Working together - but how?

Rural churches are small and  - as discussed before - the intrastructure costs of spread out provision for all sorts of things are greater per head, the church is no different. Increasingly less clergy are more and more thinly spread. On one level it must be stressed that the church is not the clergy and have great potential without us. On the other hand the resource of people set aside and trained - not to mention called - is important.

As we are spread across wider areas, and congregations see less of us than they used to it, is easy for people to feel demoralised. At the very point there is need of their skills and confidence, there is a lack of support and encouragment time to invest in them. 

Drawing churches to work together is a way to combine talents and resources - but what is the best approach? We have two competing pulls - working with those like us, as in the Methodist circuit; or working with the other denominations in the same villlage.  There are distinct advantages for me to draw the various chapels I work with together for planning and development etc. But what when geography doesn't put them naturally together?  Working with the parish church in the village allows us to have a shared community focus - but my 6 chapels overlap with 4 different Anglican ministry teams, and their clergy have 7-8 churches of their own, so it is not easy for us to find time to meet and plan together despite the desire.

Some may say that the small churches should close and people can travel into the town to church as they do for so many other things. There is a logic to that - but Christianity is not about logic, it is about incarnation. We are church where we are - at home, at work, at the shop.....etc

Too often closures are linked to resources and finance - and become a retreat from a context. The starting question is how do we best support a Christian presence and witness in a community. There can be models where that is based in the town such as the 'minster model' - the central point resourcing believers across a wider area. But that should not be assumed. Likewise we cannot pretend the status quo watered down is going to be viable.

So is it possible to go back to the drawing board? What would faith in that community look like if we weren't starting from the structures we currently have? And how does that relate to the realities we do have?

Staffing changes - reduction - in one of the Anglican teams I work with has triggered these thoughts. There will be a significant impact on working together as the remaining team members take on the extra work, and there are the pyschological effects of the loss on the local congregations. In the same area I am aware of the aging congregation in the chapel.  We cannot put off the questions of future 'faith presence' in that village, the answers need time to emerge before we do find ourselves in a form of retreat.

'Make us Lord dreamers for your kingdom' - inspire us and grant us courage.