By John Cole

As soon as any organisation sets goals or targets for itself, the next question is always ‘’How will you measure your success?’’ If we distrust the statistics, what other measurements can we use?

Most church people - from bishops downwards - carry in their heads a mental picture of a ‘successful’ local church:

The picture is probably something like this:

But if this is ‘success’, is everything else ‘failure’?

This typical picture of a ‘successful’ church is often a dangerous illusion, for its ‘success’ usually owes little to the Holy Spirit. Instead it is more likely to be a man-made sham: the product of a particular style of leadership (the clergyman impresario whose own dynamic energy makes everything ‘hum’) or a reflection of the kind of society in which the church is set.

For, in the absence of ‘impresario’ leadership (which is growing increasingly rare), these ‘successful’ churches have almost always been found in the suburbs or in small towns, where human beings are thought of primarily as residential creatures in isolated family units, and where people are happy to make some now rather outdated middle-class assumptions about such things as property, privacy, education, family, work, leadership etc.

The evidence for this lies in the balance of what is provided in the typically ‘successful’ church. Traditionally most activity has centred round the women and children - with a more recent emphasis on the elderly - mainly meeting their social needs at a fairly superficial level (discos for the youngsters and flower-arranging demonstrations at the women’s meetings). Most of the men who are involved in the life of this kind of church (a small number compared with the number of women) tend to be those who need to be ‘big fish in little ponds’, people who find fulfilment by taking limited responsibility and power within a suitably protected environment.

But what a false measure of success this proves to be when set against our calling to be a holy, catholic and apostolic church as we explored it in the last chapter!

This kind of success is gained largely at the expense of the true mission of Christ’s Church in the world - for one simple reason: it is a success measured by the extent to which the local church can provide escape from the world.

The joyful worship, the financially secure institution, the lively social scene and the happy family atmosphere combine to provide for people a substitute world, a 'comfort zone', in which to live and feel safe - the very reverse of the vulnerable and challenging ‘alternative society’ that the Christian Church should be in the world.

This illusion of success involves a deliberate attempt to break that network of contact with the locality through which God’s love is expressed; and many on the outside of church life can see this more clearly than most churchgoers.

In a ‘tribalised’ if not totally fragmented society, people may well take it for granted that the church will function in this way. But more serious than this general presumption of irrelevance is the fact that the ‘institutional church’ is then often despised or ignored by those whose problems and sensitivities run deep. They can see that the human predicament needs the healing love of God in a much more complex and wider setting than that catered for within the cosy, trivialising and escapist lifestyle of many local churches!

No wonder many ‘parish missions’, ‘diocesan jubilee celebrations’ and all the rest, can be such a dangerous waste of energy - for they tend only to strengthen the spurious success of the ‘successful’ churches and do nothing for those churches and congregations where the problems of the future are real, clearly recognised, and very probably held in common with others in the locality.

Charismatic churches would argue that theirs is an experience of ‘success’ based on different criteria - namely their awareness of the work of the Holy Spirit.

In practice, however, too many of these churches respond to their experience of the Holy Spirit in ways which are essentially self-indulgent for the individual and sometimes border on the irrational.

The result is even more escapist and inaccessible to those who rightly are not prepared to retreat into a world of alleged objective ‘certainties’ (about God or anything else) where all their thinking is done for them.

Too often these churches also depend far more than they would like to admit on the personality of their leaders. No wonder they so often hit problems after their original leaders have left.

The illusory nature of this suburban model of success is proved by the fact that it is already failing. As the years have passed many of these ‘happy family’ churches have - almost unnoticed - grown old, and what was a lively family church has become a church full of pensioners. The irony is that, following the dynamics of ‘tribalism’, there is little likelihood that these churches will die of old age. Instead they will perpetuate themselves as people join them after they have retired.

So-called ‘bowls-club churches’ in many seaside towns thrive simply because of a never-ending supply of retired people moving in to the locality - the same people who also ensure the success of the bowls club!

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