Like the church in many parts of the world, the Anglican church in Wales has seen a pattern of decreasing church and the shuttering of buildings. Rapid industrial changes saw traditional industries shrink, changing the pattern of life in the country. This combination of factors has led to a “vanishing culture,” said Archbishop Andy John, the Primate of Wales and Bishop of Bangor. He made the comments meeting with the clergy of Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver on Wednesday May 28. He is in the city at the invitation of Archbishop John Stephens and will give a keynote address at the 123rd Session of the Synod of the Diocese of New Westminister May 30 and 31.
Archbishop John said the church has disappeared from spaces where it traditionally had a presence. Concretely, he said most chapels in the country have either collapsed or have become homes. The archbishop’s wife, the Rev. Naomi Starkey, is a vicar in the Diocese of Bangor. She said she serves six different parishes, but between those six sites there are 35 people. While congregations realize their parishes are shrinking, and recognize the need to try new things, having the time to launch new initiatives and the people with energy and ability to support those new iniatives is a serious challenge. “What do you have to stop doing in order to do those new things?” she said.
Despite the seemingly bleak landscape for the future of the church in Wales, Archbishop John sees opportunities. He pointed to what he called a “quiet revival among Generation Z” and young people for whom “secularism hasn’t delivered.” As in many places in the western world, young people incur significant student debt if they wish to get an education and aspire to a profession, the cost of housing pushes the idea of owning a home further and further away, and leads them to put off having children. The result is a generation disenchanted with the world of today.
The driving question he poses is “what does the Church in Wales have to say to Wales today?”
Fortunately, the church’s governance structure is different from that of the Church of England. Which means the Church of Wales can make changes to how it operates relatively quickly, in order to offer that answer to the Wales of today.
“Change is good. It means it we are responding to the needs of today. No change means being moribund,” he said.
Aside from releasing £100,000 in grant funding to help churches “do mission differently,” the institutional church has not held back from imagining new ways to be prophetic and pastoral to the wider civic community.
Verity Sterling, Executive Assistant to the Archbishop, shared the experience of helping organize a summit with community organizations, experts, and government about the rivers in Wales. “out of all the waterways in Wales, one one is considered not unsafe,” the archbishop said. Sterling recalled conversations she had with government officials ahead of the summit, in which some wondered “why is the church sticking its nose in things it has no business sticking its nose into?” Yet, the Church in Wales manged to offer a safe space for stakeholders to gather. First Minister Eluned Morgan attended the summit. The Welsh government later acknowledged the recommendations that came out of the summit and said it was finding ways to take certain recommendations into account in its policies.
The archbishop said anything that affects the life of the people of Wales is something the church in Wales needs to be attuned to and engaged in.
That does not, however, mean turning one’s back on what came before. It mean recognizing what came before, and what sparks curiosity, “People are still drawn by the history of our buildings and holy people, they want to touch that and be different as a result of it” whether they meet Jesus by learning about the holy saints depicted in a church building, or by seeing the church of today speaking out about the struggles of the people of today.