St. John's has endured a chequered history...

In these days of slimming down, parish groupings and churches short of clergy or crippled with financial problems, there have been times when it seemed on the cards that so small a parish as this might soon disappear. Our community is oddly balanced, too - so that there are very few weddings, or baptisms; and the elderly go, so to speak, to other parishes (to Nursing Homes) to die. And we have the common difficulties that arise in any complex suburban area, where there seems to be no sense of community at all, in what people think of as a traditional manner; we appear to be simply a dormitory.

But, as someone famously said, "We are still here!" Moreover, after a long period of decline, the Church here is growing - if slowly, yet surely.

For there is community after all. In fact modern transport, communications, and new styles of work mean that people here belong to many different communities all at the same time. At first glance this looks like "no community", because it is different from the traditional Anglican models which are so deeply rooted in our English thinking and so hard to escape. But that is deceptive. It is not a case of "no community and no one cares".... It is actually too much community, people whose energy is spread very thinly, leading complex lives in a way which was once simply not imaginable (and which may of course also change rapidly if environmental factors change the way we are able to live once more, as seems likely....). Yet they are still people, with the same kinds of moral, physical, and spiritual needs. Their lives are marked by the same signposts of joy and sorrow as those of their forebears. And there is still a place for worship, and much of what made up the smaller communities we used to serve - playgroups, toddlers, Scouts & Guides, choirs, music, football and 'village' cricket... barbeques, garden parties... which serve as elements of a focus community, which helps root peoples' lives, and links the other 'communities of work and school and leisure to which they also attach. A network focus church.

We are struggling merrily with this....

.... for as people are discovering all across the churches, addressing the problems of being a 'focus community' is very demanding. In a small town/village community of the anglican old days, all kinds of assumptions could be made about people's lives, for example, which meant that worship could be easily targetted. The ancient round of Morning and Evening Prayer actually could fit, and be accessible to people. Weddings and funerals happened in 'our' church, in a well known location, and so on. Here, you get dis-location. Even if they know where 'our' Church is, the weddings and funerals probably happen miles away - at an older church because people prefer the medieval scenery for their piccies, or a crematorium because they do not want two funeral services (one at church, and what can seem like another at the cemetery chapel). And because working patterns have changed so much, traditional weekday and Sunday services are no longer accessible (of course, there is the matter of commitment, and priorities, but it is no longer merely that - many people work when services happen, and no longer have a choice in the matter.

So we are asking serious questions

.... about what this means for ordinary parish churches: stuck not only with the geographical responsibilities of a Church of England parish, but also this oddly shifting community. When do we offer worship now ? Is it just a matter of more services on more days? And what kind of worship - is the day of the parish communion gone ? Should there be much more word and prayer, a return - ironically since it mirrors an older anglican age - to less frequent Communion: not merely because that helps free us from priest-centred organisation, but also because it is less exclusive for parishioners in general ? We are blessed with a growing lay ministry, but how do we avoid turning Readers into a different sort of clergy - and how set them free to explore the sort of ministry their own gifts suggest instead of merely pressing them into service as unusually willing hands to do no more than maintain the existing committees and councils of the Church, or at best be merely deputies for the Vicar, instead of ministers in their own right ? There is more, like how, with limited resources, and in an age when 'authority' lacks general credence, do we manage to do something (other than tell them to buzz off) for the young who climb on our church roof and rip bits off, or ride their cycles across the churchyard making muddy tracks...) but you get the drift .