Features (July/August 2009)

Leading the Way at Shephderds Dene

Vive la France and Urban Mission

Lindisfarne is here to help you

Bishop Tom Wright

A Pilgrim's Reflection

Ordination candidates

Leading the Way at Shephderds Dene

It has been a circuitous – and challenging - route to the rural idyll of Shepherds Dene and the parish of Riding Mill, but Gill Henwood shows every sign of feeling at home.

As the new diocesan advisor for Spirituality and Spiritual Direction, as well as chaplain to the recently refurbished diocesan retreat house – not to mention priest in charge of St. James’ Riding Mill into the bargain – Gill is happy to be ministering in an area steeped in the Celtic tradition, and to be pursuing her own call to explore the role of spirituality in the Church of today.

“Shepherds Dene is a wonderful oasis for prayer, renewal and inspiration,” she says, “In Celtic terms it’s one of those ‘thin places’ where God speaks through the created world, through birdsong, perhaps, or through silence. It’s very special. “

The new job is a long way from her beginnings. She was a rebel at the church youth club: “I was in trouble for drinking after my O levels finished.” She was an art student in the days when it really wasn’t reputable: “My father just didn’t want me to go.” She was a female officer in the Commando Artillery Unit of the TA: “I liked adventure, canoeing, parachuting, cross-country skiing, Arctic training. I had my first visit to Northumberland during that time. Helicopter ops at Otterburn was one of my most scary moments ever.”

Gill Henwood was, in all of these, and in her subsequent career in design and computers, the woman pushing at boundaries, the one who saw no barriers to achieving her aims and ambitions. But then, after what she describes as a whirlwind romance and subsequent marriage to a fellow TA officer - and North-East vicar’s son – she found herself, within three years, living a very different kind of existence.

“I went from having a very active and stimulating working and social life to suddenly being at home, expecting a baby. I had to resign from the TA – you did in those days - and when my son was born, I realised that I knew nothing about local community life, and nothing much about children either!”

But her church upbringing, and her husband’s vicarage background, meant that they knew where to go to make connections, and so began a fruitful time in which Gill and her family came to experience the full measure of Christian love and neighbourliness.

“Our son was taken into hospital shortly after his first birthday, and people from church were fantastic. They were constantly checking to see how we were doing. There were notes through the door every night saying we were to collect our supper from so-and-so...This was the Church as family. I’ve never forgotten it.”

It was a long, and sometimes rocky, road for Gill from this point to ordination as priest in 1998, and her experience si nce has been wide. She comes to Shepherds Dene from a very different kind of role, that of vicar in a busy urban parish, Nunthorpe, in the diocese of York. Previously she’d worked at St. James’ Piccadilly “ a church which was a meeting point for many different nationalities, opinions and types of people, a questioning church which was constantly debating a huge variety of ethical and global issues.” Before that, however, her ministry was to a deeply rural area, the North-West, where she found herself serving a farming community devastated by Foot and Mouth. It was a time of crisis, and considerable hardship for the members of her flock, a time when, despite her part-time status, Gill found herself working “24/7”.

There was a family to look after too, a high-flying husband, Stephen, with a job that took him away much of the time, and by this time, three children. The family had already moved around to accommodate Stephen’s work as a management accountant, and Gill’s ministry had, of necessity, to be fitted around the demands of home life. And in the midst of it all, she was diagnosed with cancer – “something which makes you confront who you are and what you’re doing!”

Restored to health, she is eager to face the challenges of her latest job. Retreat houses throughout the land are feeling the pinch, and the way ahead for many is uncertain, although Shepherds Dene itself is entering a new and promising phase. Meantime, there is work to be done unravelling the many assumptions and misconceptions that surround the word “spirituality” as well as persuading Christians in the pews that spiritual direction is something that can benefit all, not just the clergy and licensed lay ministers. The Celtic term for a spiritual director, Gill explains, is “soul friend”, walking the journey alongside another pilgrim, as on the road to Emmaus. She hopes many will want to avail themselves of that fellowship. “I’d like to hear from people who want to be involved, and I’d like to find out what others are doing,” she says.

She will also be promoting and leading many of the events on offer at Shepherds Dene over the coming months, including sessions on Ways of Praying, Spirituality and Maturity, Training to be a Spiritual Director, and resourcing Spiritual Directors.

“A lot of people are praying for the future of Shepherds Dene,” Gill says, and she, of course, will be adding her own prayers too. “It’s hard work, trying to find out what is God is saying,” she reflects. “The bottom line is that you have a take a risk. Quite often you don’t know why God is asking you to do something, and there are no guarantees. It’s all about trust, about taking that leap in the dark.”

She invites others to take that leap, not least in supporting Shepherds Dene and exploring the spiritual promptings of this “thin place”.

George Hepburn

For the first time in its 60-year history, Shepherds Dene has a director in charge of operations – George Hepburn OBE, who leaves his job as head of the Community Foundation this autumn after 21 years.

George is well known to many in the diocese through his work for the Foundation, a philanthropic body which makes grants to community projects and organisations from funds contributed by profitable companies and wealthy families throughout the North-East. Last year the Foundation distributed more than £5m to some 1,600 different projects.

He is moving to the Shepheds Dene job because he decided it was time to do something new, because he wanted a new challenge, and because he loves the house and all that it offers to visitors.

The terms of that offer will, it’s clear, be consolidated under George’s direction. “I want visitors to feel they can enjoy Shepherds Dene and that potentially they can have a life-changing experience here,” he says. “I want them to go away feeling comfortable, well fed, and well looked-after.”

