should work!

      • This is becoming a fascinating thread. Replying first to Bowman. I recognise the sort of parish you mention perfectly well. My own situation is rural, and here the issues are different, but the same if you see what I mean. Here I am a Team Rector with nine parishes and eleven churches. I have staff of a team vicar, stipendiary curate, and self supporting curate. I think they are a pretty heroic bunch, as are the three retired clergy who assist us. Four of the churches have congregation of less then ten, in fact two less than five, and all except one have congregations less than thirty, the exception being the town civic church. But to put that in perspective the populations of the two smallest parishes is under a hundred. In fact in percentage attendance the tiny ones win hands down. All of these parishes have a legal, let alone a mission structure which needs supporting, and the admin burdens can be horrendous. But all these communities know that at their heart they have a little medieval church where the rumour of God is kept alive, and where they gather on high days and holiday, and significant life moments to discover afresh that they are loved by God. Without it they would be so much the poorer in terms of their identity as people, because they would not, for the most part find that connection with Christ elsewhere, and in truth they might well not even look. I do not intend to close the smaller churches, but that is a costly decision.

        Secondly to David I think you need to reflect on what you are requesting. In fact over the last decade the clergy have volunteered reductions to their pension rights twice and taken below inflation level pay rises in line with the living standards of our parishioners. Its tough for everyone at the moment, but ironically the best off people this year in terms of real income rises are likely to be the pensioners in our pews due to the formula the government uses. With regard to dioceses my own is run on a shoe string, and I have on occasion suggested that they need to consider taking on more admin staff to communicate more effectively with parochial clergy. Oddly when you have declining local posts you sometimes need proportionately more central ones to allow for the decline in the voluntary stuff that many of us used to do more of. And the same applies if you are training laity to take on roles, as I believe we should – trainers are required to make it happen and give support. By and large I think the CC do a pretty good job, not least as they are bound by the pre 1998 pension commitments which will begin to unwind as the clergy first retire, and then die quietly. However we are notoriously long lived….(Calls for the post of Diocesan Assasin will not be appreciated!)

        • Corrected.

          ‘Without it they would be so much the poorer in terms of their identity as people, because they would not, for the most part find that connection with Christ elsewhere’

          Perhaps, that view holds sway in the rural context. Although, the local Post Office is probably also viewed as an enrichment to their identity as a people. However romantic the aspiration, we also need to face the same realities that many sub-Postmasters do. It’s like removing the heart of a community.

          Theologically, I would be interested in how you square ‘without it, for the most part they would not find that connection with Christ elsewhere’ with the New Testament insistence on the dispensable nature of where we worship. Especially, considering the sacrifices for mission elsewhere in the world among those for whom such accommodations would be a luxury.

          I’m not advocating religious minimalism. People do seek a sense of permanence and continuity, but this is to be distinguished from a connection with Christ (which could still be found, however painfully, but necessarily, once the small groups of congregants are moved and consolidated into less costly places of worship).

          By way of contrast, I’ve seen how dispassionately the CofE can abandon a fledgling church plants when funds are not forthcoming.

          I can reflect on what I’m requesting. What’s wrong with challenging a larger proportion of projects currently approved for Mission Development funding to be self-supporting? What’s wrong with challenging Bishops’ offices to run more efficiently, instead of expecting year-on-year increases above inflation from the CC? Why couldn’t more of the £31.2M committed to these administrative costs in 2013 have gone to Mission, or reduced the Parish Share burden?

          However, if we want that precious medieval staple of British life to remain, clergy need to reflect on these questions, instead of adopting the default position of requesting more giving from congregants.

          And don’t forget, the CC are sitting on their asset base of £6.4 Billion.

          • “…the New Testament insistence on the dispensable nature of where we worship.”

            David, your recourse to scripture is a most excellent thing, of course, but much more came to my mind when I read this than you are likely to have intended. Just to clarify what you do have in mind, could you mention one or two places where scripture anchors your approach to this? Please note that I am not asking for something impervious to heavy artillery, just an indication of which stream of scriptural reflection on worship and place you have in mind.

          • Hi Bowman,

            Not meaning to be exhaustive, but:

            1. In John 4:21 – 24, with the Woman at the Well, Jesus re-focuses her attention away from the ongoing debate between Jews and Samaritans about Mount Gerazim vs. Jerusalem. He establishes that the New Testament priority is not on where we worship, but on how God is worshipped.

            2. In Acts 7, part of St. Stephen’s response to the accusation that ‘this fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and the law’ is quite telling. It’s when he echoes the Solomon’s understanding of God’s purpose for the Temple to be, not a dwelling place, but the locus for His audience of their prayers (only to immediately demonstrate from Isaiah’s vision of the final Messianic glory that it is to be dispensed with).

