Clapham Village Newsletter, August / September 2022
I am writing this during a record heatwave. Which makes it likely, given our weather, that you’ll be reading this during a snowstorm. But the reality is unquenchable: whilst temperatures alwaysfluctuate, overall, heat is steadily rising. Increasingly our weather maps show a blistering bright red. We have been playing with fire for too long to be good for the earth.
There has always been fire, writes scientific historian Stephen J. Pyne. But, “Over the past two million years … one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet.”
Professor Pyne shows how the ancient, balanced, relationships between humans and fire “broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass – lithic landscapes – and humanity's firepower became unbounded.” He proposes that “fire-catalysed climate change” created a new geologic epoch. “The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene.” 1
It’s no fantasy that the ‘lithic landscapes’ of the fossil fuel age are finite: we are at or near ‘peak oil’. What may yet prove to be infinite are the practical values of the ‘old ways’. I’m encouraged by those neighbourhood groups across the world who are working out practical methods to help their communities become self-sufficient for a cooler future without oil. ‘Transitioning’ means rekindling the old ways of any particular locale help to reignite a gentler economy of life.
In his inveterate farmer’s wisdom Wendell Berry encourages us not to be consumed by the insoluble abstractions of “global thinking”, of “how to care for the planet”. “Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence,” he says, and he invokes this set of modest actions as ways to begin turning the temperature down:
“Learn to prefer small-scale elegance and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and glamour. Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made. Put the interest of the community first. Love your neighbours – not the neighbours you pick out, but the ones you have. Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us. As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighbourhood, and household – which thrive by care and generosity – and independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage. Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well.” 2
God, Covid and the airlines all being willing, Diana and I shall be spending time with family in Japan over the coming weeks, and also by invitation speaking at Christ Church Ayashi-chuo, Sendai (with our daughter-in-law Naoko providing translation). As you may know, Naoko and our son Gary are Christian missionaries there, and they attend this Japanese Lutheran church. The theme of that talk owes itself to what many people here in the Dales say is their favourite piece of scripture: Psalm 121, 'I lift up my eyes to the hills, where shall my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth…..' Like us in upland England, the people of Ayashi-chuo live in the foothills of some of Japan's high places. A difference is that whilst we daily lift up our eyes to see our hillsides peppered with sheep, every day when the residents of Ayashi-chuo lift up their eyes they see a massive golden Buddha shining from a hillside shrine above them. It is not an unusual sight there. Christianity is a tiny minority religion in Japan, whose peoples have forever sought help from the heaven and the earth themselves, from nature and its gods and from the inner enlightenment they may bring, so for them the idea of a Creator moving behind these mountains is hard to grasp, let alone a God who walked the earth and died to save it. Where might our worldviews meet? Maybe over food: Naoko and her fellow missionary Janet are currently setting up a food truck business. "As restaurants and shops continue to suffer due to Covid restrictions, food trucks have become more and more popular in Japan as a new business model," Naoko explained. "This is a tangible way we could do ministry as a team to make connections and advertise our presence in the local area. While foreigners need to have a huge amount of money to start a business, Japanese nationals have much lower bars to do so." Taiwanese Janet has had a vision for a 'kitchen car' for a long time, and now circumstances (and Naoko's practical support) are helping this vision take shape. Can Christ be shared over Beef Noodles and Soup Dumplings under Honshu's holy hills?
Good morning. It is good to be with you today. My wife Diana and I want to thank you for your kind welcome and your hospitality to us on our visit to our family. It reminds us that we belong together to a worldwide family of Christian people, and it is a joy to be joined with you in worship here.
This is where we live – in the North West of England, in Yorkshire, which is the largest sized County in England, which stretches from the east coast to the hills and mountains of the centre and the west.
We are surrounded by mountains and our nearest one, Ingleborough is one of the largest mountains in England. Many people are drawn from British towns and cities, and indeed from all over the world – to climb it.
Why are people drawn to the countryside away from their city lives?
Why are people drawn from the low-land up to the mountain heights?
When you ask people these questions, they may talk about finding refreshment by being out in the open air.
They may talk about the benefits which exercising brings to their bodies and to their spirits.
They may talk about the beauty of the green countryside compared to the grey concrete cities, andof how that brings joy to their souls.
