Our Old Testament story from 2 Samuel 24: 9-17 seems a rather strange one. David has the number of fighting men is Israel numbered but then realises that he has sinned in doing so and the punishment for this sin is a pestilence that kills 70,000. In our day and time when census’ and statistics are commonplace, we see no sin in counting people and certainly struggle to comprehend why doing so should result in punishment.
The issue would seem to be that becoming aware of the size of one’s army is likely to reduce trust in God and increase trust in one’s own resources. David’s early career was entirely based on trust in God as he went up alone against the most powerful of the Philistine soldiers wearing no armour and carrying only a slingshot yet, through trust in God, triumphed against the odds. Now, though, he feels the need of the reassurance that 800,000 men are available to form his army.
Like David, the Church of England has become obsessed about numbers. In the past, when the Church of England trusted in Parish ministry and Parish priests, there was no need to count the numbers attending church services because Parish ministry meant that everyone in the Parish was a Parishioner regardless of whether they attended Church or not. At that time, the Church of England trusted that God was at work within the lives of Parishioners whether they were to be found in Church of not.
Now, the Church of England has lost that sense of trust in God and in the parish system, becoming instead obsessed with numbers in Church services on a Sunday and pouring vast amounts of money into initiatives that try, generally unsuccessfully, to significantly increase the numbers to be found in churches on a Sunday.
As a result, a Parish like ours which impacts people in the community seven days a week through Schools ministry, Care Home ministry, pastoral visiting, social action, wellbeing and cultural initiatives is overlooked and underfunded by the central Church, while money is instead poured into initiatives that set up new churches in existing Parishes.
One of the key factors in this change of practice and emphasis was the decision, like that made by David, to begin counting our people. Not only did this run the risk, which has now clearly come about, of focusing on our own resources or their perceived lack, rather than focusing on God and his provision, but it also had the effect of undermining our understanding of parishioners as everyone within the Parish by focusing our statistical attention on those in church on a Sunday. The latter is a congregational focus, rather than a Parish focus, and ignores or overlooks or obscures all the ongoing ministry with which a Parish like ours in engaged.
Trust in God is not engendered, as many within the Church of England currently seem to believe, by large numbers of people attending services or supposedly being converted – as is the focus of many mission conferences and agencies. Instead, trust in God is most clearly found in initiatives, where like David facing Goliath, the resources we have seem pitiful and meagre – inadequate to the task – and yet achieve impact because God is with us.
God is not only with us when material resources are poured out in abundance or when large numbers are to be found in services. God is with us in every situation and circumstance within our Parish because God’s Spirit is at work within every part of and person in our Parish. As we engage with our community, we see that truth realised in each place to which we go and each person we meet. That is what true Parish ministry involves and it is undermined when, like David and the Church of England centrally, we begin numbering our resources in order to trust in what we have, rather than trust in God alone.
The challenge of this strange story is to place our trust when it should always be – in God – rather than in the human resources available to us. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
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