Confused (then my work is done)? Let me explain.
In the nineteenth century industrialisation drew many from the rural areas into the town and these towns grew accordingly. The tensions created by the expressions 'All England should be Christian' and 'a Vicar in every village' brought new churches into being to serve the new communities in the towns and cities, for the new communities in the expanding areas were surely villages by another namer (and in a different setting). As new communities were settled, new churches were built to serve them. The reality was that even in the 1800's Church was a middle-class affair (around 40-45% of the population went and the mission field was the inner city working class (18-20%) and so we built and worked. But the halcyon days of churchgoing were, like Titanic and it's sentimental, nostalgic tosh, never a reality.
Wearing rural dean and missioner hats I have been looking at some of the churches in the expanse that is the West Midlands and find that there are some places with a church building and little or no community as the tide which brought workers has ebbed leaving an empty expanse of nothing and no one. Other places I look at in the de-industrialised areas find me bumping into church building after church building with some of these areas have lost the industry and the houses which houses the workers whilst others are now surrounded by people of other faiths (a very different discussion). Outside of the major conurbations I find lots of rural churches which no longer have any substantial resident community (due to 'incomers' who appear on a Friday and leave Sunday afternoon, commuters and the demise of the estates and tenant farmers and the growth of larger, more efficient conglomerates).
One of the interesting ways of looking at a community is that of asking where it 'looks' to. Some of the communities that I have (wrongly) assumed might be considered to be part of a whole actually 'look' to different places than those I have assumed and some, rather sadly, look nowhere. They are merely remnants of a bygone age and are enigmatic creatures. They exist for themselves and because they can pay are likely to remain and yet as they do the money and mission in others places is absorbed (or perhaps influenced is a better word) by their existence and so they hamper rather than extend the work of being Church.
So here we are. A quick splurge onto the screen and a throwing of all my thoughts and internal dialogues out into the open with the reality that regardless of efficacy or missional thinking, there will always be opposition to closing churches (quite rightly so) but not always for the right reasons (which is of course wrong) and some just need to be rationalised and reduced (and some need to be opened too!).
Here's photograph of the West Midlands - each red dot is a place of worship:
I look forward to your comments.
pax