The "Residential Village Church"

As I am winding up my association with Bay of Islands Parish and its long history of Local Shared Ministry, I can’t help reflecting on the congregation we had at Russell.

For more than two decades, leaders from Paihia have crossed the Bay to bring a weekly service to the small membership there. None of them was ever called to the Ministry Team. They did not participate in Parish Council Meetings and rarely joined in parish social events. But they faithfully turned up Sunday by Sunday even as the congregation gracefully dwindled through death.

Those who coin names for styles of churches might have called them a “Hospice Church”. They couldn’t do much for themselves but we ministered to them and supported them as they saw out their days as a congregation. 

Now I hear that one or two are suggesting our Paihia congregation is going the same way. True, they’ve suffered losses, too—and not all by the natural processes of death and dying. And as Bev and I leave to move nearer to family and a smaller home there are serious questions about who will do some of things that we have done as ordinary members of the congregation. It is a scary time for the special friends we leave behind.

But, if Paihia is to lie down and declare itself a Hospice Church so that everyone can just sit there on Sundays and be looked after, where are the people who will come from outside to minister to it?

A better model, from my personal experience over these past weeks, is what I will call the “Residential Village Church”. A residential village is also a place where people will probably see out their lives. But it is nothing like a hospice. It’s full of participants who are young in heart and mind, who are active in their communities, who are involved in the village’s affairs and who are dedicated to making the most of their lives. If they can’t add years to their lives they are certainly putting life into their years.

That seems to me to be the model for the small, ageing church. It won’t attempt to do all the stuff that more vigorous churches do. It will look for the things it can do best and it will put its limited energies into what produces the most results. It will develop its own spirit and ethos and lifestyle.

Local Shared Ministry may still be the model that enables this kind of life to flow. It will call people to do things they didn’t know they could do. It will enable every member to feel a vital part of what is going on. It will challenge but it will also encourage. And it will bring pleasure and strength to its members and its community.