An earlier column talked about several converging crises–energy, economy and environment. Since then the price of gas has gone down! Proof that I was wrong. Not!
As a nation we are so shell-shocked by the energy crisis that we think a 10-cent reduction in the price of gas is a big break, forgetting that less than a year ago we were paying under $3 a gallon.
I see churches adapting to these three interrelated crises in several ways:
–Redefinition of “church.” Church will no longer be the place we go. Church will be the people we share faith with. Churches will still meet together for worship at a central time and location, but that will become secondary to the ministry performed during the week. Church buildings will become the resource hub in community ministry, like the old Celtic Christian abbeys. Church impact will replace church attendance as the new metric.
–Restructuring of church operations. Due to the high cost of fuel and a struggling economy, churches will become smaller, more agile and less expensive to operate than in the past. Churches will need to provide direct relief to individuals and families with meal programs, shelters, clothing, job training, and more.
While I am sympathetic to some of what he writes, Pr Warnock’s views are too fragmentary and individualistic for any catholic Christian to agree with wholeheartedly. The idea that monasteries – Celtic or otherwise – catered to different “tribal” gatherings for worship is absurd. The monastic community gathered as one, several times daily, for the same daily offices and Eucharist, with the wider surrounding community joining them from time to time (especially on Sundays and saints’ days when the monastery functioned as the parish church). Neither did the early church, even if the Christians of a (large) city gathered in a number of “house churches” for their weekly eucharist, gather by “tribal” identities or preference, but by geography. (There are some few exceptions to this, for gatherings of ethnic Christian minorities; e.g., the Asian Quartodeciman Christians who gathered separately from the rest of the Christians of Rome in the early second century.)
And once again the romance with Celtic Christianity, long erroneously held by Protestants to be some form of non-papal (or better, anti-papal) medieval Christianity in the British Isles (no, I don’t forget the Synod of Whitby, Iona, or the Culdees). As for being a hub in the community, that describes any medieval monastery, not only Celtic ones – though I’ll grant that the missionary fervor in Celtic monasteries may have been greater.
My criticisms being made, however, I do like the idea of “church impact” replacing church attendance as the “new metric” (though surely some more felicitous way of phrasing “church impact” could be found?!).
Why not simply re-invent the parish system and walk to church? (And why should poverty keep church attendance down? I would expect there to be a negative correlation between wealth and church attendance.)