All are invited to visit and interact with a new website www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk built to support the work of the Church Growth Research Programme – the national 18-month academic research project exploring the factors related to spiritual and in particular numerical church growth of the Church of England. The research is being funded through funding set aside by the Church Commissioners and Archbishops’ Council for research and development. This project is being undertaken in partnership with the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex; Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham and the Oxford Centre for Ecclesiology and Practical Theology, Ripon College, Cuddesdon.
To be honest I have not followed the link to the full article but I was pleased nonetheless to see numerical growth mentioned. U.S. readers may find it hard to believe, but in the 1970s and 1980s I used to hear Anglican clergy at conferences, when the subject of mission came up, routinely say, ‘Surely mission is about more than bums on pews?’ (I apologise for the use of English demotic, but in the UK this is OK speech.) The mantra was used, I think, because of fear of evangelism, a fear that always stalks a state church. It baffled me. Of course mission was about more than posteriors on seats, but surely people actually turning up is central to our whole sense of having something to offer.