Children Present and Absent

Messy Church at Swanvale Halt has been severely impacted by the pandemic, though we aren't entirely sure why this should be. Our numbers were steady right up to the very last gathering in March 2020, and now we are getting roughly half what we could expect before the Great Disruption. Some attending now are new, some are the families who were coming before, but there are just fewer of them. Saturday's theme of 'Holy Fire' chosen by the team was a bit of a challenge to try and illustrate in my worship time, but I gave it a go and I think everyone was happy even if I didn't end up actually lighting a fire. Today Poppy (rather appropriately) joined the serving team for Remembrance Sunday and her plus two children present with another family meant we had more minors present at an ordinary Sunday mass than for a long time.

We've long since given up trying to do any traditional Sunday-School-type children's work, having tried so many configurations over the years. On Wednesday my colleagues in the Deanery Chapter shared their woes in the same area. Even the big, well-organised evangelical Tophill finds that its numbers of children have halved since the pandemic, and its vacant children's and families worker position is one of thirty-seven across the diocese. At Caringfield Rector Rebecca can't find anyone to fill her similar job, despite offering to juggle it to fit applicants who won't work with primary school children, or secondary, or work this or that time. She's propping up all her groups herself by doing all the preparation and organisation: 'I have just enough to make these groups viable in the hope that eventually someone will take them on before I go under'. At Wormton they had a very flourishing Sunday School but now can't tell whether they will get a dozen children or two, and I didn't feel like warning them that's exactly what happened to us: after few weeks where the children themselves can't be sure any more than a couple will be there, they will stop wanting to come at all. It's no fun with just the two of you, or even three. Meanwhile what parents expect, my colleagues think, is the level of children's work they are used to from schools, and there are very, very few churches who can provide that. 'Our outreach has gone back by ten years', said the vicar of Wormton. I think we are moving into a new and very different world, and there will be no going back to the old one at all - but that nobody really knows what the new will be like.