Alan Billings shares his wide experience to help and encourage you in finding the membership the church hasn't so much lost as simply overlooked. Alan shows how the majority of the British public still have an affection and distant attachment to the Anglican Church - they just don't attend on any frequent occasions. But they're still there, still have an interest and need for God and are the largest section of the Church of England. In this book of hope and promise, the panel member for Archbishop's Commission for Social Cohesion, renews your confidence in the Church of England's historic mission to British society - creating an inclusive, welcoming spiritual home for the broad spectrum of Christian belief, need, searching and expression. This easy to read book does away with the false separation of people into believers and non-believers, attenders and non-attenders, those who belong and those who don't. Exploring how even those who rarely or never attend still regard themselves as linked into the Church, the former director of the Centre for Ethics and Religion shows you how to build on those links that already exist and start to cultivate a deeper spiritual awareness in those who, though they might not come on a Sunday, will still come to 'their church' for baptisms, marriages, funerals and carol services. This book is the real repost to those who argue that we live in a secular society of declining church membership. We don't. But we do live in a country where people define church membership on their own terms - not ours. Learning to understand that and serving people spiritually where they are is your church's first step to rediscovering its historic mission to British society and enabling your ministry to continue among those whose faith is waiting to be rekindled.
