Lausanne World Pulse – Pulling Out of the Nosedive in the United Kingdom!
By Peter Brierley
However, only twenty-seven percent of churches held a midweek youth meeting. This was partly because there is still a dire absence of young people in many churches:
- thirty-nine percent of churches had no one attending under eleven years of age
- forty-nine percent of churches had no one attending between eleven and fourteen years of age
- fifty-nine percent of churches had no one attending between fifteen and nineteen years of age
These are horrific figures and indicate the huge amount of work that churches must do to reclaim the lost ground among young people today. We may be emerging from the nosedive, but without the support of more young people, we will never begin the climb back to a safe level.
However, where churches do hold a midweek meeting for young people, they were shown to be particularly effective in helping those aged eleven to fourteen to stay connected with a church. Some 330,000 young people attended a midweek meeting (more than a third of whom were in Anglican churches), and of these, over half did not attend on Sunday. So midweek youth meetings are worthwhile, which is presumably why up to one-fifth of churches now have their own or shared youth or children’s worker, or both.
Challenges
It is clear that the Census provides some fascinating material. Can the English church pull out of the nosedive? YES! We need to either start new congregations or increase our existing ones. We need to hold more midweek activity and strategically plan ahead! The newspaper columnist, Andrew Brown, wrote last year, “Almost nothing that’s possible is too improbable ever to happen.” In other words, “with God, all things are possible.”
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Dr. Peter Brierley is the Senior Lausanne Associate for Church Research. He attended Lausanne I in 1974 and has been involved with the Lausanne movement since 1984. Formerly a government statistician, he is currently executive director of Christian Research, a UK charity which produces resource volumes like Religious Trends and the UK Christian Handbook. Brierley can be reached at [email protected]. |
Comments on this article
Many who go to church are not the Church. Measurements of those who attend church will continue to focus on people who view the Body of Christ as attendance to an hour-long gathering, weekly, in a church building. The Church as the Body of Christ, a community in accountability one with another in the identity of Jesus Christ, often will meet in a home on a Thursday night. These may have grown significantly in recent years but will not be detected in the traditional statistical counts. Dr. Brierley, of course, knows this and I am thankful that he cares.
Mike :: 5 Jul 2007