Columns (April 2009)
Rural Affairs
By Dagmar Winter
Welcoming Our Visitors
This year promises to be a good year for tourism across the UK. More of us are going to spend our main holidays here this year and places have rapidly become booked up, including those in Northumberland. With the weak pound, a holiday in the UK has become especially attractive to foreign visitors, too, and passenger numbers are up by 20% on ferries into Newcastle alone.
This news can help us to focus our minds on visitors to our churches – visitors to our services, visitors to our church buildings. Many visitors to our beautiful countryside also love visiting our beautiful country churches.
There are some encouraging stories and examples around in our Diocese. Every project which reaches out to visitors will also have something to say to the residents of the parish who may not be church members but who nevertheless can be part of the visitor welcome: whether there is a pointer in the church to services they provide (eg a village shop) or whether they become actively involved in a visitor project, sharing their heritage, thus strengthening local 'ownership' of the church.
Church Trails are a good way for a number of churches to work together. Glendale is preparing this and Hexham Deanery produced a Deanery Church Trail a couple of years ago. Leaflets which were funded by Awards for All and other local charities have been made available in tourist outlets, B&Bs etc and in the Deanery Churches. It drew the Deanery together and spawned ideas amongst people on how churches can be made more welcoming, what is special and what has a story to tell in their church. The first edition of the Trail is only Anglican, a future edition is planned to be ecumenical.
Long-distance trails have become hugely popular over the last few years, none more so in our area than the one along Hadrian's Wall. But there is also St Cuthbert's Way, winding its way from Melrose in Scotland via Wooler to Holy Island, the Northumberland Coast Path and St Oswald's Way (Holy Island via Warkworth and Rothbury to Heavenfield) . The latter two walks were both launched as recently as 2006.
St Oswald's Way was the brainchild of a local vicar, now retired, Rev Michael Mountney, when he was based in Embleton. The trail was started, like St Cuthbert’s Way, to generate economic activity along its way and has won a top Local Authority Award for partnership initiatives. Michael is on St Oswald's Way Steering Committee of Alnwick District Council and has just seen published a series of short round walks based on the main centres of the trail. This might bring more visitors to the relevant churches. He and I are also preparing a leaflet with details of the churches along St Oswald's Way.
Making use of the opportunities is the guiding theme. This becomes even more obvious when a church is located close to a place which attracts large numbers of visitors. For instance, Cambo Church is only a mile or so from Wallington, a National Trust mansion. The link is very strong since the church was built by the Trevelyan family who used to own Wallington, and most of the parish is part of the Estate, now owned by the National Trust. With the start of this year's season, leaflets inviting visitors to Cambo Church are offered in Wallington and visitor welcome leaflets are also displayed in the church, combining historical information with telling the story of faith.
In a similar fashion, Kirkharle Church relates to Kirkharle Courtyard which houses arts and crafts, a coffee shop and a Capability Brown exhibition. And Capability Brown was baptised in Kirkharle Church!
In all of this it is important to be clear about our motivation: for the vast majority of churches, attracting additional visitors is not going to make a vast amount of financial difference. But hospitality and welcome are an inexorable trait for any Christian community, a virtue worth practising, and certainly part of being 'Generous, Engaged and Open', as we like to say in Newcastle Diocese.
I am intrigued by another strap line, the one of the National Parks in our country: they are called "Britain's Breathing Spaces". There's certainly a lot of fresh breath available in Northumberland National Park! When the National Park boundaries were drawn up, they studiously avoided any settlements as much as possible and only seven churches are within the Park as such. However, I counted 52 churches nearby. Since the National Park is very keen to be involved with its neighbouring communities, I sense further opportunities here. Surely we have something to say and to share, through our churches, about the enlivening breath of God ?
[This is a shortened and adapted version of a presentation given at the Diocesan Synod Forum on Saturday, 14th March.]
Next month, the Rural Column will feature an interview with someone working hard for our rural communities in the Uplands!
