Front-End Realities

Anglican churches have complicated systems of governance and oversight. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just what happens when an institution has existed for several hundred years - I'm not sure that it's possible to be old, big and yet still simple [insert joke here]. However, one of the issues that can arise in complex organisations is that those who become wrapped up the complexity of the back-end can lose sight of the front-end; the regular punter's experience of the local church. When a visitor walks of the street and into an Anglican church, chances are that they neither know nor care much about the machinery of Anglicanism. The local church needs to be really keyed into what matters to them as much as what matters to the institutionally-savvy.

I think lots of church leaders get this, but it is still interesting to stop and ask what actually matters in people's experiences of church on Sunday. I've heard somewhere that what makes the biggest initial impact is the 'welcome-toilets-kids' triplet. That is, while some churches may think that it's the quality of their liturgy or faithfulness of their preaching that draws the crowds, the experiential reality is that visitors assess the church on the basis of who says g'day, the cleanliness of the toilets and whether there's a safe kids' program that their children seem to enjoy. None of this is to say that we should therefore ignore liturgy and preaching, but just that it may be naive to think that other factors aren't also important for people who are checking churches out.

But then what about long-termers? What is it that shapes people's long-term perspective and long-term commitment to a particular local church? What controlable factors contribute to the on-the-ground reality of some members being passionately committed and others being only half-hearted? I'm happy for this to be disputed but I think there are five things: preaching, music, infrastructure, community and leadership.

- Good preaching is something that does make a real difference to lots of people - especially Gen X and younger. There is a real hunger for solid, applied, doctrinal Bible teaching out there and when there's so much good stuff available on line, a local church really needs to attend to this to keep committed believers engaged.

- Music is emotionally very powerful and crummy music really turns people off. If people want to sing, they need music that they can sing to. When building up music teams, lots of churches hold 'participation' as a key value - ie. whoever wants to express their musical gifts should be able to. But while there's something good in this, these days more Anglican churches are appointing semi-professional music directors in acknowledgement of the reality that many congregation members really appreciate being able to sing to well-played music.

- Without moving into the idea of 'sacred space', it's also true that the infrastructure of a local church leaves a significant imprint on the mind of the members. Location, facilities, style, etc all make a difference to how much it really feels like 'home'. Inattention to all this will have a negative effect.

- Community is absolutely critical. There are churches that don't aim for much in the way of community, but for many, many people, church is their third place and the relationships formed there - or the relationships that drew them there in the first place - are highly significant. A local church will find it hard to have long-standing commitment if community life is thin.

- And leadership always makes a difference. A real respect for and connection with the faces up the front is essential. Good back-end management is important, but in local churches, the direct experience of leadership through the preaching and personal pastoring will have a far greater impression on the  members.

My contention is that the more that these five are locked down and healthy, the more the members will love their local church. Conversely, the fewer of these things that are in good shape, the looser the bond between the institution and its people.

So how do Anglicans go? Variably of course. Using an extremely coarse grid, we could say that evangelical Anglicans major on preaching, charismatic Anglicans on music, traditional Anglicans on music and infrastructure and liberal Anglicans on community. But this blunt characterisation probably offends all these groups as the reality is that every breed of Anglican focusses on all of these things at least to some extent - and sometimes it's really just the style rather than the quality that differs between different local churches.

Perhaps more useful than thinking about who is best at what would be for each local Anglican church to keep thinking about which of these five areas they could strengthen in. How could the preaching and music be improved? Is the infrastructure suitable and being well used and well kept? What could be done to foster community interactions? In what ways can the leaders connect more with the congregations? As they continually build up strength in these front-end experiential practicalities (all of which have theological importance too), I believe local churches will see their members become more keenly committed.