Letter from the Vicar (June 2008)
Dear friends,
One of the most important conclusions of last year’s ‘Going for Growth’ study groups was that it is extremely difficult for a Church to be entirely effective if it operates solely at a macro or large-scale level.
It is vitally important for its well being that it also exists at a micro-level. There are many reasons for this, but the overarching ones are:
- A relatively big Church like ours has to face the fact that it is much easier to drift away from a large Church than it is a small one and easier not to be welcomed in the first place (if you are newcomer to a Church with only ten members you will be noticed and drawn in. The Church will then have grown by 10%!)
- What happens naturally in a small Church has to be organised in a large one. People can so easily get missed in our Church. Newcomers can come for months and not be noticed. Regulars can be missing for similar lengths of time and their absence overlooked. Now it is vital that we do not blame ourselves for this. It is not that we are negligent or bad Christians. It is all about group dynamics.
- Some of you might reasonably ask the question, but what about the clergy, shouldn’t they notice? Well, apart from the fact that we have a thousand and one things to do on a Sunday morning, it is a well-documented fact that once a congregation gets above about eighty people it is impossible for pastors to have all the members at their fingertips. The task has to be shared.
- For these reasons large Churches which are effective at retaining members and encouraging new ones break down their large congregations into smaller units. Larger Churches act small by all their members belonging to small groups.
All this evidence has convinced many of us that this is the path we need to take at Holy Trinity with St Nicholas. Nevertheless we know that history of small groups has not been exactly rosy in our Church. Relatively few people have been keen to sign up to home groups, for example. For this reason we have decided that the groups which will soon come into being will be a very modest undertaking and – to begin with at least – have very limited aims. Basically what we will be doing is breaking up each of our congregations into groups of between 8 and 10 members. Each group will have a co-ordinator. The job of the members of the group will simply to be to keep an eye out for one another. Usually a friendly phone call or visit will be sufficient but sometimes you may hear of a deeper problem and then it might be appropriate to inform the clergy.
Of course much of this goes on already. But you would be surprised just how many people are overlooked and this is a major reason why they stop coming to Church. When new people come to Church they can in due course be admitted to a group (not too soon, of course) and thus helped to feel welcome. At least to begin with, the groups will not necessarily meet together and members will simply see each other during the services. There is no expectation that they will get together at other times, though if in due course groups wish to do so that is up to them.
In the next few months we shall be introducing this system, beginning with the 9.30 Parish Communion congregation and then gradually spreading it across the board. I fervently believe that it will help us to be a Church which will be able not only to welcome all who come in but also to retain them.
Yours sincerely
Richard Franklin
June 2008