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Green Links
By Janis Irvine
About 70 people attended a recent presentation at Brunswick Methodist Church - “Hope for Planet Earth”, part of a national tour, which had as its speakers representatives from the John Ray Initiative (JRI), Tearfund, A. Rocha and Share Jesus International (SJI). It is, perhaps, good for us all to know who some of the players are within the field of environmental concern so I shall try to introduce these particular groups from their own publicity material.
“The three organisations providing the scientific backing for the tour are JRI, Christians in Science (CiS) and the Faraday Institute. JRI is an educational charity that brings together scientific and Christian understandings of the environment in a way that can be widely communicated and lead to effective action. It was formed in 1997 in response to the global environmental crisis and the challenges of sustainable development and environmental stewardship.” www.jri.org.uk
“ CiS is a network of those concerned with the relationship between science and Christian faith, open to all those with an interest in this dialogue. Although CiS is primarily a professional group, aimed at those working in science, a significant proportion of our members are not scientists. We aim to bring biblical Christian thought on Scientific issues into the public arena, communicate the gospel within the scientific community, and help science students.” www.cis.org.uk
The Faraday Institute is an academic research enterprise based at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. It has a Christian ethos, but encourages engagement with a wide diversity of opinions concerning interactions between science and religion, without engaging in advocacy. It aims to provide accurate information in order to facilitate informed debate.” www.faraday-institute.org
Tearfund: “We are Christians passionate about the local church bringing justice and transforming lives — overcoming global poverty. Our ten-year vision is to see 50 million people released from material and spiritual poverty through a worldwide network of 100,000 local churches. We work on climate change because it hits the world’s poorest people hardest and so we want to mobilize the global church to raise its voice and take action.” www.tearfund.org/climatechange
A Rocha: “We’re the UK’s leading Christian environmental organisation with solid biblical foundations and scientific expertise. We’re also part of the global A Rocha family with 25 years of experience in running practical projects, now in nearly 20 countries. We believe we can all make a difference to the future of planet earth, with a little help from our friends. We help individuals, groups, churches and communities think about their use of the environment, and develop practical ways to care for people and the planet, locally and globally, We’re motivated by our biblical belief that this is God’s world entrusted to our care, and welcome anybody who cares about the planet to work with us.” www.arocha.org.uk
SJI is a Christian organization that is committed to innovation. With a passion to help mobilize the church into action, relate the gospel message relevantly and stand up for justice, SJI is on the interface between the Christian faith and culture. As a Christian organization we believe that climate change is a big issue that the Church needs to engage with and that is why we have helped pioneer “Hope for Planet Earth” www.sharejesusinternational.com
There were five of us traveling home together after the presentation, representing Methodist, Catholic and Anglican churches, as well as one non-church person. We were all agreed that it had been a very worthwhile presentation, informative and thought-provoking. We might all be doing different things to help combat climate change; but what was not in question was that climate change was happening and that all of us had to engage in reducing our use of the Earth’s resources. As one of the speakers said, the world’s population has increased in his lifetime from 2 billion to 6 billion and we all had a duty to do our bit to greatly reduce our impact on the Earth. If each and every one of us did so, then there would indeed be hope for planet Earth.
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View from the Lantern
By Canon Sydney Connolly
“Give us vision, give us courage, and give us joy”
Holy Week is, in so many ways, the highlight of the Christian year. So much happens in these few days before Easter that most churches try to find some way of marking them with extra services and events. The Cathedral is no exception, and indeed is a place where the full drama of Holy Week beautifully unfol, from the Procession of Palms on Palm Sunday to the Vigil of the Resurrection, early on Easter Sunday morning.
Within Holy Week we have the Triduum – the great Three Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Into these days in particular, the Cathedral pours its considerable liturgical and musical resources – all made possible by the dedicated offering of the whole community of St Nicholas’ Cathedral. Those who live close enough to the city centre, and who do not have the means of observing Holy Week in their own churches would do well to make their way to the Mother Church of the Diocese to join in worship there.
