by Roland Ashby
Spouses' Program Communications

"At the turn of the century, over half of all English children attended Sunday School. Today in Britain's Housing Developments only one young person in every 1,000 attends an Anglican Church," the Rev. Wallace Brown told the Spouses' Programme at the Lambeth Conference this week.

One of several speakers in a presentation on mission and evangelism in specific cultural situations, he made the comments as part of a video about a new ministry to Britain's housing developments. "Housing Development Churches across the denominations are tragically infamous as small, inactive congregations," he said.

Problems, he said, included "predominantly aged congregations, very few children and overwhelmed clergy." The younger generation, he warned, "is slipping further and further away from the Church, even though many of them have profound questions and are searching for authentic answers."

There are signs of hope, however. Fr. Brown said his congregation at a housing development in Birmingham, England, had grown "from a small group of elderly ladies to an all-age community of about 250 people."

He attributed this growth to the transforming power of prayer, along with "admitting there really was a problem-and learning to talk about it with others." It also helped to recognize that people on the developments live in a "non-book" culture. "Many churches still thrust three different books at people every time they come to Church."

More than numbers

But growth is more than about numbers, said Jumoke Fashola representing the Church Missionary Society. It can also be about "developing creativity, enduring pain, stretching our understanding . . . trying new things and persistence even when the going is tough."

It is also, she said, about signs of hope. This was evident in an interview she conducted with Victoria Helstrip of the Delhi Brotherhood in India, an organisation offering basic education to abandoned and homeless children.

Ms. Helstrip said, "Amidst the sadness and deprivation there are signs of growth. It's wonderful to discover a child's creativity and imagination is still there when given a chance to flower."

The conference also heard stories about the "true signs of mission" - suffering and reconciliation. Madeleine Kayumba, wife of the Bishop of Kigeme in Rwanda, told the conference that "the people of my country have suffered and we must seek an end to our suffering together. Even today killings continue in some places and people are suspicious and frightened. We women have a vital job to do rebuilding one another and our country in love."

Dancing a story of reconciliation

A group of bishops' wives representing different ethnic groups from Rwanda and Burundi also depicted their story of suffering and reconciliation in song and dance, in which cries of fear were eventually replaced by loving embraces.

Thelma Mehaffy described the work of Women in Faith to bring about reconciliation in Northern Ireland. "Women from the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic Churches have formed joint groups in which they have openly discussed their differences and engaged in a variety of social activities," she said.

The Rev. David Bookless of 'A Rocha,' a Christian international conservation organisation, told the spouses that Christian mission must also grapple with the world's growing environmental problems.

"Christians are called to be stewards of the earth," he said. The high levels of consumption of resources in the West coupled with increases in population make this more urgent than ever, he warned. "One million new people are added to the world's population every four days. By the year 2030 the world's population has been estimated to be 10 billion."

Jumoke Fashola also challenged the Church to seize the opportunities presented by the communications revolution. "The new marketplace is the Internet," she said. "We must as a Church begin to explore the possibilities of this new medium, or we may find ourselves with nothing to say to a whole new generation."