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The Antiques Road Show
I view my wife's keen attention to the myriad antiques programmes on the television with some alarm. Sometimes I fear that she is trying to find out how much she could sell me for. In church terms, I am fairly young. Peering at the Sunday congregation, I form the impression that they make the Over Sixties' Club look like a youth organisation. This is not to denigrate them, the older something is, the more valuable it becomes. It is not the age of the congregation which worries me, it is the size. Quite often the numbers are so derisory as to give me an attack of black despair.
It has been known for there to be as many present in church on a Friday as there are on a Sunday morning. This is not a modern phenomenon, Christians were meeting on weekdays when Saint Paul's day job was making mobile homes.
What the Sunday morning attenders do not see, and they must be as depressed as I am about the sparse numbers, is what happened on the day before. Saturdays in summer are wedding days. Contrary to popular opinion, young people do still come to church to be married. The guests arrive, the girls flimsily clad in whispy frocks and the young men in unfamiliarly smart suits, clutching digital cameras and boxes of confetti, chattering and shuffling in the pews. For them church is a new experience and we try to make it as attractive and happy as is possible, issuing death threats to anyone who dares to even think about popping a flash bulb, and bellowing at them for their lack of singing ability.
What these excited crowds of people who use our churches for weddings and the numerous baptisms do not take into account is that the buildings are there for their pleasure because the small number of people, young and old, who make the effort to turn out week in and week out, in all weathers, and often when they are not feeling in the best of health, keep them open. It is their enduring faith, their money and their perseverance which keeps the church alive. They are an example to a younger generation. When those young people are old enough to begin coming to church it will still be there because of the ancient relics who have kept it going. To them we owe a debt of gratitude.
May God bless you all, Fr Allan
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