All the Holy Week Services are impressive, but there is one service which perhaps I could comment on, that is becoming more and more high profile year by year. On Maundy Thursday at 11am there is the annual Sung Eucharist with the Blessing of Oils and the Renewal of Commitment to Service. Laity and Clergy from all the parishes in the diocese are invited to this service, where the Bishops are always present. During the course of the Sung Eucharist the oils are blessed and taken back to the parishes that have asked for them. Deacons offer the Oil for the anointing of the sick and the dying, the oil for the signing of the Cross at baptism, and the Oil of Chrism (most frequently used at Confirmation). I like to think that when the three oils are taken to the parishes they are placed in a prominent position in the churches at the Maundy Thursday evening service, and their presence and purpose explained for those who were unable to be present at the Cathedral earlier in the day.
An important part of the Maundy Thursday morning liturgy is the Renewal of Commitment to Service. This is not just for the ordained, but for all Christian people, and is a very moving and fitting element of Holy Week. The Bishop reads out those powerful words, originally from the Methodist Church, but now much loved by Anglicans and others, about the service to which Christ calls us: My brothers and sisters, Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are difficult.......... Then all present say a lovely prayer of commitment: to God and to each other: we commit ourselves to you and one another, to live, work and pray as one body in Christ, to trust each other as fellow workers in your church. (that little word “trust” is powerful and humbling, isn’t it?). The prayer ends: Give us vision, give us courage, and give us joy, that the world may believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, to your eternal glory.
Having renewed our commitment to service, and having been nourished by word, sacrament and fellowship, we return to our parishes to continue our Holy Week observances. For the Cathedral, these include the Liturgy of the Lord’s Death on Good Friday at 2pm. The Easter Vigil and Lighting of the Paschal Fire at 7am includes Baptism and Confirmation, concluding with a glorious Sung Eucharist at 10am. In between the Vigil and the Eucharist there is a very welcome breakfast! And what more splendid way to end Easter Day than Cathedral Festal Evensong at 6pm?
Have a good Holy Week and a very Happy Easter.
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Christian Aid column
Christian Aid Week 2009 is already in the minds of some 150 local organisers throughout the North East of England.
It is a remarkable fact that the 41 denominations in the UK and Ireland that ‘own’ Christian Aid are together responsible for the biggest ‘house to house’ collection of its kind: 300,000 people, out on the streets, in a week that raises £15 million for the world’s poorest people.
Many supporters of Christian Aid share the view that the desperate poverty of so many millions of people in the world is not necessarily the fault of the poor, but it is certainly the responsibility of the rich. Responding to the poor is not a casual choice: it is a deliberate and often sacrificial act of will on the part of those who recognise that poverty is a global issue that cannot be ignored. They believe that it is vital to the spiritual, emotional and physical well being of people in the global North [that’s us!] to engage fully with the scandal of poverty as it impacts upon our neighbours in the global South.
Christian Aid Week provides everyone with opportunities to respond to the Gospel to the poor, at the same time as building up church and ecumenical relations. ‘House to House’ can be a great money raiser. Where ‘House to House’ is impractical, people organise lunches, coffee mornings, clothes- swap sales, bog-a-thons, promise auctions, push-up challenges, sponsored walks, safari suppers, plant and book sales. Money is also collected at church services, street collections, supermarkets and railway stations.
Quizaid is in its second year: sometimes several churches join together, each providing a team; different organisations within a church might compete against one another; classes in schools; the list goes on….
This year we are hoping that Quizaid might be used on Pub Quiz nights and there are downloadable alternative versions for use with different ages and abilities.
Christian Aid is unusual in having area offices throughout the UK and Ireland. The staff and volunteers are here to resource and support churches where prayer, action and giving to the poor are regarded as integral to Christian lifestyle.
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