Video for July 10th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I was given this rather fetching football shirt by a group of young people from Brazil who visited the Palace on Monday of this week. I have to be rather circumspect about my allegiance to Brighton and Hove Albion around here. They knocked Hereford out of the football league in 1996, and memories are long. You couldn’t imagine a more different trajectory for the team since then.
There were around thirty of the youngsters from Brazil on the visit. I hosted them at the Palace; I shared a bit about the history of the diocese and the funny beast that is the Church of England, and they asked some searching and perceptive questions. In my experience, and Monday was no exception, young Christians have a healthy passion and commitment. They tend to look at situations and ask why things couldn’t be different rather than accept the status quo. They were curious about the low level of Christian allegiance in the UK and wondered why so few young people here have any connection to the church. They had some good ideas about how we should try to reach children first and then walk with them into adulthood. At the end of their time, they prayed passionately for the young people of our diocese.
Their question about the low level of Christian attachment in the UK and why that was is a question we need to address if the church is to have a future. The Church of England as an established church is particularly vulnerable to a loss of cultural re-enforcement. The statistics are revealing. Up until the early 1980’s the average Anglican was the same age as the general population at 41. That has remained unchanged for decades. But since then, the age average has diverged. The average age in the UK is now 47, but the average Anglican is 62. The beginnings of the divergence coincide with the adoption of widespread Sunday trading and particularly the shift of young people’s sport from a Saturday to a Sunday morning. It’s a brave parent who will deny their sports mad children if the alternative is going to church. It possibly explains why the majority of young Christians are girls. We have also been far less successful in passing on the faith to the next generation than have our Muslim neighbours. About 50% of the children of Christian parents continue to actively practice their faith into adulthood. Atheists are much more successful in passing on theirs!
The widespread adoption of Messy Church, Forest Church and our Youth Hubs meeting at times other than Sunday morning is an expression of the imagination and commitment of people in our churches to reach children and young people with the Gospel. If you were starting afresh in our current cultural moment with the intention of spreading the good news of Jesus, you wouldn’t meet on a Sunday morning; Sunday afternoon perhaps, or like our catholic friends the first mass of Sunday at six in the evening on a Saturday would definitely be more accessible.
I believe there are some signs of a resurgence in spiritual interest in young people. I think talk of the ‘quiet revival’ is over done outside urban areas, but people even in the diocese of Hereford do report a slow trickle of people just turning up, in many cases clearly stirred by the Holy Spirit. I’ve confirmed several such younger people over the last year. This may present us with a Kairos moment. Are we going to expect such spiritual seekers to conform to the pattern we like or are we going to be sufficiently hospitable to be flexible in our approach. When people come to the Palace to eat, we always enquire about their dietary needs. If someone is allergic to gluten, we don’t make them eat doughy bread! William Temple said, “t he church is the only organisation that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not yet its members”. Will we embrace that challenge for ourselves? I know that there won’t be one size fits all in the church in the future, but I am convinced it will be marked by the values we are seeking as part of our diocesan strategy; those of Christlikeness, prayerfulness and engagement. It will be marked by mutual love, and it will be known for its hospitality and welcome. Will we have the courage to set aside our own preferences to make that possible?
+Richard