Church: alive, dying or dead?

Is the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia alive, dying or dead?

I ask the question as a kick off point to some reflections below, but I am aware in posing the question as such a kick off point that there are friends and colleagues within our church, to say nothing of observers from outside our church who not only pose the question but ask it, sometimes in tones which express concern/empathy/sympathy, sometimes in tones which make me wonder if they are being just a tad triumphalistic about other ways of being church here which are most definitely "alive"!

Recently I have been part of events which have involved gathering people from several corners of our church, and, of course, I continue as bishop to be part of contemporary church life in different ministry units in Canterbury, Westland and the Chatham Islands from Sunday to Sunday. I find myself offering an answer to the question above which is nuanced. It goes like this.

There is no doubt some parts of the church are dead (or, "dead"), meaning that we have lost members (through death, transfer to other denominations, dropping out of regular participation in corporate worship, etc), we have closed churches, we have fewer parishes than we used to, and, in some parishes, we are very concerned about missing generations.

There are also searching questions about whether our church is dying (or, "dying"), meaning that we look around us (at, say, ageing members, fewer attending, smaller offerings) and we look at our statistics for the past whenever years and chart graphs which suggest by 2037 or 2056 or 2071 this diocese, or that diocese or the whole of theAnglican church in these islands - Polynesia likely will be another prognosis - will be gone, finished, deader than Monty Python's parrot. (There are some graphs which do predict years of final demise but those years above are made up by me). We are alive as a church in 2026, but we may not be so some years hence. Thus, we are dying (unless there is revival and resuscitation).

We may not, of course, be doomed to follow the exact path of statistical decline. Apart from what I am about to say about our church being alive (or, "alive") in the next paragraphs, we are a nation of many migrants. While most Christian migrants are Catholic, some are Anglican or are keen to associate with the Anglican church. If we are looking ahead to, say, 2050 (the two hundreth anniversary of the arrival of the First Four Ships of the CofE Settlement of Canterbury), then we cannot predict where migratory patterns might take our Diocese and other episcopal units in our church. (We might also, cheekily, observe - speaking very locally - that some internal migration is taking place these days as cool city Christchurch with a stadium, plentiful housing, jobs, etc is drawing people here, and that is bring new people into our churches). The dying parts of our church may yet reverse, shifting from surviving to thriving. 

Is our church alive? There are definitely thriving congregations, especially in our larger cities. New people are becoming Christians in Anglican contexts. Christians are being drawn to the Anglican way of being Christian and being church. God is - simply being consistent - still in the spiritual business of transforming lives, growing Christians in grace and gifts, and drawing believers deeper into the spiritual nourishment which comes through the ministry of word and sacrament. For some new(ish) Anglicans, it is our comfortableness in being bicultural which is a "drawcard" factor in becoming Anglican. These aspects of church being alive are simply about numbers of people turning up on a Sunday or getting involved in small groups and outreach activities, they are about people journeying ever more deeply into the resurrection life of Christ.

The past couple of weeks have been especially precious through various events which have reminded me of the mixed up life of our church: signs of death, of dying and - thanks be to God - of life.