Some may say that they visit the mountains because they are looking for healing.
Some because they are looking to rid their busy minds of anxious thoughts and seeking to think clearly again.
Some go to the mountains just for one simple thing which they call ‘escape’.
We might say that these people are all looking for Salvation – of one sort or another. Looking to be saved from all that harms them in their everyday lives; longing to ‘find themselves’ again in nature.
When they lift up their eyes to the hills, where shall their help come from? Will it come from the heavens and the earth alone? What is the good news for those who are seeking Salvation from nature?
In your land and in ours we have what some people call ‘holy mountains’. We have Pendle Hill,which for centuries has been associated with paganism, whose followers see it as a high place where the nature gods live.
And in Japan there are places like Yamadera, a holy mountain which people visit seeking healing from the ‘Medicine Buddha’.
Those who visit holy mountains, When they lift up their eyes to the hills, where shall their help come from? Will it come from the gods of the heavens and the earth? What is the good news for those who are seeking Salvation in nature’s holy mountains?
Now we know that the mountains can be beautiful in the sunshine but inhospitable and dangerous in a storm. Nature can be cruel.
Where are the gods of the heavens and the earth when I am caught in a storm? Are they judging me, punishing me for my wrongdoings? Or have they disappeared to abandon me to my fate?
Sometimes even when we are in a place of the utmost beauty our inner troubles continue; and can lift up our eyes to look, earnestly seeking out help.
The truth is that we are not always ‘at one’ with nature, nor is nature always ‘at one’ with us.
In times of drought people seek out the sky gods; in times of famine people seek out the gods of grain and harvest.
At times like these we may find that nature, in itself, is not enough. We may sense that those nature gods have their limitations, that like humans they can be selfish and cruel.
We may also reflect that our relationships with the non-human world are sometimes troubled. Consider how our greedy exploitation of nature has led to so much loss and destruction, and the fatal disruption of weather patterns; how our drive towards violence and power over others has led us to use nuclear fusion for weapons of mass destruction; how our disregard of the power we exploit has led to and energy plants which threaten communities with radioactive contamination.
And yet – despite all this – we might still feel in the deepest part of ourselves that in our world a force of absolute goodness persists; that a force of love and unity might yet be found. We might consider that there must be a way for the human and non-human world to be reconciled. And this may cause us to keep asking if there is another spirit behind the spirit of nature; we might be drawn to seek another power beyond the holy mountains.
The Psalmist of Israel went on that search, and in Psalm 121 when he asks,
‘When I lift up my eyes to the hills
Where shall my help come from?’
– he finds that his help comes not from heaven and earth in themselves, but from The Lord who made them. The Psalmist of Israel discovered the Spirit behind the spirit of nature; he celebrated in song a greater power beyond the holy mountains – in the Person of The Lord, who made heaven and earth.
The Psalmist discovered a Creator, who exists outside of our ideas of circular time and linear history and outer space, and who set all natural things in their place:‘Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God,’ another Psalm (91) says.
Through this Creator God all things in heaven and earth have their origins – Genesis chapter oneshows us God bringing the world into being through the words of his command; and creatinghuman society, as we are taught in Genesis chapter two, the story of Adam and Eve.
Although this Creator God comes close to earth – walking with Adam and Eve in the garden – he remains elusive, addressing Moses on the mountaintop, leading Israel towards their promised land in a pillar of cloud, hidden behind a curtain in the holiest place of the Temple.
And so people still often thought of this Creator God as a sky god – bringing forth rain in season; people still regarded him as a nature god – punishing wrongdoing through famine or flood; people still saw him as just like a god of any other emperor cult – destroying enemies to claim territory for his chosen people.
But with wonderful insight, again, the Psalmist of Israel perceives that this God shows signs of a deeper grace behind his actions. In Psalm 121 he describes a personal God – One who like a loving parent watches over us whilst we sleep; One who like a caring companion on an uphill trail makes sure that our feet do not stumble; One who even shades us from scorching sun and the dangers of a shadowy moon; ever-present, ever-giving, this Creator God has something more.
Could he be the One God who not only sets Creation in motion and sustains it, but who also intervenes in human history to save it? If he is a personal God then is it possible for us to see him?
