Orare est Laborare
We are faced with another steep rise in Parish Share next year: almost 10%. This is partly the penalty for success, as it's calculated by the deanery on the basis of electoral roll numbers (and we have always had an inclusive Roll: lots of people in the community want to 'belong' to the church even though they seldom attend and contribute little or nothing financially) and income (and we have always taken stewardship seriously, encouraging people to renew their pledges and banker's orders each year). The upshot was, as our treasurer told us, that in three years our Parish Share has gone up by 38%, but our planned giving only by 9%.
The PCC discussed this, and the general feeling was that the most important thing to do was pray about it. So it was agreed to have a special time of prayer from 7.30 to 11.30 p.m. which came to be called variously an Evening of Prayer or a Half-Night of Prayer, depending on whether you were an optimist or a pessimist. (Or vice versa.)
This event took place yesterday evening; and well, it was remarkable. The intention was that people should be able to come and go and stay for as long as they could. In the first hour there were about 20 people there, by the end there were 8. Altogether I suppose about 30 people, say a quarter of our main adult congregation(s) were there for some part of the time. Six of us stuck it out for the whole four hours, including Alison and myself. I felt I should no more drop out halfway than a junior officer would have hung back when ordering his troops to go over the top. This is one hard call where the leader has to go first.
In fact it was tiring (very tiring), but not quite the ordeal I had feared. It was even, in a way, exhilarating. There was a tremendous sense of faith, solidarity with each other, mutual care and affection, openness to God, attention to what the church and parish need and should seek, hope and expectation (amidst the anxieties and the real pain some folk are going through). At one point I shared about how I had been feeling quite low recently, and was invited (told?) to stand out in the middle while everyone laid hands on me and prayed for me.
I have never sought or initiated this kind of prayer meeting before, and this one wasn't my idea either. To my mind, the church already prays corporately twice every day - even if I'm the only one there - and three times on Sunday, and whenever and wherever any of its members is praying, besides. I have major problems with anything that suggests that prayer 'works' better (whatever that means) if more of you do it all at once, or for longer, or in your own words instead of the liturgy. But yesterday makes me think that the value of that kind of experience is not that we did something which might have greater leverage with God, but that it would have a big impact on us. Our offering of our time - and some sacrifice of comfort, given the hard pews and cold building - makes us that much more serious about who we are, what we are doing, what we are wanting and seeking as a believing community. Remains to be seen what fruit it will bear in the longer term, or what we (or God) might do as a result, or at any rate after this.
The PCC discussed this, and the general feeling was that the most important thing to do was pray about it. So it was agreed to have a special time of prayer from 7.30 to 11.30 p.m. which came to be called variously an Evening of Prayer or a Half-Night of Prayer, depending on whether you were an optimist or a pessimist. (Or vice versa.)
This event took place yesterday evening; and well, it was remarkable. The intention was that people should be able to come and go and stay for as long as they could. In the first hour there were about 20 people there, by the end there were 8. Altogether I suppose about 30 people, say a quarter of our main adult congregation(s) were there for some part of the time. Six of us stuck it out for the whole four hours, including Alison and myself. I felt I should no more drop out halfway than a junior officer would have hung back when ordering his troops to go over the top. This is one hard call where the leader has to go first.
In fact it was tiring (very tiring), but not quite the ordeal I had feared. It was even, in a way, exhilarating. There was a tremendous sense of faith, solidarity with each other, mutual care and affection, openness to God, attention to what the church and parish need and should seek, hope and expectation (amidst the anxieties and the real pain some folk are going through). At one point I shared about how I had been feeling quite low recently, and was invited (told?) to stand out in the middle while everyone laid hands on me and prayed for me.
I have never sought or initiated this kind of prayer meeting before, and this one wasn't my idea either. To my mind, the church already prays corporately twice every day - even if I'm the only one there - and three times on Sunday, and whenever and wherever any of its members is praying, besides. I have major problems with anything that suggests that prayer 'works' better (whatever that means) if more of you do it all at once, or for longer, or in your own words instead of the liturgy. But yesterday makes me think that the value of that kind of experience is not that we did something which might have greater leverage with God, but that it would have a big impact on us. Our offering of our time - and some sacrifice of comfort, given the hard pews and cold building - makes us that much more serious about who we are, what we are doing, what we are wanting and seeking as a believing community. Remains to be seen what fruit it will bear in the longer term, or what we (or God) might do as a result, or at any rate after this.
posted by Tony at 11/19/2004 07:23:00 pm
1 Comments:
Trouble is, I don't know what 'rich' and 'poor' mean in this context. Cowley deanery has 3 UPAs in it, which means that the non-UPA parishes carry a significantly larger share of the deanery burden. And because we are supposed to be a 'rich' diocese, everything from house prices to pints of beer is enormously more expensive than anywhere else, so that our people (many of them retired on fixed incomes) probably have less disposable income available than in some 'poorer' areas. All I know is that our parish share at £51K next year is 134% of the cost of our own clergy (reckoned at £38K), where in the diocese generally, it was said deaneries (why not therefore parishes?) wouldn't have to pay outside the range of 80-120% of those costs.
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