The curious thing was to meet all three of them in the last 12 hours of my short midweek break, within half a mile of one another.
They were all quite different; I did not raise the subject, since we met for other reasons, yet they shared this common bond. Was I witnessing the birth of a new movement, or non-movement, for our times?
Probably not, since there was nothing spectacular here. At one extreme, a friend of more than 20 years; at the other, the taxi driver speeding me to the station, whom I do not expect to meet again. Let’s change the names and introduce them.
Valerie
Valerie is 40 something and feels it. I knew her as an active Anglican, whose job eventually took her away from London to settle on the south coast. She joined a bigger congregation than ours and soon became part of an exciting church plant in a new urban area. Unlike some such outcrops, this one took root and saw continuing growth. Her gifts took her into a leadership team (no, not ordination) and for four years the local church was her life. At least, the available bits left from a full week’s professional work.
Every evening was hectic with church planning, study, training, prayer, publicity, mission, evangelism, visiting, supporting, hospitality, catering, and vision for the next advance. And every weekend. I may be wrong, but from her own account I could not see her fitting in much by way of concerts, watercolours, DIY or a riverside stroll.
Then, suddenly, she suffered something between burnout and disillusion. ‘I needed to grow as a person and there was no way that could happen in this church.’ Exit Valerie. I have only her word for it, but no one stepped beyond the doorstep to discover why, or see how she was coping.
Peter
Peter, by contrast, is happily married; a teacher musician with several songs to his credit. You have probably sung one of them, since it resonates for many Christians and features in books of every shade and shape. His church was across town from Valerie’s; they do not know each other. It was the song writing which led me to him, only to discover that his church too had split. This, though, was division, not multiplication; not growth but argument. Strong feelings were roused, harsh words spoken, Peter felt unwanted by the leaders. He remained hungry for God, but found his appetite unsatisfied by either party. And unfilled from elsewhere, since his front door faces another church across the road, which he also does not attend.
He is neither bitter nor vindictive; his children remain involved. He is grieved by some shallow aspects of church life and the shallower songs which accompany it. But he maintains his music and his inner faith without benefit of public prayer, preaching or sacrament shared with other believers in the gospel proclaimed by his songs.
Harry
Harry, whose real name I did not discover during our ten-minute acquaintance, has had many jobs and two redundancies. Taxi driving proves to be both secure and sociable: ‘You meet such amazing people’. He concluded that as I was being collected from the vicarage, I must be a vicar too. ‘Birds of a feather’ was his phrase. I owned up to the cloth and the collar. ‘What I say is’, he began; and, guess what? ‘You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian’! There’s a thought.
By now it was only five minutes to my train (discussing the weather took two or three), so my study course on Church Life in the First Century According to the Acts had to be somewhat curtailed. I don’t know if he showed up at All Saints next Sunday; I wasn’t over confident.
We all have favourite ways of handling this great British creed: the analogy sporting, the metaphor military, the surprise pretended, the rebuke resented, the sympathy misplaced, the joke laddish, the text ecclesiastical. Though their convictions are the same, each adherent of this sect is different and needs patience, impatience and a sense of proportion. Hell fire may not be the best approach.
The person of our Lord will bring some up short; he will do sooner or later, anyway. Sometimes I wonder aloud how they will feel when the next Herod, Caesar or Stalin rounds up for the firing squad all those present on Sunday at ten, leaving the absentees alone. The existence of a praying mother, a boyhood in the choir, or a baptised grandchild will not then entitle you to a bullet in the head.
Here they are, my trio of mature adults; all more or less assured of their status within God’s family, all firmly committed to avoiding their siblings in that same household of faith. Each might be mildly shocked to find themselves grouped with the other two. I would have given much to put them all in the same taxi without limit of miles or minutes, to monitor from the driving seat their mutual counselling. But discussion may not be what they need. How can they find the Kingdom afresh as genuine Good News?
Never having sat exactly where they sit, I cannot claim to fathom it all. One of the three mentioned the long, dark night; that showed an awareness of daylight somewhere. Another confessed to sneaky viewing of Songs of Praise; even joining in the singing.
But how do they feel about the first day of the week? Is it just time for half a ton of newsprint, dad’s day with the children, the big shop or catching up with a week’s odd jobs? Are the sound of church bells little more than background music, the ice-cream van or the wail of 999 traffic? Even fire, police or ambulance chases still turn our heads for a moment.
I had not set out, during my few days away, to sound any sirens or reclaim the lost sheep. I am not convinced that spoken words would move them; the first two have heard it all before anyway.
Sometimes the card-carrying pagan is easier to relate to than the ex-member. Some churches do better at attracting newcomers than in plugging the leaks.
In any religious survey these three would all tick the slot that said ‘Christian’. They wouldn’t show up, though, on the church attendance census. No good asking whose fault this is, or what assumptions we are making. I resolved to find a slot for them in my prayers. There are a million more out there, but where are they all going? I don’t know. I only know who has paid the fare.
