Future holds renewal and demise for Methodists, says president

The future holds a mixed bag of renewal and demise for Methodists in the UK, the denomination's President the Rev Martyn Atkins predicted on Saturday.

Speaking during the Pentecost Festival in central London over the weekend, Atkins admitted that the denomination faced some tough challenges including a serious drop in the number of members entering Methodist circuits - the groups of Methodist churches served by teams of ministers.

A report in The Times last week cited controversial forecasts from think tank Christian Research predicting that the number of Sunday churchgoers would drop to below 900,000 by 2050 if current rates of decline continue.

Atkins said, however, that he was not alarmed in the face of such statistics, saying that they failed to take into account the growing numbers of Christians who are worshipping outside the traditional Sunday service model. Such new forms of church attendance include rising numbers worshipping at house and cell churches, mid-week worship services, Fresh Expressions of church, youth conferences and events like Pentecost Festival.

"One of the things we are beginning to see is that an increasing minority of Methodists are finding the focus of their Christian life nurtured in environments that are different from the kinds of congregations that produce the statistics in last Thursday's Times," he told the audience.

Atkins acknowledged, however, that attendance patterns across the Methodist Church were extremely diverse and that some churches adverse to change were indeed likely to become extinct.

"There is an enormous amount of new energy and health and excitement going on in our Connection alongside a huge amount of nominality and jadedness. We really are a mixed constituency in that respect," he said. "There is the Methodism that is tired, jaded, increasingly disconnected from the world in which it lives."

Such churches are "poor models of inherited traditional church", he continued.

"I started the year feeling that there was no hope for such churches, that they are going to become extinct, and I end the year ever more convinced that that is the case.

"If Methodism equals the worst kind of poor, nominal, tired, uninnovative, unwelcoming, unfriendly, Protestant, cerebral ghetto...then there is no hope for renewal, none at all. Where churches are too much like that there is consistent evidence that they will not survive."

Atkins also said he was aware of the challenges being presented to Methodism by the growing number of Christians attracted to worship within larger churches, a relatively new development occurring alongside the rising popularity of small house and cell churches across the UK.

"About 80 per cent of our churches are the wrong sort," he conceded. "The fact is that most people want to go to a church where something's happening. Success breeds success...Eighty per cent of Methodism is slap bang in the middle of those two phenomena."

Despite the difficulties, Atkins said he remained "very energised" about the future of Methodism.

He encouraged more churches to develop their children's and youth work as a means of attracting more people.

"If you've got a church that says, 'We've got no young people, as soon as we've got some we'll provide something for them,' the likelihood is that things will stay as they are. If you are a church that's got none [young people] and you begin to put time, energy, resources and advertising into running things, you stand a greater chance of getting some."

Atkins also asked Methodists to return to their missionary roots.

"One of the things I have been trying to say this year is just pause long enough to ask, 'Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? Who are we?' These are seminal questions for potential renewal.

"I'm trying to say that Methodism is a missionary movement in its guts and DNA. You can't lose that or conveniently forget that and be truly and authentically Methodist."

Atkins continued by warning that so long as Methodism "forgets or live in a way that belies the fact that it is a missionary movement then I think it moves towards extinction, if not numerically, then of its usefulness within God's purposes anyway".

"While Methodism rediscovers that it is to be a missionary movement offering Christ, proclaiming that Christ died for all ...holding a view of holiness that is intensely personal but deliberately communitarian, if it rediscovers in the 21st century what that looks like and begins to embody it, you can forget about extinction."

He concluded by urging Methodists not to focus on survival or preservation as its core purpose.

"Is Methodism heading for extinction? Some parts of Methodism, yes. Other parts of Methodism, no," he said.

"The passage in the Gospel, where it says that those who try to hold onto their lives will lose them, but those who give their lives for My sake or the Gospel will find them, works denominationally. If we try and hold on like some preservation society for a great, wonderful era then we will move towards extinction.

"If we lose ourselves in pursuit of a new discovery of who we are in our guts and our ecclesial genes, extinction won't happen. It will simply become a non-thought through issue because we will be too busy being the people that God wants us to be."