Week 4: A Short History of St Michael’s

This week, read the historical account each day, thank God for what he has done already, and ask God to show you what he is saying to his church today.

 

Mon 1 Feb: 1873

“Are the angels not ministering spirits sent out to serve those who are to inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14)

St Michael’s Church was built, with the money of Arthur Pryor and at the urging of his wife, as a witness against the sins and problems associated with gambling at Galleywood Racecourse.  For the first decades of its existence, it was not a parish church but a “Consolidated Chaplaincy”.  It was named after St Michael, the warrior angel, as a token of the spiritual warfare in which it was engaged.  Today, you might want to ask God where St Michael would be in action today around Galleywood.  Have you been to other churches dedicated to St Michael’s, and if so, are there things we could learn from the way they relate to angels?
 
Today, re-read the verses above from 1 Thessalonians and Galatians 5-6.  Ask God to show you if there is a phrase, word or idea that he is particularly underlining in your life, and in the life of the church. Ask him about how growth results from acts of love and the word of God.  Today would also be a good day to think about the buildings of Galleywood.  How could we use the church building better, for God’s glory and for the good of the whole village?   Is there any building work that might make the church building a better resource for the village?  Are there other buildings that we should be using for church activities?

 

8am: You are welcome to a service of Holy Communion at the Church

10.30am: A joint service at the school with the theme of change. Ideas for the future are presented  - we will evaluate them next week.  Questionnaires may be distributed.

5.30pm: All are welcome to a short evening service, focussing on “the body of Christ”, featuring  Upwards, our youth group.

6.10pm: The leadership team meet to start to examine options,

 
 
“Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.”  (Galatians 6:15)

God’s making a new world, where suffering’s no more,

and when your spirit groans, that’s what you’re yearning for. 

One day it will come down – like a city, like a bride.

God’s people, in new bodies, will be there – his joy and pride.

Meanwhile, the church is supposed to be a foretaste of God’s new world, embracing the future with hearts full of hope; not a backward-looking body taking refuge in the past.  What counts is a new creation; imagine Paul’s frustration with the Galatians, then, when they started to forget that they were the future’s people and decided to worry about circumcision, one of the covenant signs of the Old Testament!

Facing change is easier for some of us than others, but for all of us there is at least one area where we tend to resist change and concentrate on the past.  An archbishop’s words hold enormous challenge: “We love the unchanging God and the unchanging Gospel only as much as we are willing to change everything else”.  Today would be a good day to confess areas where we are unwilling to change, and embrace new creation.

And thank God for Church at the School – 35 years old today!
 
ST MICHAEL’S CHURCH, GALLEYWOOD

 

40 DAYS OF DISCERNMENT…THE FUTURE OF OUR CHURCH

 

MY VIEWS ARE:

A. THE MISSION STATEMENT

1. Our church states that: God calls us to – Show the love of Jesus; Share His word with everyone; Grow together as His family

 

IF WE TAKE THIS AS THE CONTEXT within which the church must decide upon what action is best then we must consider the following factors:-

B. MODERN DAY SUNDAYS

1. We should look at the modern day Sunday – not the Sunday we Christians might like to see but the Sunday that exists and that will stay.

2. The modern day Sunday offers work; sport; shopping; festivals; theatres; museums and much more. These force people to work; to go to see sport if they want to follow their team, play, officiate etc; make compromises about shopping and so on.

3. Consequently Sunday provides difficulties and competition for time, which can be made more complicated by family pressures if not both partners are practising Christians.

 

C. CHURCH ATTENDANCE

1. Our church attracts about 300 people each month, which is about 5% of Galleywood’s population.

2. Take out the church members, who live outside Galleywood, then the % of Galleywood’s population who attend church slips lower.

3. How is the demographic going? Looking at the current joining and leaving trends amongst the church family, can the church be confident that those church members who will die in the next 25 years will be replaced by new members? If not then our church is in trouble. So, the church must seek to broaden its members both by age, gender, work background, postcode and (dare I say it) social class. Failure to do so could lead to our church becoming unviable, maybe reducing the clergy to just the vicar, as had happened in other churches.

