Caution: Champing Ahead

By Jeff Long

I would love to get Bob Farr's take on champing -- a word that is yet unfamiliar on our shores but which has real meaning in England, where so many of our religious customs are derived. Farr is the bishop of the United Methodist Church in Missouri and wrote a book a few years ago with an apocalyptic title: "Renovate or Die." His overarching theme is that American churches are too focused on maintaining the congregational status quo. Unless they change and get focused on making new disciples for Jesus and transforming their communities, disaster and death are ahead. I can't claim to know Farr but have talked with him a couple of times. His book paints a dystopian future for congregations that navel gaze, who do the same tired things over and over again and expect to grow.

Here's the essence of Farr's thinking: some congregations couldn't care less about growing. Some are social clubs, a place to see friends. Some churches see falling attendance and declining giving and collectively shrug. The result of this inward mindset is a majority of Christian congregations in the United States are getting smaller and effectively are on a glide path toward extinction. Instinctively they know this but prefer death to making any changes. Without further elaboration on my part, I've seen this first-hand and fairly recently. Some put far too much reliance on wording from a particular part of church liturgy, which says, "The church is of God and will be preserved until the end of time." If the church referred to in the preceding sentence is understood as the organized church, then it's a lie.

Churches do fail and go out of business, their witness in the community effectively ended. If the church means that God will not be left without a witness, even if it's one or two people, then yes -- that understanding of church will survive. Most folks see church in the former example -- of an organized community of believers, with a mortgage, a building to maintain, a staff to compensate.

Unless episcopal prophets like Farr are heeded, what's happening in England right now may well migrate west across the ocean.

Now, a definition of "champing." National Public Radio recently explained that an English charity called Churches Conservation Trust oversees 350 empty churches. In an attempt to keep these often-historic structures and give them minimal maintenance, the Trust charges over $200 (when converted to U.S. dollars) per night for a family of four to use a church as a campsite. See it now? Church + camping = champing.

Churches have long been in decline in our mother country. During a trip to the industrial city of Manchester in 2003, my wife and I visited the historic Anglican church there. On every pew and post inside the sanctuary were signs with these sorts of messages: "It takes X pounds to keep this building maintained for one hour." A congregation dwindles to the point where the bills cannot be paid. Tourist dollars are sought but they fall short. Turning a sanctuary into a campsite is apparently the next best option.

At St. Katherine's outside Oxford, built in the 18th century, a family beds down in sleeping bags with kerosene heaters nearby -- the church having long ago lost its electricity. The Trust provides bottled water and cots to each church for champing purposes -- but none has a shower. No electricity, no running water. Many of these old churches have pipe organs. Kids enjoy pushing the keys randomly to hear noises from an instrument that hasn't seen a tuner in a lifetime. At St. Kate's, as the locals call it, champing stays tripled last year. A vacation is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

You might say, well, the United States isn't England. No. Not yet, anyway.