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.
Story by Janet Eastham
Church
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”.
Dr Giles Fraser: ‘The Church has given up on church. Not since Prince became Squiggle has there been such a daft revision’ – Andrew Crowley
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.