 

D. WHO ARE WE AIMING AT?

1. We need to retain our current worshippers

2. We need to attract new worshippers

3. This needs careful consideration, as both of these could encourage conflicting actions and achieving one but losing the other would be counter productive.

 

E.  BUT HOW DOES THE CHURCH ATTRACT MORE WORSHIPPPERS?

This is a difficult issue. Probably, the answer is multi-faceted, including:

1. Prayer

2. Providing what potential worshippers might want: a wide variety of services in time and content – the one size fits all model does not work in the C21st; regular start and finish times of service; clear knowledge of what to expect at the service; new/uncertain worshipper friendly services; encouragement to attend from others and other facets I expect.

3. Does the church wait for new members to arrive or go out and get them. If the latter, then how?

4. Sadly, the national image of our faith is poor at present, with seemingly continual internal bickering over difficult issues; a lack of apparent vision and drive; a sense of drift; plus competition from other faiths and a secular world. There is no clear national Christian message at present strongly coming from national church leaders that will inspire new worshippers into our church, I fear. Ours seems to be the only faith that can comfortably be ridiculed and criticised in the media and is so. I doubt if these national problems will change in the near future.

5. Consequently, it seems to me that the answer will need to be a local one, where our church has to contradict national stereotypes and trends.

6. In short it is up to us in Galleywood to increase our numbers, as Lambeth Palace is not likely to deliver an increase in congregations, I fear.

 

F. PUT ALL THESE POINTS TOGETHER

1. How do we increase the church’s attendance, our church’s family?

2. Our church should move to a worship plan that allows as many worshippers as possible to attend.

3. Such a plan should provide:

a. as many opportunities to worship as possible….holding 2 services at 10.30 offers one opportunity to worship and, so, is not an efficient model to attract more worshippers.

b. certainty of times….8am services on some Sundays but not all can cause confusion

c. clarity of worship style….what will I receive if I attend. Uncertainty causes non-attendance.

d. discipline in services ….the 10.30 service can end at any time between 11.30 and 11.55am, which can be off putting, can create uncertainty and can cause non-attendance.

 

G. A POSSIBLE WAY FORWARD………..this is an outline plan.

1.  Every Sunday could look like this. All services are weekly and held at church:

a. 8.00am 1662 communion service. 8.45am finish.

b. 9.30am more modern service similar to the current school based service. Compulsory 10.30am finish with no exception. Communion 1st & 2nd week of the month.

Late leavers of the 9.30 service and early arrivers of the 11.00am service will meet over coffee.

c. 11.00am traditional service using more traditional hymns and content. Compulsory 12noon finish with no exception. Communion 2nd & 4th week of the month.

***Both 9.30 & 11.00am services will cut their content to meet the one hour deadline. Preachers will need personal discipline and as will service leaders to keep the momentum of the service going and keep to the time limit. Both of these are weaknesses of current services, which often drift aimlessly and have no time discipline. Non liturgical matters should be resisted, as current services can be more like social gatherings to which new and irregular worshippers can find excluding them due to a lack of understanding of what is happening as well as being irrelevant and unnecessary.

d. 3pm Family gathering for anyone. Fun activities for children and refreshments for parents with short spiritual input. First steps to Jesus? To include all baptisms?

e. 6.00pm service based upon the current 5.30/6.30pm service. Twice monthly communion service.

**But what about Sunday school and youth groups? Can these be accommodated at church? If not then a radical and creative solution must be found.

2. The weekdays could look like this. Frequency anything from weekly to monthly:

a. Mondays: youth gathering – open to neighbouring parishes. Dynamic and relevant discussion, activity based worship with contemporary films, music and media. Cross between a mature youth club and challenging spiritual gathering. Something you might want to bring your mate or girlfriend to and not be embarrassed.

b. Tuesdays: women’s meeting and worship. WI meets Friendship + (without children) meets young wives meets singles club.  A social and spiritual meeting with refreshments. Something at which both regular worshippers and non-worshippers will feel comfortable and interested at attending.

c. Thursdays: men’s meeting and worship: relevant discussion: activities. Something at which both regular worshippers and non-worshippers will feel comfortable and interested at attending.

