Why Would You Throw Away the Word "Church?"

A Reflection on Going to Church in France as an Anglican

Notre Dame de Laon

Across my feed, a couple of days ago, wandered the news that the Church of England was dropping the word “Church” as being démodé. The piece was from the Telegraph, which I’m not going to pay for, so I dug around and found this from the Christian Post. The C of E, according to the Christian Post, is vigorously “pushing back” against this radical idea reported in the Telegraph that they are getting rid of the word “church” for “new congregations and communities popping up.” The trouble all began with a study called “New Things: A theological investigation into the work of starting new churches across 11 dioceses in the Church of England.” Research, it seems, was perpetrated between “November 2022 and June 2023 in 11 of the CofE’s 42 dioceses.” Here is what the research was like:

The research conducted for the report consisted of interviews with representatives of each diocese following their completion of a questionnaire. Based on the information gathered from the questionnaires and interviews, the Centre for Church Planting and Theology Research discovered that “all 11 dioceses had started new things within the last 10 years, with around 900 new things (on the dioceses’ own terms) started.” 

I have always said, myself, that “things” is a precise theological term the meaning of which is always perfectly obvious to those who choose to understand. 900 Hundred New “Things” must be very exciting. I wonder what those things are:

The report adds: “89% of these are integrated within the existing parish system rather than existing as stand-alone churches. Anecdotally, these new things were seen to be growing in perceived contrast to most inherited churches. This includes 40 new resource churches (brand new churches and churches becoming resource centers).”

Well, this is a little strange. Is the research relying chiefly upon anecdotes? That’s actually my favorite kind of thing. I basically already know something to be true, I just need a few anecdotes to back up my perceptions. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here. I don’t know what’s going on here because this paragraph is pretty muddled. It’s almost as if the C of E wants to be able to show growth of any kind and hope that people will assume the growth is people coming to the place formerly called “church” but because that isn’t the case, a whole lot of clotted cream has to be dashed into the face of the reader as she tries to make sense of it all.