            ‘However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
            “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.
            What kind of house will you build for me?, says the Lord.
            Or where will my resting place be?
            Has not my hand made all these things?’

            Of course, Stephen lets the Sanhedrin remember for themselves the next two verses that damn their aristocratic and prideful stranglehold on Jewish liturgical life:

            ‘For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.

            He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations.’ (Is. 66:2,3)

            Ouch! No wonder the Sanhedrin were incensed, especially once his final comparison to their presumptuous ancestors had enraged them to mortal hostility.

            The locus for an audience with God is no longer constrained to a particular location. As Isaiah explained, it is now situated wherever united consciences respond to the scrutiny aroused by the words and deeds of the Holy Spirit and seek the comfort of His all-encompassing grace.

            3. Christians are described by St.Paul as living stones, inhabited with God’s invincible life individually, and fashioned together by God into His temple.

            That is not to say that it is wrong for Christians to assemble together as a kingdom of priests confident in our High Priest’s access to heaven’s providence.

            It would be great to know where the same scriptures take you.

          • Thank you, David. These seem to be broadly evangelical picks. I hope that you enjoyed the writing as much as I enjoyed the reading.

            The pauline strand to which you allude in (3) probably best engages the facts that we have mentioned thus far. We may want to develop this a bit as we go.

            For our purpose here, (1) and (2) seem to me to be byways of (3). God’s present absence in post-exilic Jerusalem is probably being assumed rather than asserted (cf Babylonian Talmud at Yoma 22b). Indeed those Jews who became Christians will probably have assumed that the local ‘shekhinah’ who left when the First Temple was destroyed would return with or as a representative man-god who was the Messiah (cf Ezekiel 1.26, Daniel 7.13, Isaiah 53). So we might say that Acts 7 identifies Jesus as that expected man-god, that the pauline passages on incorporation explain how his body is God’s presence, and that St John 4 applies this insight to the Gerazim/Moriah controversy.

        • Simon, you may have one of the best jobs in ministry! Team ministries in rural areas are also quite common here, and I could just as easily have picked one of several Episcopalian rural deaneries or Lutheran clusters for my cautionary tale. They themselves have asked David’s questions from time to time, and not for rhetorical effect. Yet they persevere.

        • It can be clear that pooling resources for a rural team ministry would be wise before it is clear what configuration of it would be best. This uncertainty can pose a delicate question: is a given team intended to help the constituent congregations survive through greater efficiency, or as a new collective identity that facilitates closing some churches and keeping others? This cannot always be answered in advance, and the same actions can seem to promote either outcome. Churchgoers may respond warily to the uncertainty in ways that hinder the team.

          • “I have found the thing a congregation really wants to know is ‘who is our vicar?’”

            Simon, you have probably found a universal truth. Even rural congregations that have muddled through with lay readers for a century or more* still seem to take the priest who drives out to lead eucharist for a few hours to be in some sense their vicar, even if he does this for a few parishes each Sunday. **
            ________________

            * A small number of churches built in the C17-18 as ‘chapels of ease’ for the outlying areas of parishes survive today. This was a practical necessity since the parishes were the large counties that Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia then had, and each was the responsibility of one priest. He might, for example, lead services in a parish church two weeks in six and in the chapels of ease during the other four. Wherever he was not present, services– usually a mash-up of Morning Prayer, Litany, and Ante-communion– were lead by a ‘lay reader’ licensed by the commissary of the Bishop of London in Williamsburg. (Exception: In tidewater parishes of Maryland, Jesuit priests often substituted for the lay readers and said mass.) When Anglican congregations organised the dioceses that founded the Episcopal Church, these tiny churches were recognised as parishes, although there was and is no chance that they will ever support a vicar on their own.

            ** I have in mind a retired and rather catholic priest from New York who long ago led eucharist for four quite evangelical parishes in different Virginia dioceses each Sunday. Because the dioceses are divided by a river with one ferry and one bridge, he drove a weekly circuit of about 100 miles to get to them all. I asked this lifelong rider of subways whether the long drives in the car were difficult for him. “No, really the problem is that all of these little parishes eat together after the service– a very pauline thing to do, you know– and they want to feed me too. It takes very little self-control to say mass four times; it takes a lot of self-control to say ‘no’ to so much good food!”

  4. @Bowman,

    The real question is why the ‘messy goodness’ of polite, hushed, fake-smile courtesy, cream teas with the vicar, messy church for the kids and wide-eyed conviction that community engagement on any level (whether the ever-popular Ukulele club, Happy Hands mobility classes for the elderly, or ‘Better Bums and Tums for Mums’ workouts classes, take your pick) should be funded as ‘incarnational’ mission. Is it simply because it humanizes churchgoers, so people won’t think we’re trying to be super-spiritual? The early church appeared to do the opposite. They exalted Christ by placing the gospel into the fragility of human vessels. They prioritised showing people how immediately they could experience the power of restoration from harm in Christ. They did this through words and deeds.

