Moving to Bristol
I would imagine that you will have heard by now that I have been appointed as Vicar of St Mary Redcliffe in the Diocese of Bristol. My final Sunday in this parish will be Easter Day, 31 March 2013 and my induction is at 4.30pm on Saturday 20 April.
It was very hard weighing up whether or not to apply for the post. I was asked to think about making an application in the summer and I took wise counsel from four different people across the Church of England. Each of those conversations led me on to the next one and, in the end, I concluded that I should fill in the application forms. I was interviewed against a strong field of candidates, each offering a different model of what it means to be a parish priest, so it was with some surprise when I took the phone call from the Bishop of Bristol later that evening to hear him offering me the job!
Redcliffe is not just a marvellous building (though it is clearly that), it is also a fascinating mix of communities. The congregation is gathered from across the city but the parish is ten tower block with all the usual signs of urban deprivation. There are two church schools, a primary and a secondary, and some civic functions as well. It is an exciting prospect for me.
However it will leave this parish in vacancy … again! I am very aware that this vacancy has come around sooner than might have been expected and I will do my very best to work with all my colleagues to plan for a smooth transition. The Bishop of Reading is equally aware of this and is keen to ensure that a new Rector is appointed as soon as possible.
This does not mean that everything comes to a grinding halt. The Church Leadership Team at St Peter’s and the other aspects of the leadership across the parish will continue their good work. Indeed elsewhere you can read about development plans at St John’s and here is one development planned for St Peter’s:
Choral Evensong … Enhanced
Many people find that Choral Evensong, sung in churches and cathedrals up and down the country, and sung weekly in St Peter’s is a quiet, secluded, sacred space which nourishes the spirit. We are keen to enable this glory of Anglican worship to be more widely known, so that more people can draw deeply from the well of this sacred space.
So we’re embarking upon a project called ‘Enhancing Evensong’. We’re going to improve our publicity across the area; we’re going to offer really good refreshments after the service; and we’re going to preach on … this is where you come in!
What would you like the clergy to preach about? What questions do you have about faith and life? What concerns would you like us to address? Our hope is that if we preach on the questions you have about faith, those are the subjects that will resonate with others.
Please let me have your thoughts. With my best wishes.
Dan Tyndall
Keep Calm or Say Something Angrily?
How the no-vote might just be good news for the Church of England
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by the fallout from the narrow defeat in the House of laity. All of those, myself included, who have waited long enough to see women in the episcopate have every right to feel frustrated and let down. Indeed, there is a great deal of shouting, whinging, and crying going on. I do wonder, though, whether this frustration is as much directed at those who are against women’s ordination, as it is at those who are for it.
I do not accept that this vote reveals that the Church to be a bigoted institution, or an out-of-touch institution, nor even one with faulty democratic structures. For me, this vote reveals something that is blatantly obvious to anyone who has anything to do with its common life: the Church of England is full of well-meaning, decent people who simply assume that because their views are well-meaning and decent, they will be supported by ‘those people’ on Synod, and so all will be well. There is a structural apathy that runs throughout the majority of the Church where it is assumed that it is somebody else’s responsibility to ensure their views are represented and enacted. We have assumed that by not standing for any Synods, nor voting for anyone who is standing, that all will be well for reason will win out.
This vote put paid to that. And I hope that it is a wake-up call to the vast majority of those baptised into the Church of England to realise that in order for the structures to represent their views, they must participate in them. It is no use decrying ‘conservatives’ (whatever that means) for ‘loading’ the Synod; they understood what the majority did not: that this was worth fighting for. And they have proven their point through the narrowest of margins. Synods may not be everybody’s idea of a good night out, but they are the pathways through which Church of England organises its common life. If synods are seen as a minority interest, then the majority should not be surprised when these synods express minority views.
A time for the National Church to be national. For once.
This is something, quite rightly, that the whole nation wants to discuss. So let’s have those discussions at parish and national levels, and encourage parishioners to participate in their Church. This should be a good opportunity for our Churches to engage, and ask all those who are rightly outraged at this decision to help us in the building project which is the Church of England.
On this point, however, the Church of England should not allow itself to become the nation’s scapegoat for ubiquitous inequality. The ground on which our politicians stand to berate the Church is not as solid as they would like us to think: only one of the large political parties has ever had a woman in charge, and there are far more men involved in the whole of parliament, than there are women. The same can be said of the business world, the journalistic world, and so on. Whilst these institutions certainly agree in principle with the concept of women in leadership, very few of them are acting on that principle. You can be assured, however, that when the Church legislates for women bishops (which it will), that it will act swiftly in seeing the right people – women and men – in the leadership of the Church.
Don’t Panic.
With all of this pressure on the bishops, there is every chance they will panic and rush through a second-class piece of work that attempts to inappropriately appease those against women’s ordination. Personally, I hope they take their time. I would rather wait another five years, or more, and have the right structures in place, rather than rush something through that will cause enormous problems in the future. Certainly this time will allow the Church in the nation to express more carefully the genuine theological foundation that underpins the importance of seeing women as equally called and gifted as men. Just as important, however, this time will also enable reflection on the general apathy of the majority of the baptised, and how to encourage deeper participation in the common life of the Church of England.
As utterly frustrating as the current position certainly is, it may be the (re-)making of the Church of England.
