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How long is a piece of string
If you believed what the newspapers reported you would be surprised if you turned up at any church in England and found a single soul there, not even the Vicar and the harmonium player. The places, we are led to understand, are deserted, the faith is not being taught to our young, and the whole country is in a state of irreversible spiritual decline.
Look at us, for example. The biggest housing estate in North Yorkshire and our usual attendance on a Sunday is a mere fifty-five adults and four children. That is a fact. That our communicant numbers average out at about eighty-two a week is puzzling. That is because we don't just open on a Sunday. What a surprise! The other factor which our detractors gloss over is that not everybody comes every single week. There have been months when our congregation size regularly hit the hundred mark and there have been weekdays (which nobody counts) when the churches have been packed. Honest.
We have no Sunday School, no Youth Club, no work at all with young people, on paper that is. The truth is that I take assemblies in three junior schools and an infant school on a regular basis. Some weeks I seem to be in school more often than some of the pupils.
The clergy, they say, are remote figures, out of touch with the general population. At Christmass (when church attendance here nearly hit the two hundred mark) this family was inundated with gifts. We were profoundly moved at being so appreciated by so many people throughout the community.
February is the time of Candlemas, when we recall the visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the Temple for her purification. Well, the young mothers are still coming to our churches with their children for baptisms and for the Thanksgiving for the gift of a child. Couples are queuing up to be married and I had some lovely Christmas cards from some of those who I married in the past. If we rely on the bald statistics of how many are in church on a "normal" Sunday (one when it is raining and influenza is raging) we do not have a true picture of how buoyant the faith still is in England's green and pleasant land.
May God bless you all, Fr Allan
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