Parish Work
THE parish is dead. That is the ,truth in many parts of Britain. One in ten people, at the most, go to church. And they largely represent middle-class ecclesiasticism. About one in three hundred manual workers go to church. Some say : 'The parish is dead. Let's bury it.' Some pretend it still lives. Others have found the parish in extremis challenge to the depths their mind and spirit. Canon Southcott's book is the remarkable record of one man's response to this challenge. One man's response—for there is about him something of the prophet, the genius and the visionary. Yet not least is his achievement remarkable for the way he has carried his Leeds housing-estate congregation with him, and blazed a trail which many another parish priest and congregation can and must follow if their parish is to come alive.
Concern about Baptism began it all : concern that many are baptised but few are communicants. They decided to baptise only four times a year and in the presence of the congregation.
Before Baptism there were interviews in the home and rehearsals in church. But this only exposed the trouble : people who come to the• church for Baptism are still miles from the worshipping community. Deep down they feel they don't belong. They move in a different world. Southcott saw that if people are eventually to share in what goes on in the building which is the church, first -and slowly—they would have to be drawn into the community which is the Church. And the Church would have to come where they are—to their homes. This was not simply a bright idea, a
technique, but a profound theological insight. We have lost the meaning of being the Church—`ye are the Body of Christ'—in our concern with going to church. But St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles give the biblical background of the Body of Christ meeting in houses. And did not the Incarnate Lord come to people in their homes?
The House Church in Halton has taken several forms. There is the House Communion—in the home it is clear that holiness is not simply withdrawal, but concerns the consecration of the commonplace, the scullery as well as the sanctuary. There is the 'Intensive' House Church—regular worshippers meeting one with another for prayer, discussion and instruction. There is the `Extensive' House Church—regular worshippers meeting irregular worshippers. There is the Interdenominational House Meeting— regular worshippers of different denominations meeting together: the Ecumenical Movement at the level of the parish. There is the United Nations Association House meeting—Christians meet- ing non-Christians in a common concern for the world. The con- gregation, having learnt to be the Church outside the building, returns to the parish church, a gathered community, for worship, for the ministry of healing, for thinking and planning together. Every vicar, every churchman should buy this book (throw the dust-jacket away!) and work at it with mind and soul. It is the counterpart of the worker-priests at the level of the English parish.
E. JAMES
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