18 January 2023

In 1988 the Lambeth Conference of bishops announced a “Decade of Evangelism” (1990-2000) to promote a “renewed emphasis on making Christ known to the people of his world.” This initiative could not be described as an unqualified success. Ever since, the Anglican Church in the West has been in steady numerical decline. In many provinces the recent Covid-19 Pandemic has accelerated the pace of that decline to a point that might reasonably be described as catastrophic. There are many things that have contributed to this rapid acceleration and the inability of many churches to “return to normal” following periods of closure for public worship, but one of these has certainly been that many of the standard pre-Covid tools of evangelism are not fit for purpose in a post-Covid world. People are less and less inclined to respond to others “reaching out” to them. More often than not, people who are looking for something, and who are prepared to consider that that something might be found in a church, will survey the available choices, and make their own, independent decisions.

Those churches which have thrived in this environment have invariably been those that have provided something that the outsider looking in (and the insider living the experience) can see as attractive and life-giving. By “attractive” I mean compelling; something that intrigues and draws people in and, having drawn them, holds their attention and encourages them to dive deep. Something like Jesus.

In 1983 Richard Holloway contributed a series of four keynote essays in Renewing the Drifting Church – a series of papers from the Australian Anglican Catholic Renewal Conference held that year. It was one paragraph in this essay that especially grabbed me, and that has provided the impetus and main idea for my current writing, and much of the likely future content of this blog.

The magnetism of the beauty and glory of Christ draws men and women to him. Your Christ is not without witnesses. In our struggles we often feel that if we don’t persuade people, then they will forget all about Christ. But they won’t! He is still active, can still work directly. He is not bound to us! In the Old Testament there is no explicit call to mission. The emphasis is predominantly that of magnetism rather than mission: drawing in rather than sending out. The great text is Isaiah 2:2-3:

It shall come to pass in the later days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many people shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

The idea was that the people of God would be so attractive, like a city set on a hill, that the nations would be drawn to Zion by its sheer beauty. In the New Testament, in addition to this evangelism by magnetism, of attraction, there is an evangelism of searching, of going out, but the magnetic model is not thereby superseded. It is still an essential element of the Church’s impact on the world: ‘I, when I am lifted up will draw all people unto me’ (John 12:32).

It is this idea that not only Christ, but the people of God – the Church – might be so “attractive” or “magnetic” that I believe warrants revisiting. At a time when the adjectives most often applied to the church are “irrelevant”, “outmoded”, “boring”, “repellent”, and sometimes even “evil”, what is it that might still compel anyone, let alone an articulate educated person, to join the Church? And in a post-pandemic environment where many of those who have had a past affiliation with the church struggle to identify anything of true worth that might renew their commitment, what might make them persist as a member?

As for me, I remain because I still find elements within the life of the church compelling; attractive if you like. Even in the midst of catastrophic decline, even at a time when many look at the church and see neither a compelling vision nor, in fact, the loving face of Jesus, there remains enough left to point me to Christ, and it is Christ that I seek. There is still a sufficient remnant of the beauty of the Church’s story which attracted me in the first place, even if today I often find myself wondering whether a curious person peering in from outside could be similarly moved.