Class Divides and Church, Part 2

We need to stop and ask the question why are our churches so middle class in nature?  Here are some the contributory factors:

Our church are situated (planted) in middle class areas, or are in working class areas but are commuter churches.  Many of the churches situated in working class and deprived areas are struggling or have closed and been sold for other uses.  Many new plants are started in middle class areas because they are the people we know and the need we see because they are part of our network. And often those churches that are in working class or deprived areas are still middle class churches where people drive into the church building because that historically is where they meet but few if any live within walking distance of the church.

We operate in networks through work, education or hobbies which span a town or city or wider afield. The working class, by contrast, operate in neighbourhoods.  This means that middle class christians have little contact with those from working class or deprived backgrounds.  We spend our days with those in our work places our communities and our networks.  We will rarely if ever meet someone from a working class area within them partly because of a lack of social mobility but also because they live life based around the neighbourhood.  That means if we want to reach such areas and communities we need to live in them and serve in them and commit to them.

We put on events with middle class appeal.  Think about the last 3 evangelistic events your church has run and my hunch is that they would be for people like those already in the church.  In other words we put on events that appeal to people like us, therefore limiting their appeal to those different from us.

Because churches aren't in or connected to working class and deprived communities our Churches don’t play key roles in working class areas.  This means working class and deprived people cannot see the gospel tangibly lived out in front of them.

We have a class prejudice (we like/value people like us).  Everyone of us suffers from this bias, we valued those most like us, we naturally find them easier to relate with and therefore have fewer issues and conflicts and misunderstandings.  Until we recognise this and face up to it not just individually but corporately as churches large swathes of Britain will remain unreached.

We wrongly assume middle class values are gospel values.  In Tim Chester's Unreached there is a helpful table which provides a list of hidden class rules which determine how each class operates.  The tragedy is that some of these we have confused in our churches with gospel values.  Therefore what we preach is sometimes a mishmash of middle class values masquerading as gospel values.  This is a huge topic which I've blogged on before and will come back to again.  But let me give one quick example - in the application to read the Bible - we assume that a middle class value - reading/formal education - is a gospel value.  Actually we would be better to talk of listening to and obeying the Bible because that is a more biblical application.  The bible looks not for us to read God's word, but to hear God's word and put it into practise in tangible ways.  Speaking of it and applying it in such a way is more working class than middle class.