Sunday, October 09, 2005


Level Five Group
@ Greenbelt 2005



Went to Church today ........

CHURCH

The average Anglican is a 24year old African woman. (In most of the world the church is not like it is in England.)

The Church of England is the mother of a worldwide community of churches, the Anglican Communion. (If the mother sometimes seems tired, the daughters are getting stronger every day.)

In C20th England the institutional churches, including the Church of England, have been losing appeal, losing members, losing influence. (At the same time, the Anglican Church has experienced unprecedented growth. It is growing by 1000 members a week.)

In Asia at the turn of the century, there were less than a million baptised Anglicans, now there are more than 6million; in Latin America the figure has jumped from 700,000 to 900,000; in North America from 2m to 3m, in Europe, from 24m to 26m. And then there's Africa. Noticed a slip in attendance at Choral Evensong recently? Take heart from Africa. In 1900 the continent
boasted 369,430 baptised Anglicans. By the year 2000, the figure will be 31,571,690.

Still, Church isn't about numbers. In many parts of the world the social and moral contribution of the church far outweighs its membership. In some places its influence is inestimable. In Palestine for example, the Anglican Church has only 6500 members - not many more than Holy Trinity Brompton. It is also a minority community squeezed between Moslem and Jewish majorities. Yet here the Anglican Church runs 31 different institutions from schools and hospitals to orphanages. However unrewarding and fragile being Church might sometimes seem where you are, the Church is not just you. We are members together of a global communion.
'The Church,' said the Salvadoran martyr Bishop Oscar Romero, 'is all of you.'


And the average Anglican is a 24year old African woman.

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