ACTION STEP 4

1. Look for opportunities in the life of the locality for people to come together to celebrate special events or anniversaries that arise out of that local community life and are not just based around church festivals.

2. Look for ways of symbolically making the church building more accessible, to give people a sense that this building can be their gateway to heaven and not be solely the meeting place for a group of initiates.

3. Make sure that the building has within it a good number of spaces for intimate and private prayer and devotion - suitably equipped with ikons, candles etc. The sign ‘This chapel is reserved for private prayer’ sadly only serves to secularise the rest of the building.

4. Find ways of ensuring that the building is open other than during service times. At least put up a key-holder notice! Even our smallest churches might be able to have someone on duty in the church and so have it open at least at advertised times on summer week-ends.

5. Do whatever is necessary (by way of removing pews etc - and engaging in the necessary political debates!) to ensure that the building is not restricted to being used just as a preaching house. 18th and 19th century churches are likely to be the most inflexible in this respect - the latter often being architect-designed down to the finest detail to reflect a particular understanding of the way the service should be conducted.