 

G. PRESSURE ON THE CLERGY

1. Clearly this plan would put great pressure on the clergy but it would raise the issue of what can the church family do to help and support the clergy.

 

 

A wise saying that is regularly used at management seminars is: “If you continue to do the same things then you will get the same outcomes.” If our church is serious in setting out to attract more worshippers and to: “ Share His word with everyone” our church must address the issues outlined above and be prepared to adopt radical proposals. But will it?

 

Good luck to all who will be making these decisions. May God be with you all in your thoughts, discussions and decisions.

 

Mike Arnold
 
I received this by e-mail:



The following comment is limited to the two 10:30 services; other services and activity should be separately assessed.

On the structural level, from the comments here and conversations I’ve had during the Days so far, both congregations now seem to have a shared view:

“We like being together – but we don’t want to worship like them.”

I’m simplifying a complex issue – but if this is an accurate picture then it might also hold a key.

What comes next must be a Corporate Merger, and not an Acquisition.  What must emerge will be different to what currently exists.

The position we have reached reminds me of Jews and Samaritans; each having their own practices and “holy place” – but let’s remember Jesus’ words to the woman at the well and see if they apply to us:

“…a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither merely in this mountain nor merely in Jerusalem [so neither according to one tradition nor the other]…

“A time will come, however, indeed it is already here, when the true genuine worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (reality); for the Father is seeking just such people as these as His worshippers” (John 4 v21, 23 – Amplified Bible, comment in square bracket added).

God likes new:  “New Thing”, “New Creation”, “New Song” – most of these have already appeared on the graffiti wall.

What we need in order to Unify our Corporate Worship is a New Thing, and then slake our thirst together with the same drink that Jesus offered to the woman.  At the same time we’re each scared of it going wrong and losing something dear.

Let’s urgently seek the bedrock principles for this New Thing, and then be patient as we make mistakes trying to bring this New Thing into reality (as we cannot expect to get the details right first time).

Could we enter into the following agreement, or something like it?  It would be for Leadership to determine the appropriate time periods.

 

  • We agree TODAY that we will unite our Corporate Worship (the 10:30 services) on [Date]
  • We agree that during the NEXT MONTH the core Principles that will purpose our Corporate Worship will be determined [Leadership might have discerned these by the end of the 40 days]
  • We agree that during the NEXT SIX MONTHS we will consider the implications of these Corporate Worship Principles on all other aspects of church activity [8am and evening services, Housegroups, etc.]
  • We agree that during the NEXT YEAR we will explore, try, and test how to embody those Principles within our united Corporate Worship.
  • We agree that this will involve getting things wrong, and we will forgive each other when that happens.
 
"These are my views:

> 1. We should come together as one congregation under one
> roof.

> I felt the first Sunday we met together at the school (17th
> Jan) was a very special time in many different ways and in
> my mind was a significant foretaste of what we could achieve
> together. We can be much stronger when we are together, but
> we are weak when apart. Sunday morning services should be
> our ‘shop window’ and known as the one to invite
> newcomers. Content should be well presented, the programme
> not long and involving all ages.

> I have not heard one opinion suggesting we should remain as
> two congregations. Everyone seems to say it is the way
> forward. However, everyone who accepts that, must therefore
> equally accept that the worship ‘culture’ inevitably
> must change at a personal level for all of us from the
> currently established positions in both CATS and COTC, if we
> are to move towards a single corporate act of worship on a
> Sunday morning. I am not sure many have yet recognised
> that!

> However there is little point in discussing detail such as
> styles of worship, times, venue, etc, until we have first
> established whether or not the congregations should unite.

> 2. Homegroups should be a central part of internal church
> life.

> Homegroups are the place where individuals can be part of a
> small family where they can be nurtured, taught and cared
> for and participation should be encouraged for everyone.
> This might necessitate expanding the number of groups and
> possibly the training of new leaders. Personally, I do not
> believe Homegroups should be the place for a primary
> evangelistic activity, but rather for caring and teaching.

