Lament for the Filling-in of Statistics for Mission

 

My heart sinks within me 

and my mind reels at my situation.

For I am filling in a website full of mission statistics

when the world outside is utterly changed.

How can I compare 2021 with 2019?

Or even with 2020?

How can I explain the difference in numbers?

How can I tell the diocese why my heart sinks at my failings

Apart from remembering those that are still scared

those that have lost the habit

and those that are dead.

 

Is a BCP Communion a Fresh Expression?

What are "young people"?

 

I weep as I recall those days when I would fill in the stats

Knowing that the church was - to be frank - a quarter full

And rejoicing in the annual Messy Church

Though at the time I thought it was slightly paltry

- in retrospect, what a time to be alive!

 

But now I enter "Zero" in many columns 

and wonder whether singing carols at the pub is a Fresh Expression

or an evening service.

 

I wonder how many people watch online 

And whether it equals those that the post "reached" 

Or those that "engaged"

Or those that got to the end

Knowing that in Facebook worship

There is no end.

 

But this I remember

As I submit my form

The mercies of the Lord are everlasting

That soon men and women will be marrying as in the days of Noah

(but not men and men, or women and women, for that would cause a Schism)

that baptisms will rise up like spring flowers

even like the flowers in the gardens of Babylon

and that though death may not be at an end

at least the weekly funerals might be.