Graeme Fancourt
Jeremy’s Jottings
Advent marks the start of a new church year, and like any new year it’s a good opportunity for us to reflect upon what has happened in the past year and to look forward to what lies ahead. Space prevents me from mentioning everything but here follows a few examples.
In terms of the past year, we had a Lent appeal for new hymn books, namely Complete Anglican Hymns Old and New. Amazingly, this provided just the right amount of money for us to buy the 8 choir music books and 100 congregational words books we were looking to purchase and these were dedicated by Dan for use on Pentecost Sunday. I think they are proving useful and I am thankful to the working party of Len David, Sylvia Purkis, Margaret Cameron and Sean Holmewood who assisted with this process.
Two significant parts of our community engagement this past year came with the Churches Together in Caversham (CTC) involvement in the Caversham Festival and the Amersham Road Cooking Club. The Caversham Festival was a wonderful example of the local churches pulling together to make a real difference in our locality through providing an open air worship service at the festival, free inflatable rides, a sporting/artistic performance arena, and two Christian bands. I am very grateful to our steering group rep., Jenny Hicks, and to all those from St.John’s who acted as stewards on the day and those who came along to support the activities. I think this and the CTC Olympic themed children’s holiday club have done a good job in raising our profile in the community.
So too, to a lesser and more focussed extent, has been the work of the Amersham Road Cooking Club (ARCC). This parish and Methodist Church venture, initially in conjunction with the council, housing association and local parents has been well received by the 7-11 year old children who have attended the termly sessions of cooking, craft and games. Now that the churches are solely responsible for running this, there is more opportunity to introduce a Christian dimension to the proceedings and hopefully this will provoke a greater interest in our faith and in due course lead to a new worshipping community emerging on the estate. A special word of thanks to David Salisbury and Linda Shannon from St. John’s who have been involved with the ‘fresh expressions’ team behind this.
In terms of what lies ahead, Advent Sunday marks the launch of our Pastoral Care Team. At its away day in January, the Church Leadership Team set in motion a process to set up such a team so that we might care better for those who we know (both new and old) at St.John’s. I am grateful to the working party of Ann Deane, Linda Shannon and Sarah Lowther who worked with me in helping to set this up and look forward to working with Ann, Linda, Inga Gregory, Doreen Jobbins and John Dudley in translating this into reality. Please do let me know if you, or someone you know, is in need and would appreciate a visit and/or to be prayed for.
January sees the beginning of our much awaited parish-wide small groups and this is something else which the leadership team has been keen to see happen here at St.John’s. As I write, these are still in the process of being set up and I hope they will prove to be a fruitful way of enabling us to worship, pray, study and care for each other. Our faith is not just for Sundays but for the whole week and anything we can do to support and encourage each other in that is a good thing. Do sign up for a small group in this Advent season.
Finally, the spring is due to herald the arrival of the three Cs – the Caversham Community Café. This initiative, which springs out of our involvement with Newbridge Nursery, Caversham Hall and Caversham Methodist Church through the Lower Caversham Community Partnership (LCCP), provides an excellent way for us to continue to engage with our community. Wendy Buss and Richard Purkis are doing some sterling work in relation to this and I am looking forward to seeing greater use made of our church building, which once again ties in with another goal the leadership team set for the church back in January.
May I thank each and every member of St. John’s, and the parish, for your support of the on-going ministry and mission here, and I look forward to reporting back in a year’s time on the exciting developments which have taken place. Happy New Year!
Jeremy Tear
“With All Faults”
It’s very easy when you’re incapacitated, trapped in four walls to get maudlin and very sorry for yourself! Using a walking stick does nothing for your morale. I picked up a book by Eddie Askew, a past director of the Leprosy Mission and found some comfort in its pages on ‘old things’!
I’m a collector. I love and respect old things. Antiques, old paintings, antiquarian books, old china. From time to time, I get lists of old books for sale sent to me by antiquarian booksellers. The format is always the same. Each book is listed by the author, then comes the title, the date, of the particular edition, and then anything else that’s relevant. The size, the style of binding, and so on.
Booksellers have their own jargon of course, and all this is written in abbreviations. Quite often, at the end of a short description of a particular book, you’ll see the letters WAF. They stand for ‘’with all faults’’ When you see this, you know that the dealer is warning you that the book is imperfect. It has faults. Perhaps some pages are missing, or its suffered significant damage. He’s found some faults but he thinks there may be more. If you really want the book, you have to accept it as it is.
I like to think that’s the way God loves us. With all faults. That in spite of all our faults, he’s still prepared to accept us as we are, ‘’buy’’ us, redeem us, and add us to his collection. God doesn’t demand perfection before he loves us. He loves us as we are with all the faults-however many pages are missing! Someone said ‘’There Is nothing that we can say or do to make God love us more than he already does.’’
That’s important. He accepts as we are. Having accepted us, he then begins to work with us, renewing, repairing, recreating us and our lives, but that’s nothing to do with how he loves us. And when you think about it, it has to be that way, because if God loved us more the better we became, it would imply that God loves some people more and other people less. And that can’t be true – can it?
It would also mean that we could earn God’s love and again, that’s not true is it?
Love is his free gift, and he gives it to us as we are, with all our faults.
If that’s the way God loves us, then maybe that’s the way we ought to love each other.
I wish you all a blessed and loving Advent – WAF!
Marion Pyke