The city of Colossae around 60 years after the birth of Jesus had been twice shaken by cataclysmicearthquakes which destroyed the place. Colossae had become a place of spiritual turmoil and its people were seeking certainty and Salvation. So there one of the earliest Christian communities was established.
To the Colossian believers, one of the very first Christian creeds was written. It begins with a remarkable statement about Jesus, saying ‘Christ is the visible image of the invisible God’.
This is a remarkable statement: if you look at Jesus you see what God is like. This Creator God who had been hidden for so long is visible in the very human shape and form of Jesus. Jesus is God in the flesh.
The first missionaries proclaimed Jesus as the saviour, through his absolutely self-giving act on the cross and his glorious life-giving resurrection. But in this statement of faith we find them affirming that he is also entirely the Creator – ‘who existed before anything was created and is supreme over all Creation, through whom God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.’ The Creator is the Saviour, says the earliest Christian creed.
The Creator is the Saviour. There is no division between Creation and Salvation. This means that Christians cannot focus solely on the human world whilst ignoring the non-human part of Creation. It means that as well as seeking heavenly, ‘spiritual’ things we also find God acting at the heart of the life we live now. This is good news for those who are seeking Salvation in this world – those who care about human life being better, now. And this is good news for those who are seeking Salvation for this world – those who care about the earth and its well-being?
This passage of scripture helps us understand that Jesus brings Creation and Salvation together. His act of creating everything from nothing, is exactly the same thing as his life-affirming self-giving out of love on the cross through which death itself dies. The Creator is the Saviour of the human and the non-human world, which is one world, entirely made and saved in the absolute love of God.
The Salvation which Jesus worked was, at the same time, the fulfilment of his Creation. On the cross human sinfulness died, as did everything else that is broken in nature. On the cross Salvation was bought, marking a new beginning for God’s whole Creation. [2]
We can celebrate because:
by the life of Jesus, God’s fullest life;
and by the cross, God’s gift of self-giving unconditional love;
and by Jesus’ resurrection, God’s release of healing, forgiving, renewing power into the world;
– all that is broken in Creation may begin again – human and non-human alike.
Let us give thanks that as a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Creation is in the process of leaving death behind. As a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, all Creation is in the process of being reconciled.
Is there good news for those who are seeking Salvation in nature but don’t know where to look?
Is the good news that there is a Creator behind all this beauty and wonder, who existed before anything else, and who holds all Creation together?
Is the good news that this same Creator can be known because he has been shown, he has walked the earth, lived, laughed, loved, taught, blessed, healed?
Yes – the good news is that this Creator-Saviour has wept over the world’s brokenness, has calmed nature’s storms, has restored afflicted people to good health, has cast out evil spirits and brought blessing to the poor.
Yes – the good news is that this same Creator-Saviour, by exposing and confronting the sin of the world, paid the price with his life but now lives again, having overcame death once for all.
All this is very good news for all seekers after God’s truth in this world.
The final piece of good news is that the creative work of Salvation – of reconciling Creation – is a work in which we believers share in every day.
The Colossian creed says that ‘Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body.’ Which means that just as Jesus himself once embodied God on earth, showing the world the image of the previously invisible God, so now, with the help of his Holy Spirit, The Church now embodies God on earth. It is our joyful task to share in his work of Salvation – of reconciling Creation – in the way we live our lives each and every day.
Let us pray constantly for all who look up for help, all seekers after God’s truth in this world. Let us encourage each other in the joyful task of opening people’s eyes to The Creator, who is also and in the very same way The Saviour.Amen
Notes
Talk presented in collaboration with Naoko Seddon, translator, to whom many thanks.
Jesus was at it again. Like a good rabbi, teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath; but when a woman appeared needing healing, he healed her; rousingthe leader of the synagogue to call him a very bad rabbi, saying, ‘There are six days on which work should be done, people should be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ Jesus gave him short shrift, shaming his opponents and delighting the crowd who thought what he was doing was truly wonderful.
Now, please note this: Jesus was a rabbi. He worked from within his faith tradition. But Jesus was an utterly unpredictable rabbi. Jesus was always surprising his synagogue friends by eating at the wrong houses (those of sinners), hanging around the wrong people (tax collectors, adulterers, prostitutes, lepers), and healing people on the wrong day (the Sabbath).
