Rites of Passage and Other Mission Opportunities

Couples have to be determined to get married at Swanvale Halt church. This is not because we have a parish policy of making them somersault through a hoop backwards whistling 'The Star Spangled Banner' to qualify, but because it takes a hard-nosed bride to choose a church where the first sight she and her new husband will see as they emerge after their marriage service will be the supermarket across the street. If they have the option of a church set in a field or a nice cobbled street, they tend to go for that (also we have no car park). That's why we only have two weddings this year, one of which has already happened.

In my last year at Lamford I did no fewer than twenty-five weddings, because I was looking after Goremead as well for eight months and we had a good few there. Fifteen at Lamford was probably average. So I was most surprised to hear from Il Rettore the other day that the parish's wedding tally for 2018 is four. This is quite a decline in nine years. Il Rettore wonders whether the fees are putting couples off, as the choir and bells do cost a certain amount as is only fair, but it can't be just that. You can refuse the frills if you want. At Swanvale Halt I offer couples the chance of a choir turning out for a very modest fee, but in nine years the offer has, I think, only been taken up once.

The Church of England has had a number of initiatives over the years - the Wedding Project, the Christening Project, and - yes - even the Funeral Project - to promote best practice in providing these rites of passage. We are supposed to be friendly and welcoming and understand better what it is that people unfamiliar with church may expect and want out of the experience, so that it's as user-friendly and accessible for them as it can be. This is of course good for all sorts of reasons. It hasn't, however, stemmed the catastrophic decline in the numbers of weddings, christenings and funerals most churches conduct. 

I've had plenty of positive feedback from our dealings with the couples who come to us to be married, to baptise their children, or to conduct the funerals of their loved ones. I don't think I've ever had any negative feedback although there have been a couple of rare occasions when I deserved it. It's nice to be appreciated. But I'm not sure it makes any difference, at least not in the short term; I'd doubt whether a single person has ended up attending church as a result of coming to one of the services I've conducted, however good their experience was. 

There is a gulf between how people feel as a result of their lives taking them inside a church building, and incorporating those feelings into altered behaviour. I remember Dr Bones reporting a conversation she'd had with the cleaners at the university department she worked at many years ago. 'If my vicar was like Weepingcross, I'd go to church', one said, and gratifyingly for me the others agreed. 'Have you been to your church?' asked the Dr. No, they hadn't. 'So how do you know your vicar isn't like him?' 'Well, they wouldn't be.' People can discount their own immediate experience in the face of what they think is the universal case, and recast it as an exception. 

Of course each priest doing their best to make people welcome and comfortable in their church - which is virtually all of us - is doing a good thing, eroding gradually whatever negative ideas and stereotypes people may have about Christians and how they behave, but you see what a weight they have to shift. It isn't just the actual attitudes and prejudices people have, but also the kind of experiential exceptionalism which locks those attitudes in.