That is a very valid question. Let us be honest, it really is. We ask you all to be part of setting up and catering and worship and many of you are involved in some role most weeks.
But why is the buy-in so high?
Recently I sat down and tried to analyse this. Here is what I found.
As things stand right now, just to keep things “ticking over” we have around 1.5 roles per member of SVC. That doesn’t include outreach stuff like Little Lullabies or CAP or Church@coffee#1. That is just to maintain what we have. (if you include outreach if goes up to around 1.9 roles per member.
That is a lot, as I am sure you will agree. In reality that works out to an average of just over 7 hours per head per month. If you are involved with kids’ ministry, Rock or lead a housegroup this is closer to 9 hours a month, if you are not, then it is actually only around 3.5 hours a month.
In an “average” church in the UK 20% of the church do 80% of the work. If we went back to a system of teams and thus, inevitably, reverted to this ratio then 20-25 people would be averaging around 35-40 hours a month.
Yes, but why is there so much to do?
Another good question.
40% of churches in the UK have no children at all. Most of those with children have a handful. Southampton Vineyard is 50% children. That’s right. Half.
According a recent CofE study – “Church Growth Research” – a “high” ratio of children to adults is considered to be “more than 20% children”.
I have literally no model for what we have. Anywhere.
We have around 100 adults (using the term loosely – over 16 years old) but, effectively, we have the same number of children as a “normal” church of 500 adults (by which I mean, a church with a “high” ratio of children).
There are 60 roles for running kids and youth ministry at SVC! That is the minimum we can legally and sanely get by with. If there were 500 of us then that would not be too much of an issue, but when there are 100 of you it is.
Like it or not, children create a huge amount of the workload, whether at home or in a church. Trust me, I have three boys. That is just the way it is. The unfortunate thing is that that workload is taken up mainly by parents with small children who are already tired from parenting.
So what is the solution?
I have absolutely no idea.
(Apart from Bromide tea, but even that is closing the door after the horse has bolted!)
I was recently asked, “what is the main strength and the main weakness of your church?”
That’s easy.
The main strength is that we are 50% children.
They have an opportunity that almost no other Christian children in the UK have. What an incredible and exciting privilege this is for us to be part of! It is unprecedented. For years I was involved in a Christian youth camp and every year it was the same story over and over from so many different children – “I am thirty years younger than anyone else in my church”. This is off the chart. This is something totally “epic”, as the kids would say.
The main weakness is that we are 50% children.
The workload and commitment from people has to be really high and it is really tiring. Often visiting people, or members, without children feel as though they do not have peers here. Having this many kids is hard work. It is hard to motivate people to get involved in things because we are all tired. Its exhausting.
BUT…
I refuse to look at the children in SVC as a “problem”, because, actually it is an incredible thing! The kids of SVC have an experience of church which is unique. They are growing up within an excellent kids’ ministry with loads of friends around them. In five or ten years’ time, we will have a very different picture and those kids will look back at this time as foundational. If they go from here to other parts of the country, they will take what they have learned and experienced and impact others. If they stay, they will become part of building something here.
It is what it is.
We have loads of kids. It makes a lot of work.
We can choose to see this as an issue or we can choose to see this as a privilege and unique opportunity. I have to keep reminding myself of this because it is not easy.
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