With Jesus, there was no digital diary, no strategic plan, no mission statement; there was only the eager anticipation of the present moment. But the Pharisees wanted Jesus to be the same as they were. They wanted his truth to be the same truth that they had spent centuries taming. Their encounters with Jesus reminded them that truth is unpredictable. People rarely like surprises – church people included – and we don’t want to be uncomfortable. We want a nice, tame Jesus.
But with Jesus, tameness is not an option. When Jesus is present, traditional practices get upset: andwhilst some traditionalists around him get angry, others feel mysteriously glad at the same time.
You take surprise out of faith and all that is left is dry and dead religion. Take away mystery from the gospel and all that is left is a frozen and petrified dogma. Lose your awe of God and you are left with an impotent deity. Abandon astonishment and you are left with meaningless piety. When religion is characterised by sameness, when tradition is set in stone, then the uniqueness of God’s people is dead and the church is lost.
Most people believe that following Jesus is all about living right. This is not true. Following Jesus is all about living fully. And that means being open to the idea that faith and tradition are evolving things.
Jesus met a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years, bent over unable to stand up straight: a woman, possessed, a cripple – there are three reasons why her society would probably exclude her. What did Jesus do? He immediately called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment’, laid his hands on her, set her free.
Jesus taught by example that Christianity is tradition in motion: it’s not about learning how to live within the lines; it is about the joy of colouring.
Christianity is faith in motion: it causes us to often ask, which is the most important, sticking to the rules or acting out in love?Which is the most important, sticking to the Sabbath law or this woman’s well-being?
Christianity is love in motion: it’s not about Christians moving with the times to keep up with the good morals of the world around us; no, it’s about keeping open to the Spirit who will prompt us to reform our ways when those ways have become stale and even worse, oppressive.
What do you want from your Christian faith? Something substantial that grounds you; something familiar which holds and affirms you; and maybe also something which can surprise you and offer you new beginnings, something that can give you a lifetime of holy moments…?
When you arrive in church, what do you think you’ve come to? The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says that:
You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Worshipping God is never tame. It’s always an encounter with the most powerful force for good we can ever meet.
And it’s a force in motion; for Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant; which means that Christians are committing to a life of living right, for sure. But more, much more than that, we’re committing to a life of living fully. A lifetime of holy moments with a Saviour who loves us so much that he affirms us in our traditions whilst keeping them, and us, in forward motion.
The great spiritual writer Frederick Buechner who died this week aged 96, once wrote that “Faith is the word that describes the direction our feet start moving when we find that we are loved. Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.” [2]
Those who love Christ are at one with a force in motion.
So let us watch – and see what God has in store for you this week. Watch – and pray to spend your time with Jesus, crying and laughing with him, all the way.
Mike Yaconelliwas a writer, theologian, church leader and satirist. Co-Founder of Youth Specialties, a training organisation for Christian youth leaders, and The Wittenburg Door (sometimes just The Door), a satirical magazine, Yaconelli was also the pastor of a small church in Yreka, California – “the slowest growing church in America” as he called it. As well as his contributions to the Wittenburg Door, Yaconelli also wrote a number of books for youth leaders, and was a well-received Christian conference speaker, a regular at the Greenbelt festival in the UK. Mike was killed in a car accident on October 30, 2003, aged 61. Source: Wikipedia.
[2] Frederick Buechner, ordained minister and author of nearly forty books, passed away on Aug 15, 2022, aged 96. The quote is an excerpt from the sermon ‘Follow Me’ found in The Magnificent Defeat.
"I want you to know how sad I am to give up the best job in the world." If there's a point for reflection to draw from the feverish events of the past week maybe it's that giving up is very hard to do. Boris Johnson has reflected on this himself:
“Long after it is obvious to everyone that we are goners we continue to believe in our ‘duty’ to hang on, with cuticle-wrenching tenacity, to the perks and privileges of our posts. We kid ourselves that we must stay because we would be ‘letting people down’ or that there is a ‘job to be finished’. In reality, we are just terrified of the come-down.”
Johnson wrote this in 2006, about Tony Blair, who had let it be known he would be stepping aside the following spring. He didn't believe that Blair would stand by his words, but the then-PM left on a schedule.
Giving up is very hard to do: but we all have to face the truth at times that the moment has come. "Openness to truth will be an experience of dispossession and impoverishment. We give up our desire to possess the truth, the People, their money," Benjamin Myers recently wrote.
