Measuring church impact
Just been listening to yet another discussion of church attendance figures on the radio. Every time these things are published there is a flurry of comments from either side. On the one hand there are the pundits who shake their heads knowingly and say that this is evidence of the inevitable decline of an anachronistic religion. On the other hand, there are the church spokespeople who say that the figures do not mean what they appear to. On this particular occasion, some have pointed to poor Christmas church attendance on account of bad weather…and sound a little desperate as they do so.
I find this argument, from the Diocese of Portsmouth, a little more persuasive: ‘The impact a parish is having on its local community is only partly measured by the number of people in church for Sunday or midweek services’. Whilst we cannot dismiss attendance figures as irrelevant, there are other scales which might provide a better measure of why (or if) the church matters locally. At this point my thoughts have turned to Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg, who devised a scale for measuring the seismic impact of earthquakes. Although largely superseded now by more sensitive equipment, at the time it led the way. Non -specialists still use it to compare the relative impacts of different earthquakes on their surroundings:
Image: blogspot.com
How big an impact does your church have on its immediate community, I wonder?
