NOVEMBER/DECEMBER PASTORAL LETTER
Pride of Place
Dear Friends,
My current post here, as interim Priest-in-Charge of the Ely villages, is to look after what might be called ‘a string of parishes’, and here I am deliberately avoiding using more technical terms like team, group, benefices, or cluster. What is very clear to those who live and possibly also work in a village is their sense of identity, which is evidenced in any number of areas, be it church, school and catchment, parochial charity, club or sports team. My time in urban Salford also taught me that even the context of back-to-back terraced housing is equally territorial despite what looks homogenously similar …the inexorable question had to be asked there… “where were the boundaries between Weaste, Seedley and Langworthy?!”…but indigenous local folk knew. The Church honours each parish by ‘beating its bounds’ at Rogationtide, praying for all human activity within its borders, and each parish, be it ecclesiastical or civil, has its own Council, a decision-making body closest to the everyday lives of all who belong to that place.
‘Parish – a theology of place’ is my current book, written by Bishop Andrew Rumsey, Suffragan (or Assistant) Bishop of Ramsbury, which roughly covers the county of Wiltshire within the diocese of Salisbury. His writing helps us to understand why the presence (and sometimes threatened loss) of a parish church has such a profound importance for people who live there…..the building itself (John Betjeman’s phrase ‘a sermon in stone’ comes to mind) speaks of the presence of God, notwithstanding the number of regular worshippers. This why all parish churches should wherever possible be open during daylight hours, something we achieve in most of those locally, such that people can enter to say their prayers. We also need to remember that God is here among us, without a building or clergy, which is why places of pilgrimage remain so powerful too, such as The Holy Island of Lindisfarne from where I recently returned with a group, having visited Etheldreda’s formative place at Coldingham in Berwickshire, where she became a nun. Etheldreda then returned to Ely to begin the dual community of religious men and women, which has ultimately become our inspirational cathedral.
So, while honouring the significant presence in some parishes of self-supporting (ie unpaid) clergy, and some retired clergy who have the Bishop’s permission to minister locally or wider, each parish simply can no longer have its own resident ‘vicar’…the Church of England has simply not got enough people sensing God’s call so to minister full-time, nor has it the resources to fund either their stipends (salaries), or the houses for them to live in. This is why people such as myself are asked to exercise leadership and oversight of a string of them, but I can only live in one place and travel to the rest, attempting to be as visible as I am able in church, school, and the whole gamut of social gatherings. In the face of this inexorable situation, which is clearly here to stay, here in our own diocese of Ely, in common with all the other 43 dioceses of the Church of England, we are facing up to this by trying to establish Authorised Local Leadership, which is likely in each parish to comprise a small team of people with particular skills, and in some cases just a team of one. Such folk deserve all our thanks and praise for their heroic work within and for each parish. Such teams will simply embody current distinct roles in a parish, but give them authorisation together, and with the incumbent (i.e. someone like me); in so doing, they locally and best identify what God is up to in each place. The pity is it has taken us too long to get here, as Canon John Tiller’s famous report in the late 1980’s prophetically said.
In closing, may I wish you and your family a holy Advent, and a blessed and Happy Christmas when it comes, and do come along to a church service that suits you, whether or not in your own parish! You will find a warm welcome.
Mark
Revd Canon Mark Haworth
Interim Priest-in-Charge of the Ely Villages
& Assistant Curate in the Ely Team Ministry;
Rural Dean of Ely
The Rectory
Main Street
Downham-in-the-Isle
Ely
CB6 2ST
Tel:
01353 699491
07932 160 009
Email: mhaworth50@hotmail.com
