Can Gen Z save a C of E it barely knows?
by Christopher Landau, Church Times:
The lack of attention to liturgy in some of the larger urban churches is a cause for concern.
THE demographic reality facing many parishes is stark. Questions about future viability are becoming urgent. For more than 40 years, Anglicans in England have been growing progressively older than the population from which they are drawn.
As the most recent official Statistics for Mission noted: “It continues to be the case that people aged 70 and over make up a considerably larger proportion of the Church of England’s Worshipping Community than of the population of England” (News, 9 December 2022).
When churches buck this trend, even the mainstream media take an interest. Last month, it was the Telegraph that asked “Could Gen Z save the Church of England?”. Abigail Buchanan, who described herself as “an anomalous Gen Z churchgoer”, reported on the thriving younger congregations of some larger urban churches, many of them associated with Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB).
What fascinates me is that such churches are increasingly becoming non-liturgical. Their services might be tightly structured, but not in a way envisaged by the authors of Common Worship. Even the Service of the Word’s gentle nudges towards Anglican uniformity are frequently disregarded: corporate confession and absolution are unlikely; the collect is probably absent; even the Lord’s Prayer might be left unsaid.
In its place comes the tripartite form that characterises acts of worship in the Vineyard movement, whose founder, John Wimber, so influenced both New Wine and HTB: “Worship, teaching, ministry.” In other words, an extended time of contemporary sung worship, followed by a talk (still prefaced by a Bible reading, it is to be hoped), and ending with opportunities for personal prayer ministry.
The popularity of Sunday worship at such churches is undeniable, and I have heard more than one bishop suggest that Anglican norms are being departed from as a result of a generous interpretation of Canon B5, Of the Discretion of Ministers in Conduct of Public Prayer. But, for me, the question concerns how much such churches are able to identify with the reality of wider Anglican life and worship — and the implications of this for the unity of the Church.
[…] The generation that pioneered Charismatic renewal had been rooted in the Prayer Book and knew what it was departing from. There is now at least one generation of Anglican worshippers who barely appreciate the liturgical norms of the tradition of which they are formally part. For the sake of the future of the whole Church, we surely need to ask whether local freedoms are undermining national unity.
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