Headline AFP: Bishop hopes chocolate, invites will bring back worshippers
LONDON (AFP) – The Bishop of Manchester hopes to draw worshippers back to church with chocolate bars and invitations.
The Reverend Nigel McCulloch plans to distribute business card-style invites and goody bags, the Daily Telegraph said.
The bishop provoked strong reaction in March when he said the Church of England could disappear “within a generation or two” if no action was immediately taken.
Under the scheme, new church-goers will receive a brochure about the Church and ‘fair trade’ chocolate at the end of the service, the newspaper said….
The idea has been inspired by marketing campaigns and glitzy launches where gift bags are given away to promote products.
The campaign aims in particular to woo over-50s who once went to church but have stopped.
For services celebrating the autumn harvest festival on September 26, clergy are being encouraged to use hymns that are popular among over-50s and do something completely different during the service, “such as showing a comedy video”, the paper reported.
“We will, unless there is a turn in the tide, be a Church which gradually disappears from this land,” the bishop told the paper. He was commenting on figures suggesting the number of Church members would fall to below six million, or one tenth of the population, by next year.
Having completely lost confidence in the preached word of God, these church leaders seek to get people into church with chocolate and comedy sketches. They fail to realize that with all the changes they have made to make attending church more palatable to people, there is no longer any reason for anyone to come to church. It would be better to just close the doors than to change church into an entertainment. But better still would be to stand with Paul and preach the gospel:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
