Support for the Church

I have read with interest the interchanges on the future of the Church - and our own local churches and would offer the observation that I believe it is a mistake to try and gauge support for the church by the size of the regular congregation of worshippers. Our researches for the Restoration Appeal have turned up some interesting statistics - during the past 30 years St Mabyn Church has been the venue for 114 funeral services, 114 baptisms and over 80 weddings; many of the names of the participants were barely known; they clearly weren't regular worshippers but they valued the church and all it stands for, and those we have already contacted for support to ensure that the building remains for future generations has been overwhelming. Add to this the large congregations for the High Days and Holy Days (and also in our case the thrice weekly usage by our schoolchildren and the steadily increasing congregation on "ordinary" Sundays) and I would suggest that some of these gloomy forebodings are unnecessarily pessimistic
Abigail Kirby-Harris