As I've often said in church, we are driven by our desires, and that's not necessarily a negative thing for it is rooted in God creating us 'in his image', ie, desiring that we desire to be like him. The faithful life consists of often stopping to question whether the desires shaping us are of that sort, or whether we've embraced what St Paul would call 'worldly' desires.
Away from politics, in the world of art this week Nick Cave released a small spoken word collection called Seven Psalms. Cave's work has always been 'Christ-haunted', powerfully drawing on the imagery of scripture, and since the accidental death of his son Arthur in 2015 it seems to have taken a deeper devotional turn. Seven Psalms is a series of profound responses to loss, or having to give up. In I come alone and to you Cave says,
I come alone and to you, Lord, in sorrow Thirsty for your refuge, I cannot breathe I kneel among your stars and in the morrow I have nothing more to offer but to leave
Deep calls to deep, the silver waters flow Winding through the gardens damp with dew Deep calls to deep, I have nowhere left to go But to you, Lord, breathless, but to you
At the heart of the faithful life is the practice of permitting ourselves to be dispossessed and impoverished – before the gaze of a loving God. Another poet of grim, joyous truthfulness, R. S. Thomas, celebrated that insight with these words:
The Kingdom
It’s a long way off but inside it There are quite different things going on: Festivals at which the poor man Is king and the consumptive is Healed; mirrors in which the blind look At themselves and love looks at them Back; and industry is for mending The bent bones and the minds fractured By life. It’s a long way off, but to get There takes no time and admission Is free, if you purge yourself Of desire, and present yourself with Your need only and the simple offering Of your faith, green as a leaf.
The Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Sea Sunday, Sunday 10 July 2022
Austwick, Keasden
‘Who is my neighbour?’ – a question which is now, and always has been, at the centre of every Christian’s thinking about how we are to live, faithfully, with others in this world.
‘Who is my neighbour?’ – an interesting question to ponder on this, Sea Sunday, a day set aside for us to think about the sea and those who work on it, to consider our connections with them and our ministry to them.
How we answer the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ will depend on our answer to another, more fundamental question, ‘Who am I?’ For there are deep-rooted reasons why we regard other people the way we do, and they are to do with the stories of our own lives.
The Mission to Seafarers began on the beach at Clevedon, Somerset, when one day, looking across to Flat Holm, the son of a young Anglican clergyman asked him, “Daddy, where do sailors go to church?” and the Reverend John Ashley turned down a parish appointment to begin a ministry to seafarers in the Bristol Channel. [1]
What are your connections with the sea, through the places you have lived or worked, or through journeys you’ve made?
For me, the sea played a large part in my formation. As many of you know I was born and raised right alongside the banks of the River Mersey, the view from my bedroom window across to the Wirral peninsular and the hills of North Wales and Snowdonia beyond, out to the Irish Sea. Ours was a port city, so as I played on the beach at the end of our road, commercial ships and ferries passed by, and the sights and sounds of loading and unloading at the container docks less than a mile away were part of the background to every day. And I remember every New Year the sound of ships in the channel blasting their foghorns in the dark at midnight.
So when we think of the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’, we’re conscious that my neighbours aren’t just those next door, they are also ‘over the water’; aware that the waters which separate our place from other places, actually also connect those places together through those who move across them from port to port, from place to place.
Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that our neighbour is the one who does something for us. Those who work the shipping lines bring us virtually everything we need. The 40,000 freighters on the seas today between them carry 80% of the world’s trade and 90% of its energy. Nearly everything we eat, wear and work with has spent some time on a ship. Although it is almost invisible the sea trade is enormous, and this shows us how dependent we are on our international ‘neighbours’ whose work ensures that our material needs and desires are attended to. [2]
Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan also teaches us that our neighbour, the one who does something for us, is often the one we’d least expect to.
Of all the occupations in the world, sailors aren’t the best regarded. Their hard living, social isolation and general poverty has always put them on the margins of society, and when they have come ashore they have on the one hand been prey to the exploitation of opportunists, on the other have been looked down on for their drunken excesses. A famous Liverpool waterfront thoroughfare is called Paradise Street, because historically it was a sailors’ paradise of readily available women and alcohol. There is knowing irony in the name, for rather than being a real paradise this was a poor replacement for the genuine intimacy of the relationships the sailors so dearly missed with loved ones back home.