> 3. A strong children’s and young people’s group is
> essential for the ongoing life of the church.

> Strong and effective leadership is key. Energy and
> resources should be devoted to a long – term strategy to
> achieve these goals.

> 4. We should endeavour to have an effective, practical role
> in village community life which involves a good cross
> section of the church family, acting under the name of St
> Michael’s.

> In all things, as mentioned in 1 above, the important thing
> is to determine the principles first and then iron out the
> detail subsequently.

> Geoff"
>
 
I'm trying to make sure every comment on this blog (apart from mine!) goes onto the graffiti wall; in turn, I'll put everything on the wall or in the suggestions box onto the blog.  I'm sorry I can't reproduce the handwriting and artwork of some of the children's contributions, but here are the things added on Sunday:

"[The suggestion that we have two services in one location] I think this is to keep everyone happy, not to grow the church!"

"love God and weshep him"

"Yes, I love"

"to believe in him"

"I love God and worship him"

"God says I love you.  God is great"

"to show our love by our actions"

"We should have a service where people can just come and listen without being expected to participate"

"Structure and conformity are more important than rampant flexibility.  The Anglican rite is wonderful and variable and should not be jettisoned".

"People that have not known structure or church are put off by all you have to do.  Even the communion practice is weird and hard to relate to if you are not "churched" or a Christian.  You need new people or there is no growth!"

 "Christian groups in schools, advertisements, help other churches grow, more activities for kids eg SOLID"

"Growing churches together"

"[If you look for many of the churches Paul planted, they're no longer there].  This will happen to the church if we don't change."

"Pray to him and sing a song and love him."

"Let half the church go to craft things and the other half todo talks and stuff like that.  You can choose and go out when the children go out."  Hannah Beales age 8.

"Sing a song, said God.  Praise him."

"Growing St Michael's:
    Pray for people all over the world and the poor.
    Help different people - kids, disabled, non-Christians, pensioners, homeless people.
    Advertising - put posters up.
     Make faith interesting
     Friends: talk with them, share, put friends before yourself, get to know everyone
   
 
“Far be it to glory in anything but the cross of Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)

Today would be a good day to think about worship.  Paul talks about “glorying” in the cross; letting the truth of God and the sacrifice of Jesus become so overwhelming to us that our whole being is changed.  This is true worship, centred not on certain styles of music but an attitude of the heart.  However much we talk about growth, acts of love and the word of God, worship matters more than these.  Ask God: what would help our worship to be all-consuming like this?  What would most please him in our adoration? 
 
Big Ideas from the Homegroups

Thank you to all those (around 65) of you who fed in your views through homegroups.  Thank you to the homegroup leaders who spent two hours of their valuable time feeding back the results in a badly chaired meeting.  About a hundred views were voiced and the leadership team will see the whole set; here is a digest of the main themes that emerged.

First Big Idea: We’re sharing a Hunger.

We want to be one, but don’t know how, given the limitations of both our buildings and the tensions that occur when worship style is unfamiliar.  But if we KNEW church would feed us, we wouldn’t care as much about style.  Once we know the way ahead, we can do whatever it takes (eg building work or buying a minibus) to make it work.

Second Big Idea: Discipline is Required.

The word “discipline” occurred as we discussed many themes.  We feel our Sunday services need to be disciplined – this does NOT mean not fun or not child-friendly (for example, the Christingle Service was disciplined, child-friendly and fun).  We feel that the leadership team needs to be disciplined as it comes to decisions – some groups feared that decisions would be postponed or, if taken, then mere compromises or not followed-through into implementation.  And we feel that the members need to be disciplined to accept and submit to the decisions taken – a good school consults the children, but the children need to accept the decisions made.

Third Big Idea: The Hub of Images of Church is and should be “Family”.

