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 PrintableVersion Keen but not green!Results of the EN Church Travel SurveyWhile attending a church close to our own homes is still very much the norm for EN readers, results of last summer’s reader survey show that making that short walk each Sunday morning is proving something of a challenge. A survey of over 400 randomly-selected readers was conducted last June to attempt to determine some facts surrounding three issues. The issues were: how far do Christians tend to live from their church (using the word ‘church’ colloquially to mean the meeting place where God’s people gather), how do they generally get there, and how often. Of additional interest was whether regular involvement in church life is impaired by having a greater distance between where people live and where the church gathers. Is the ‘local’ church dead?Going about our daily business within easy reach of our homes seems to be less fashionable these days, with many of us driving to out of town superstores to do our shopping rather than visit a local butcher and baker, and perhaps even getting into our cars as the first step in going for a walk. Results of the survey suggest that this trend has yet to take hold in church life. Making a long journey to visit the large super-church down the road is reassuringly rare in our results. Three-quarters of respondents (excluding pastors and vicars) said they lived within three miles of their place of worship and two-fifths live within one mile. Only a small minority (4.7%) travel more than ten miles to church. As might be expected, given these results, four-fifths of respondents said the journey to church took less than 15 minutes and a quarter said it took less than five minutes. Taken together these results suggest that most church members live in the same community as their church building. These results also leave most Christians with little excuse to be late on a Sunday morning. ‘Rise up and walk!’Perhaps disappointingly given the results above, four-fifths of respondents said they generally travelled to church by car. Excluding all respondents over retirement age reduced this figure to a hardly more environmental 75%. Even looking at those people living within half a mile of church revealed about a quarter of them used their cars for travel with this figure rising steeply to around 75% for those people living between half a mile and one mile from church. In an age where the media are constantly reminding us of the dangers of lack of exercise and greenhouse gas emissions, surely this is an area where Christians must improve. I have often heard messages from the pulpit about the importance of Christians taking the lead in green issues, so it is disappointing to see this having so little impact in the behaviour of individuals on a Sunday morning. If the need for speed is the issue there is also room for improvement in bicycle use. Of the 282 respondents who were below retirement age only three came to church by bike. ‘Do not give up meeting!’While it is reassuring to know that most individuals live relatively close to their chosen church, it is of interest to explore the relationship between the distance a person lives from their place of worship and how often they are willing to travel there in a normal week to get involved in church life. While it is not always possible to pick and choose exactly how close we live to our chosen churches, living a long way from church would be something to be avoided if it were generally related to a lack of involvement. To examine this question we looked at the relationship between the distance people live from their church and the number of times they make the journey to church in a typical week. This is, of course, something of a crude measure of involvement in church life (people may be actively involved without actually visiting the church building). However, notwithstanding this proviso, it was found that there was no relationship between how far people live from their church and how often they make the journey. Once we removed those respondents with leadership responsibilities (such as pastors or elders who are required to visit church more often than others) we found that just over half of respondents (55%) visited church three or more times during a typical week, regardless of the distance from their home. Roughly a sixth of respondents came to church just once in a typical week. Further analysis also revealed that other factors commonly thought to be associated with a lack of involvement (such as marriage or having children) had no significant relationship with the number of times people came to church. The implication is clear; regardless of circumstances there is no excuse for giving up meeting with other Christians. It might be a good idea if we did it on foot more often though. Tom Benton,
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