vii.The question of numbers

‘How many turned up?’ is a question we are used to asking of one another concerning Chapel worship and other chaplaincy events. We know with one part of our heads that numbers are not everything, in fact, actually not that significant. Yet another part of our brain cannot quite escape quantitative measures. Why so? Well in part because quantitative gauges can signal qualitative effects.

It’s not that numbers matter in an absolute sense, but there is such a thing as a required ‘critical mass’. Every type of event requires a certain number if it is to feel alive, sufficiently mainstream and comfortable enough for folk to want return (McGrail & Sullivan, 2007, p.23). Even with highly innovative and creative improvisation, a Chapel designed for a congregation of two hundred will forcefully raise its own questions of a gathering of twenty or so. And many of us have experienced the thrill of a good group of freshers coming along to an event for the first time only to be unsettled by their understandable questions about why there are so few from other years! In a culture where popularity signals success, the ‘chosen few’ can be a hard sell. In a consumer culture – where people do not always realise that their presence is essential to the quality of what they are seeking to experience (they will come if they feel like it, or there is nothing better on offer) – attaining that ‘critical mass’ can be frustratingly elusive.

Why is it then that while universities have been generally expanding, those attending chaplaincy events have been generally shrinking? There is, of course, no one simple explanation, but there is a cocktail of factors which press in this direction.

• The appetite for participation in Christian activities is declining in the population as a whole, and most rapidly in the younger generations (Guest et al, 2013). Thus even by the generous measure of the National Census, 2011 saw only 59% claim Christian allegiance compared to 72% in 2001.
• While overall numbers of students have increased, so have those engaged in part-time study or forms of distance learning for whom, by necessity, the focus of university is more narrowly the academic curriculum.
• Many students have caring responsibilities that preclude a great deal of extra-curricular options.
• There is little, if any, common free-time: there is no shared lunch-break; even Wednesday afternoon for organised sport is the fragile echo of a past commitment.
• Changes to the funding of Higher Education require increasing numbers to take on part-time paid employment.

What then is to be done? First, one needs to give up the haunting sense that small attendances are evidence of ‘failure’ on the part of the chaplain – evidence of a job poorly done. Small attendances are a near universal phenomenon, and we can’t all be hopeless! Secondly, it may seem defeatist, but there is wisdom in learning to live with the possibility of the collapse of Chapel worship (or another chaplaincy event) as a permanent threat. Give up on the crippling sense that all depends on you. Receive those that come as a gift and do what can be done, rather than wistfully desiring that things were otherwise. Thirdly, recognise that on occasion the congregation may simple be the chaplain or chaplaincy team. If this is going to happen regularly, then organise matters so there is little preparation and what happens suits those present! Such times are but the extreme form of the phenomenon of ‘vicarious religion’ that has been recognised by Grace Davie, Europe: The Exceptional Case (London: DLT, 2002) and others. While not regularly attending worship, significant numbers are content to let others enact a memory of religious activity on their behalf. Moreover, they are positively disposed towards the continuing presence of religious practice upon which they can then draw if need be, and especially in times of crisis and bereavement. Davie thus muses: “Could it be that Europeans are not so much less religious than populations in other parts of the world, but – quite simply – differently so?” (2002, p.19). Chaplain-only worship does not mean, therefore, that no one cares. Finally, it is worth remembering the cyclical nature of chaplaincy work. With such a rapid turnover of persons, there is no straight-line prediction from one year to the next. Next year really can be different.