Almost all the groups ranked this both as St Michael’s strength and as the most important thing to retain moving forward.  Many of the other images of church (army base, school, hospital) drew much of their attraction from the way that they operate in certain ways like a family.  We felt that homegroups are particularly good at this (indeed, we recognise that some people find homegroups daunting for exactly this reason), but we need to be “on watch” to make sure that every person who comes through our doors on a Sunday also feels embraced and welcomed by the family.  “Everyone needs a smile” – and they may also need a prayer.  The Galleywood area desperately needs this kind of community.  God is like a mother, protecting us, providing for us, and feeling our pain.  A family combines people of different ages; we love the idea of children and young people being a very visible (and participating) part of our services, and value our relationship with the schools.

Fourth Big Idea: We need to work a lot harder on Spreading the News.

Almost all the groups felt that this was a weakness.  Some felt that we spend so much energy “instructing” the Christians, we have no time left for non-Christians; others mentioned the difficulty of making truth-claims in a world that dislikes absolutes, a sense that we aren’t good at packaging ourselves as current and relevant (who wants old news?), or the parish system that can sometimes get in the way of mission.  Specifically, we should be liaising with radio (Radio Essex and Radio Chelmsford) and desperately need an up-to-date website, perhaps with sermons uploaded onto it.  “my neighbour would come if... ...I gave them an opportunity to say yes”, said one group, acknowledging that we’ve never learnt to ask.  We need to make communicating with youth and building strong youthwork a priority; and we need to be very careful that our language on a Sunday morning is accessible to newcomers, and that we don’t target services at existing Christians (eg by asking everyone to say the grace without it written down for them).  And we acknowledged that this weakness is not just a matter of faulty evangelism close to home; we also do not send out missionaries worldwide; perhaps this is something we should be challenged about (including the retired).

Fifth Big Idea: We are ambivalent about where “instruction” is meant to occur.

All the groups agreed that instructing our members in how they should live was a strength of St Michael’s, and a particular part of homegroups.  However, some groups felt that “instruction” was over-emphasised, or that it is something that should find its place in homegroups and not as much on Sunday mornings, where a more invitational/grace-oriented/newcomer-friendly message was more appropriate.  Others felt that it was important to retain “instruction” as a strong part of all our services and groups; “church is a place to learn” and to “speak the truth in love", though of course this is not an excuse to use words to hurt.  

Sixth Big Idea: We fear the Holy Spirit is not being sufficiently Highlighted

We like the picture of leaving church as “little flames”, “empowered to get back out there”.  But in order for that to happen, there needs to be a real sense of the power of God in the church; our services need to be “humming with his power”  (not our power – we’re only a substation!).  But we doubt that this is the case, and wonder if it is because the Holy Spirit is under-emphasised.  It might seem daunting to develop this more – “too hot to handle” – and there are dangers in all this (for example, we hate the idea that some people might think they’re “second class Christians” because they don’t speak in tongues).  But we are convinced that being empowered by the Holy Spirit is an important part of the way ahead.  We also felt that prayer for healing should be an important part of the ministry of the church.

Seventh Big Idea: We need to “do good” corporately as well as individually.

We recognized that many individuals within St Michael’s do sacrificial acts of good for neighbours or for the community.  But all the images of church are corporate, and it would be good to have practical ways that we can show God’s love TOGETHER.

Eighth Big Idea: Homegroups need to be Highlighted

There needs to be active encouragement for Christians to join homegroups and to lead homegroups; training should be provided. 
 
“Since you have life through the Spirit, now walk with the Spirit”(Galatians 5:25)

Your life is a journey.  Perhaps you have only recently started to become aware that the Spirit has been at work in your life; perhaps through baptism, through Alpha, through the hard path of bereavement that leads through the valley of the shadow of death, or through marriage, you have taken the first steps on the path of following Jesus.  Or perhaps you have been walking with the Spirit for many years.  Either way, imagine the road you’ve travelled on; ask God to show you what landmarks are still to come and to assure you of the Spirit’s future companionship.   And see the many others who might travel this road with us.  How can our life together be organised so that we are accompanying people on their journey, rather than simply organising events for them?

You are welcome to a prayer meeting at 9.15am at the Vicarage