THE CHURCH IN A MINING COMMUNITY

Rev Geoff Kimber

In 1998, at the diocesan clergy day to meet the new bishop, I was asked to do a short presentation on failure. It arose from my experience of five years working in an ex-coalmining community. We had worked ceaselessly with the church, opening a parent and toddler group, establishing a 4-8’s group, a 9-14 youth group, holiday bible club, alpha in the local pub, a new family service, an open baptism policy - everything the handbooks suggested. At the end the church had halved in size - from 30 to 15 and was still shrinking. All the children’s activities were heavily subscribed and oversubscribed, the baptism visits were very cheerfully received, but there seemed to be an invisible line which no one would cross in their relationship with the church – from client status, to membership and Sunday attendance. We brought in all the experts – diocesan advisers, CPAS, evangelistic friends, established routines of prayer and prayer walking, even consulted the diocesan exorcist, and I asked my self endlessly: was it me - my personality or my style of churchmanship?

Finally I decided to research what was going on, and with diocesan approval enrolled to do a part-time M.Phil at Birmingham. My thesis is the result. It is based on interviews with the people in the village concerning the history of the past hundred years since the coming of the pit, and on their current attitudes to church and spirituality. What came out was a fascinating story.

My background is in mission in Africa, and I used cross cultural models to understand what was going on. In a 1998 issue of World Pulse Stan Guthrie lists four basic categories of resistance to the church and the gospel: cultural, theological, nationalistic/ethnic, and political. In other words people may be unresponsive to the church and its message for any one of four reasons: they feel that it is not their way (cultural), not what they believe (theological), not their kind of people (ethnic) or not in their best interests (political). I analysed my material according to three of these categories.

1. The ethnic resistance – the church is not our kind of people

From very early on I was struck by the incredible immobility of the village - nobody wanted to leave. Children settled close to their parents, possibly in the same street. Really adventurous types moved into the local town three miles away. I began to realise that this immobility was not just geographical. It was academic – hardly anyone went into higher education. It was intellectual – a preference for shared community attitudes and a distrust of private opinions. It was also spiritual – a reluctance to step out from the community and be involved with the church. At the heart was a feeling that they were a tribe with loyalties to each other, and the church was not part of that tribe. This meant that however much they might like the vicar, enjoy the services and appreciate what the church was doing, at the end they knew who they were – part of a group who did not go to church. Church was not a place for “people like us.”

2. The theological barrier – not what we believe

Many people in the village will tell me “I’m not religious”. I used to think that this meant they had no religious beliefs. I now know this means they practice no formal religion. Their beliefs however are very strong. Nearly all believe in God, they believe strongly in the supernatural, and the centre of their religious practices is the church. Well not quite - actually it is the churchyard. We zealous church members see the church as the symbol of our risen Lord, the place of new life, and the graveyard as a place of death and mortality. The village sees things the opposite way round: the church is that dark place that one only enters in times of grief and which many avoid entering because of the sad memories, while the graveyard is the place of continuing relationship with the dead, of love and life and hope. Many are there weekly practising their religion of adoration, with its rituals of flowers and water, stone cleaning and grass trimming. They also take time to pray, but often those prayers are not to God but to the deceased - some perceive the dead as answering those prayers. There is a theology of death: that great working men’s club in the sky where “our Bill” is telling his dad all about “our new baby”. The place where we meet again with all the family, those we have known on earth and those we have never met.

I believe that the gospel that offers eternal life through faith in Christ threatens this world view, making the future life less certain of outcome, and less attractive in nature than the great family reunion theology.

3. The cultural barrier – not our way of thinking and speaking

Finally I looked at epistemology and language. I discovered that this is a community which, in Piaget’s terms, is concrete operational rather than formal operational in its thinking. They prefer the concrete to the abstract, the known to the unknown, the particular to the general. In fact they seem to have an epistemology that is totally experience based, “I know what I know” ie. I know what I have experienced. To this is added the testimony of those they know around them. All other information is suspect and probably irrelevant so there is nothing worth learning from books. A church that is abstract and logical in its thinking and book-based is therefore constantly felt to be irrelevant. I have had to completely re-learn how to preach, using story, informality, and trying to earth things in the local experience. I have had to jettison the Pauline exegetical approach and return (surprise, surprise!) to the methods of Jesus, based on story, parable and practical application.

Since my presentation on failure, two things have happened. Firstly the research has helped me to see what it is we are dealing with in this village. Secondly, and in a way separately, a new church has grown up in the old village, built not on overt evangelism, but on pastoral care of the bereaved, a warmth of welcome in the church, Alpha Courses and (amazingly) said BCP worship.

Geoff may be contacted at geoff.kimber@btinertnet.com

This thesis is available as a leaders briefing titled No 17 A Warwickshire Mining Community from us price £9.00 inc p/p please order via our shop under leaders briefing section.

January 2001