Churches Tourism Association

...on a spiritual journey

The Rev Eileen MacLean, Vicar of Bamburgh in Northumberland, spent the summer of 2006 finding out how churches are responding to visitors. She has kindly agreed to share the results of her sabbatical study via the CTA website.

When a visitor comes into a church, for whatever reason - interest in its history or architecture, simple curiosity, a place out of the rain, or as a wedding guest – this provides a wonderful opportunity to plant or nurture small seeds of faith, to stimulate growth in spiritual awareness or exploration.

St Aidan's, Bamburgh - a Northumberland welcome at the church of Grace Darling

The results are now available here as a resource to help other churches:

• Churches & Visitors (Eileen McLean) - an account of Eileen’s visits to 100 churches around the country to see how they help visitors to understand their Christian heritage and renew or deepen their spiritual experience. Her findings and recommendations are thought-provoking as well as practical.
• Encouraging Visitors Booklet – a short guide (in booklet format), providing practical and simple suggestions for church congregations, offered to stimulate thinking at a local level. This was produced with the support of the Church of England’s Newcastle Diocese Tourism Task Group.

As Eileen puts it, “In a secular age it is a real challenge to present the truths of the Christian faith using comprehensible, attractive and gentle language and imagery. It is right that we should seek to impress and inspire visitors with the fascinating history and beautiful architecture of our churches, but is also important that we should seek to engage them in the faith for which those churches were built.”

“A visit to one church is unlikely to be a life changing experience, though that is possible. Visiting several churches over a period of time, may have a cumulative effect, favourable or unfavourable, regarding the places, the people who worship in them, and the faith they hold. Every single church has a responsibility to consider its own image and how it contributes to the whole picture.”