    Mission-related Bible studies often focus on the Book of Acts as the exemplar of evangelism. That story of the nascent church is characterized by a number of factors missing from current Anglican mission:

    1. Distancing the new initiatives by challenging old traditions, so that they are not destroyed by them. How do Anglicans declare with the early church that it can do its good on any day and in every place, instead of just perfunctorily in the ‘synagogue’ on the Sabbath? How can we accept, with Stephen, that physical temples are symbols of a less immediate access to God that are consigned to obsolescence? Especially when we prioritize concerns about the quality of these physical resources over the supernatural empowerment of human resources that use them.

    Christ’s parable of the wineskins holds true. We need a leadership that would uproot the tired focus on shaping people into form and ritual, rather than shaping worship around how God reveals Himself in ordinary strife-ridden lives today. We need visible examples of leadership that’s open to radical change and immediate tactical efforts to challenge those failing churches that remain hide-bound to traditions that neither communicate or connect with the uninitiated, and yet happily lean heavily on growing churches to subsidise their Parish Share. A condition of heavily discounting Parish Share should be the acceptance of missionary intervention.

    2. The baptism of the Holy Spirit. The effect of this divine phenomenon empowered ordinary people with extraordinary capabilities. Even those tasked with community welfare, like Stephen and Philip, became persuasive representatives of the Jesus movement and were able to affect whole communities with their passion for God. If rejected in one place, they would simply separate the disciples and build up their resolve and witness through example and instruction.

    Today, that charism is lacking among clergy and laity alike, not because it’s no longer available, but because that’s not the cause for which most Anglicans think they’ve signed up when they embrace religion as a cornerstone of family or national tradition.

    3. Phenomenal energy for God. There was an indefatigable strength that spurred on St. Paul and the other apostles to travel far and wide across Asia Minor and beyond to demonstrate the restorative power of the Kingdom of God and spread the acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. There were miracle-workers who could invoke God’s healing power as a counter to skepticism about the resurrection of Jesus. Today, we can barely whisper an answer to atheists that isn’t an inscrutably paradoxical ‘doubt is a form of faith’ response. I would suspect that there were remarkably fewer cases of clergy burn-out because the church mission involved all of the converted, not just the leadership. There was no room for flagging zeal or ulterior motives, because prophetic discernment quickly exposed the likes of Ananias and Sapphira.

    Most of the early church were eye-witnesses to the miraculous: sharing detailed testimonies about healings, escape from persecution, heroic martyrdom and sudden, unexpected conversions. Where are those testimonies, where is the every-day heroism today?
    ‘When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.’ (James 4:3)
    4. Because the early church treated especially the Gentile mission field as new territory, they were more guided by miraculous intervention, divine providence and their new-found spiritual instincts of discernment, than professionally self-assured assumptions about what a traditional religious revival should look like.

    From the selection of Matthias to replace Judas, to Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch, to the selection of Paul and Barnabus for mission, to the dream that inspired Paul’s detour into Macedonia, to Agabus’ prediction of famine, the early church mission was led by divine intervention and scriptural precedent to principally establish the universal validity of faith in Christ. They communicated a genuine eternal danger in rejecting the overtures of the gospel. Show me what part of Mission Action Planning packs allows for the unexpected intervention of God?

    Today, the CofE lacks ordinary members who display enough initiative, courage, conviction and flexibility enough. I’d suspect that many haven’t encountered God as a supernatural intervening personality in their lives. It’s all prescribed with no surprise. Imagine the uproar were a PCC member to insist that God had given him a genuine dream in his sleep (as He did St. Paul) about a mission opportunity that contradicted the carefully conceived and implemented Mission Action Plan.

    5. Hearing what the Spirit says to the church. By the time that St. John the Divine wrote the Apocalypse, the churches had fallen into collective apathy and need to be challenged to hear ‘what the Spirit says to the church’. The same is needed today.

    Neither strategic Task Forces funded by the National Church, nor ‘grass roots’ community engagement can cure the apathy or disparities between the Early church and modern Anglicanism. What’s needed is a radical message that what we think we’ve got ain’t really enough.

    If we really want to spiritual riches, let’s think about what happens when life puts the torch of modern apathy, rejection and persecution to our wonderful Anglican heritage. Is it still robust? Or is it being scorched to ashes and consigned to the dustbin of history?

    ‘You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes’ (Rev. 3:17 – 18)

  5. Do our churches really have an edifice complex? Or is it so difficult for us to map the messy goodness of even a tiny congregation onto the tidiness of structures and funds that no solution ever seems convincing enough?

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