THE Archbishop of Canterbury commented recently that his short time in Durham had "reinforced in me that the real front line of the Church is the local church, the parish church" (News, 21 December). As he is now enthroned in Canterbury, it is timely to consider the mission of parish churches, and to ask whether their growth is the priority.

It was certainly the priority when Dr Williams was Archbishop: early in his time, the report Mission- shaped Church (Church House Publishing, 2004) was proving hugely popular, with its attractive vision of a mixed economy of church life, in which the nation would be invited back to church in a variety of ways.

Nearly ten years later, however, it is clear that church attendance has not increased. Research by Church House on average attendance at C of E Sunday services, issued last year, suggests that average attendance continues to fall, as has average attendance each week, although the number of weddings has gone up (News, 20 January 2012).

One response was summed up bluntly by a churchwarden: "They won't come to us; so we must go to them." In line with this, his church has set up a series of after-school clubs - not in church, but in two schools, and has invited children to come along for games, crafts, and a "circle time" with a thought and a prayer.

They have proved to be popular, and there are now after-school clubs on four days of the week, with a mothers-and-toddlers group on the fifth. The clubs have resulted in some children and their parents' coming to the Sunday service, but the point is not to generate support for the church, but to give the children fun, and an opportunity to connect with God. The adult helpers also find them enriching.

The curate who set up the clubs also initiated a weekly eucharist at a care home, drawing in another team of helpers for what has become the second-largest congregation in the parish each week. Again, the point was not to create a feeder for Sunday church, but simply to provide a point in the week when the residents and others could connect with God and one another. The helpers have described these services not as a chore, but as a source of real blessing.

OVER the past few decades, academic theology has been emphasising how the mission of God is in the world beyond the Church. As I have come to know our parish, the penny has dropped that I am witnessing this very principle: churchpeople encountering God's saving purposes as much outside the walls of the church as within it, finding his presence and grace in the children of the clubs, and in the residents of the care home, and in ways that are inspiring for their own discipleship.

This insight also puts baptisms, weddings, and funerals in a different light. Most who come for these do not return to church the following Sunday, and it has been easy to regard these offices as failed attempts to attract new families into the regular congregation. Now, though, they can be seen differently, as God-given opportunities to help all kinds of people connect with God at turning-points in their lives.

Here are couples, parents of babies, and relatives of the deceased, who do not have anything to do with regular church life, but who approach the clergy because of what is happening in their lives. Such offices provide a precious opportunity to help these people recognise and respond to the presence of God.

ALL of this encourages a different vision of mission. No longer is it seen as all about increasing the size of the regular congregation. Something bigger and less quantifiable becomes the aim - a change not within the church so much as within the wider community. Church history provides a number of antecedents, one of which is the work of the German pastor and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was active in Berlin at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century.

He sought to reawaken interest in the Christian faith among his contemporaries, who were increasingly dismissive of the Church, and whom he described as "cultured despisers of religion".

Schleiermacher did not begin by trying to woo these people back to church through new kinds of service or social activities. Instead, he engaged them in a dialogue, in which he drew attention to an aspect of their human nature which was not addressed by science or philosophy: the domain of feeling, or, more accurately, inner self-consciousness (Gefühl), and especially the "consciousness of absolute dependence". The Christian faith, he argued, allowed a fulfilling response to this universal dimension of life.

Whether or not this is the kind of language we would use today, it points to a type of mission found in many places, which seeks to awaken an awareness of the presence of God within the community, and to encourage people to respond to it. God's mission is already at work in the world, bringing his people back to his love, forgiveness, and peace; the Church, through its lay people and clergy, can encourage personal response to this through its pastoral ministry, sacraments, and teaching.

This vision of mission has some big implications. It changes the primary aim of the regular congregation from that of trying to make itself bigger - that is, of filling the ark of salvation of those who are saved - to being an agent of the salvation of the wider community.

This has the further implication that the health of that church will not be measured by its statistical size, but by assessment of its impact on the wider community. This, of course, is hard to measure.

Such assessment would, however, involve looking at the whole way in which a church, through its congregation and all its interactions with the community, through home-life and work, as well as Sunday services, helps the wider population to connect with God, the God who is already within them.

Some might say that this loss of focus on church growth will imperil the parish system, which is under threat. One response would be that aiming for church growth itself is not going to save the parish system, because the wider population have generally lost interest in coming to church. What does appeal to them, however - and would, as a by- product, draw many into the life of our churches - is their discovery, or rediscovery, that God is with them, and will transform their lives, if they only give him the opportunity to do so. 

The Revd Dr Stephen Spencer is Vicar of Brighouse and Clifton in the diocese of Wakefield, and the author of SCM study guides on Christian Mission (2007) and Anglicanism (2010).