So it follows that if he had told the story in another time and place, Jesus might have called it the Parable of the Drunken Sailor, for in this respect, sailors are just like the Samaritans of Jesus’ time and place. Given a wide berth by Judeans not so much for a perceived lack of morals, but more because of their religious differences; Jews regarded Samaritans suspiciously as semi-pagans in their beliefs and practices and went out of their way to avoid them. [3] This is the real shock value in Jesus’ story – not so much that someone stopped to help the bruised and bleeding man, but that a Samaritan did. He really wants us to understand that our neighbour, the one who does something for us, can often be the one we’d least expect – and to be always open to that possibility.
Part of the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ rests in how I ‘love my neighbour’ – how I behave towards the other – and especially, towards the one I’m least connected to, or comfortable with.
We might imagine that there would have been some opposition to the Reverend John Ashley’s idea of leaving conventional parish work at the start of his ministry to embark on a previously untried venture supporting outcast sailors. From family, peers and diocesan chiefs who would regard this a risky move at best, a scandalous waste of his time and energy at worst.
Like other Christians who have stepped out into the unknown to pioneer mission work, not everyone would have shared Ashley’s view of his neighbour being the lonely, exploited and rather rough-edged sailor, not everyone would have seen any value in leaving the parish behind and taking church out onto such choppy waters. But ‘Ashley’s work inspired others to minister to seafarers and by 1856, when the Mission to Seafarers was officially constituted, there were mission “stations” in a growing number of British ports and harbours, and within a short time, chaplaincies on the Elbe, in Mediterranean ports, in Halifax, Nova Scotia and by 1866, as far away as Singapore’. [4]
If Ashley ever asked, ‘Who am I?’ he could have justifiably said that he was one who showed what it really meant to ‘love God with everything; and his neighbour as himself’. An inspiration.
I wonder how this connects with your story? Who are the Good Samaritans in your life, those who have impressed you for the way they have reached out to others in need?
It might seem surprising to you to find the Foreword to the Church of England book How Village Churches Thrive being written by the entertainer Hugh Dennis. “If I am honest, I probably find it as surprising as you do,” he begins, “but let me give you a little context.”
Hugh Dennis calculates that for nearly half his life he has lived next door to churches of various shapes and sizes. Born in the Rectory of Kettering Parish Church where his father was the curate, “when I was a mere three months old, my father became the rather cool, pipe-smoking vicar of Christ Church, on the Isle of Dogs, in the East End of London.” Later, Mill Hill in North London was followed by a stint in Yorkshire where his father John served as the Bishop of Knaresborough, and then a move to Suffolk when he became Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.
“You might think, quite reasonably, that a childhood of such proximity to churches would mean that I would step away from the habit in adult life, but not a bit of it. Instead, I bought a house next to a small church in the South Downs, one of eight churches in a team parish in the Diocese of Chichester. In other words, when it comes to churches and parishes, I am something of an insider with a particular love for rural churches, and a great sympathy for those who toil to keep them going in what are often very difficult circumstances.”
Hugh Dennis knows church life well enough to be able to state that “It would be folly to make the mistake of thinking that these buildings are simply historic monuments, facing inevitable decline. In my experience. they are often well loved, well used buildings that stand at the centre of the communities they serve, with halls and facilities that could be used or indeed are already used. to bring the community together, be they churchgoers or non-churchgoers. During the pandemic, for example, many such churches have led the way in organising networks of support. The same pandemic, in one of its rather unexpected consequences, has changed the outlook for rural areas as, helped by the move homeworking, families increasingly look to leave larger towns to and cities to experience the peace and quiet of the countryside. So, if anything, I think many rural churches are rather like spring bulbs, ready for the right conditions to release all the potential they hold, and to thrive. Some are already growing and blossoming, and many others will follow.”
This is an encouragingly positive perspective from a supportive friend of the churches and church people. It serves well as an introduction to the equally positive workbook How Village Churches Thrive which I hope you'll not tire of hearing about in the coming months as I'll be using it to help us engage together with practical questions about our future, starting with a morning on Saturday 10 September devoted to discussing positive approaches to stewardship and fundraising: please do come along and get involved.
