The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me to and fro among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know”.
I am a 71 year old artist. I have no experience of business and no real knowledge of what this church is allowed to do in terms of enterprise. I am, therefore expecting to be shot down in flames. On the other hand I have always been a creative thinker, able to come up with ideas and to think, as they say, outside the box.
Because Tim asked me to say something about the Restoration on 16th October, and Carol felt that we needed something bigger than just a brief speech delivered “on the day” she and I got involved in putting up a display and writing a bit more clearly and volubly about the scale of our achievements, as a congregation, in raising close to a million pounds over the past 17 or 18 years in order to save this church building.
As I researched the project I became aware of the huge number of major players in the restoration effort who died before they could see it completed. I am also aware of many names who played a part and have, for one reason or another, moved away from the church.
At the same time that all this was happening the church treasurer, in a PCC meeting, spelt out the fact that we are currently spending more than we have coming in. This, we know, can only be bad news. Yet it was received, for the most part, with a quiet resignation.
Are we burying our heads in the sand? Are we fiddling whilst Rome burns? What, if anything, can we do about it?
When Anne died I gave a little money to the restoration fund in her memory. It just so happens that I shall be speaking to the congregation on 16th October which is her birthday. Is that what has inspired me to speak out?
The over riding terror that pervades my thinking is this. Have we and our forbears made all this effort to save a church building that we simply cannot afford to run? Are we going to fall short of the expectations of our forbears, to squander and betray all the hard work that was put in by Stan Ward, Iain Frith, Winifred Ball, Doreen Ashworth, Mavis Sullivan, Jean Burke, Barbara and Derek Jones, Alice Parkin, Anne Stockwell and ….... well one should never embark on this kind of list... fill in your own list of names from your own memories and in your own minds.
There are only three ways out of this.
It is the third of these three options which interests me. I find it hard to believe that we can significantly raise our giving in a recession and with a diminishing congregation. With the mainly elderly volunteers that we have it is hard to see how we can work harder at coffee mornings, summer and Christmas Fairs, market stalls etc. We are already stretched and tired. Our old bones are indeed dry.
What I believe we should be exploring is the better use of our resources and our resources are:-
Medieval Churches were used as meeting places, schools, bazaars, sale rooms, places to sleep in or shelter, places of sanctuary and shelter, places of entertainment and locals even kept their cattle in church during the week and especially in the winter. Because they had no pews they were far more versatile places; you could change the seating arrangements have different things going on in different corners.
The Victorians taught us to be far more prissy and precious about our churches. They put the pews in and were able to provide the luxury which we can no longer afford – a set aside place used for worship one day a week. That legacy still affects us. Since I came to St. Paul's there have been several occasions when we have been approached by the community and we have turned them down. Part of the problem is that we identify too much with the church as “ours”. Instead of seeing it as God's house, we see it as a sort of extension of our own and what we would not want to see in our own sitting rooms, we do not want to see in church. We want to preserve it as a pretty and quiet place. We would not want it to be full of drug addicts, the homeless, jobless and down and outs, noisy children, boozy, raucous men, chatty and gossipy women, forgetting entirely that those are precisely the people whom Jesus would invite in.
Whereas in medieval times the church was at the hub of the community – the centre where everything went on. We are becoming isolated and aloof from our community. We are becoming the living equivalent to the dry bones which lie beneath us and around us. Ask the average resident on the Brushes and Copley estate what the church means to them. Ask the young; to them our beliefs and practices are becoming as alien as something from a Doctor Who adventure but nothing like as entertaining.
If we could make the church building and land work for us we could both raise money and involve the community more. It might mean sticking our necks out, spending more initially to make more in the long run. It might mean working in partnership with other groups, businesses the council or individuals setting up enterprises and sharing the profits. It might mean appointing a church development officer. But let us brainstorm some of the possibilities. Brainstorming of course means putting forward all sorts of ideas many of which will be totally impossible and many others totally undesirable. In brainstorming there is a focus on quantity; criticism is withheld; unusual ideas are welcomed and ideas are combined and improved.
How about antique and collectors fairs, sending out individuals or groups to take part in TV quiz shows? Who wants to be a millionaire? I don't but I'd like to win a million for the church.
Some of these ideas may sound crazy, even offensive but I am sure plenty of you have ideas and the purpose of this article is to stimulate discussion. We need to set up a forum where we can kick around ideas, an ideas forum where people can feel free to suggest anything – however unlikely or outrageous.
I began this appeal with a quote from Ezekiel in the Old Testament. I end it with a quote from John's Gospel in the New Testament. I urge all church members to contemplate the significance of these two passages for our present situation.
They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Early in the morning Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realise that it was Jesus. He called out to them “Friends haven't you any fish?” “No” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.