Church of England Increasingly Dropping Word ‘Church’ to Be More ‘Modern’

The Church of England is increasingly dropping the word “church” in favour of “relevant and modern-sounding” descriptions such as “community”, a new study suggests.

The Anglican church appears to be increasingly avoiding the word “church” when discussing the creation of new worshipping communities and congregations, a report has found.

The Centre for Church Planting Theology and Research looked at the language used by 11 dioceses to describe new churches.

The creation of a new church group is traditionally referred to as a “church plant”. But the report found that while 900 new churches had been started by the dioceses in the past decade, none had used the phrase “church plant” as the primary way to describe the project.

The report’s author, Rev Dr Will Foulger, vicar of St Nicholas in Durham, found that six of the 11 dioceses used the language of “worship” in their main descriptor of new church projects, two used “congregation”, and seven used “community”.

Dr Giles Fraser, vicar of St Anne’s, Kew, told The Telegraph that this apparent reluctance to use the word “church” reflects “a misplaced desire to be relevant and modern-sounding”.

In an article on UnHerd, Dr Fraser said that it was as if, “the Church has given up on church. Not since Prince became Squiggle has there been such a daft revision.”

He warned that embracing these new forms of worship had been “ruinously expensive” for the Church, cautioning that the push for modernisation should not come at the expense of traditional parish churches.

The report found that 10 of the 11 dioceses studied “used the language of ‘culture change’ to describe the place of new things within the dioceses.”

Dr Foulger suggested that the Church of England might be moving away from using the word “church” as part of a cultural rejuvenation.

He said that the word “church” was not comprehensive enough “to describe what it is that these dioceses have been starting”, adding that the phrase “new things” might be more appropriate.

A spokesman for the Church of England told The Telegraph that one reason why the word “church” appears less often in description of “new worshipping communities” is that these forms of worship can exist outside of traditional bricks-and-mortar churches.

Examples of these new communities have cropped up across the country.

At St Barnabas in Ealing a “Shh free” mass is on offer to welcome families with young children, while the “silent disco worship” at All Hallows Bow in east London – a new congregation founded within an existing church – attracts young adults.

Outdoor worshipping

The Diocese of Worcester, meanwhile, has embraced outdoor worshipping, with members of the churches in the Teme Valley South replacing church services with countryside walks, stopping for Bible reading and prayer along the way.

“These communities often meet in existing church buildings, attracting additional worshippers alongside traditional congregations, but they are as much ‘church’ as any other form of worship,” a Church of England spokesman said.

He added that a church is defined in theological terms as “a community of people who, together, live in relationship with God through Jesus Christ”.

In his report, Dr Foulger acknowledged that this change in language by the Church is “forcing us to redefine what we think a church is in the Church of England”.

He also recognised that the debate had “left certain parts of the Church – for whom fidelity to ecclesial forms and practices is central – feeling outside of the planting conversation”.

Since 2014 the Church Commissioners have awarded £82.7 million to dioceses to be used for the purpose of starting new churches and religious communities.

This investment is set to continue. In 2021, the Church of England announced plans to establish more than 10,000 new worshipping communities over the next decade.

A spokesman for the Church of England defended its funding record in parish churches, stating that “significant investment has supported parish renewals, front-line ministry roles, and children’s and youth workers across various church traditions”.

Source: The Telegraph