Retreat houses throughout the country have fallen upon hard times lately, and finding out why has been George’s first task. He has been working part-time at Shepherds Dene in the run-up to his departure from the Community Foundation, and he’s been looking at other houses to assess what makes for sustainability, and what signals decline.

“The retreat houses that do best are the ones that stick to the nitty-gritty,” he says. “And that’s what we must do at Shepherds Dene. Everything should reflect the fact that this is a Christian house, a place of prayer. Spirituality is what we do, and people need to know that by coming here they can deepen their relationship with God.”

George plans to develop to community life of Shepherds Dene with regular services in the chapel “so that if you work at Shepherds Dene, or if you’re a trustee or a volunteer, you share in the worship and you pray for the work of the house,” he says. “We need a shared prayer life, and we need to focus on our purpose which is to help people get closer to God. If we’re not doing this, then the game’s up.”

Beyond this he’ll be looking for new ways to encourage use of the premises in addition to the courses and parish weekends that make up its usual programme. “Anything to do with art, photography and music,” he says, “And there may be personal occasions for which people would like to hire Shepherds Dene, for the renewal of wedding vows, for example.” Wedding receptions are already part of the package, and he hopes to encourage these too.

His brief, he says, is “to put Shepherds Dene on the map” and he’ll be doing that by making more of what, in essence, it already is. “It’s not a hotel or a conference centre,” he says, “We won’t be letting it out simply as accommodation. It’s a place for stepping back, for escaping the pressures of the world, and for giving thanks.”

Vive la France and Urban Mission

By Julia Babb, Vicar of Saint Peter’s, Cowgate

As a member of the British Committee of the French protestant industrial mission, Mission Populaire Evangélique de France (known affectionately as Miss Pop), I travelled to Paris recently to take part in the Annual Meeting of the French missions, the ‘fraternités’, the houses of which are located in some of France’s largest urban centres.

In Britain, industrial mission is associated first and foremost with industry proper – of which very little now remains, even in the North East. In France, industrial mission is associated with industry proper, such as the heavy industry in the Alsace region, and also includes what we would term urban mission and ministry in Britain.

The word ‘populaire’ can be somewhat of a misnomer when translated into English. When translated literally it means popular. When translated in the French ‘Mission Populaire’ context it signifies, rather than means literally, working class and has urban connotations.

And so it was with great interest in British / French industrial overlaps, and the particular French working class and urban signification of the word ‘populaire’, that I arrived in Paris only to be greeted by even more similarities and contrasts – and questions around the purpose, identity and structure of industrial, working class and urban mission, serious questions which we also face in the churches in Britain, in similar contexts and to different degrees.

Paris is arguably one of the most architecturally beautiful, culturally rich and financially wealthy cities in the world and as such is the location of palaces such as the Louvre with its vast collection of world art, sculpture and archaeology – and Da Vinci Code fame. Yet it is also a city of extreme poverty amongst social drop-outs, minority groups and refugees and asylum seekers.

I stayed in a typical 19th century Parisian apartment block, with a grey stone facade and elegant-looking shuttered windows, in the Montmartre area, the 18th arrondissement. And on the pavement near to the stairwell of the apartment block was a small one-person tent that was home to a middle-aged French man – who would talk to diners on the opposite pavement when he was ‘at home’, and very helpfully leave a collecting pot by the tent when he was ‘out’...

The Annual Meeting was held over two days at the Foyer de Grenelle in the Vaugirard area, the 15th arrondisement. And on those days I used the Metro, the underground, to cross from Montmartre to Vaugirard. As I travelled I had the luxury of carrying a purse in my rucksack, which I didn’t want pick-pockets to steal, while there were other passengers who had the poverty of busking and begging for money.

At the opening of the Annual Meeting the Secretary General, Pastor Jean Pierre Rive, reflected on the current western financial and social crises, crises which are accompanied by social instability and the increasing withdrawal or privatisation of provision that was once made by the state on behalf of, and for, its citizens. He then introduced a debate about the nature of the mission that the pastors, staff and volunteers of the mission houses are engaged in – together with the men, women and children whose needs the houses exist to serve.

The Secretary General summarised his reflection by turning to the theology, to the ‘words about God’ which underpin our sense of who or what God is and who or what God calls us to be in our life together and in the mission that flows, or should flow, from our life together. “nous ne sommes rien sinon le mystère d’un cheminement commun que nous avons été appelés à faire pour que d’autres s’y mettent aussi.” We are nothing other than the mystery of a common journey that we have been called to make in order that others join it too. And I thought of the rough sleepers and buskers of my morning journey across the city.

In the debate and group discussions that followed delegates spoke about homelessness, housing benefits and poverty traps, single parent families, children and young people’s work, asylum seekers and asylum law, homosexuality and the pastoral response of Mission Populaire and the protestant churches, social inclusion and the participation of minorities, and the churches, in public and political debate, the environment and climate change, and of course the financing and resourcing of the mission houses and their ministry.

When Eurostar slowed to a halt on the return through the channel tunnel, due to technical problems, I thought about the almost subterranean nature of the similarities and contrasts between British and French urban mission and ministry; subterranean in that they are deeply embedded in a shared Gospel and distinct cultures and societies. And I wondered what future shape mission and ministry might take in the urban church in Britain.

The Annual Meeting did not suggest a geographical structure – or institutional blueprint – that will make the urban church financially viable. But the work of Stéphane Lavignotte, the Pastor of Maison Verte, the Montmartre mission house, offered a defining vision for the engagement of the urban church. Lavignotte summarises that vision in his book Vivre égaux et différents, when he writes that, “tout humain en vaut un autre, en droit, en fait, en dignité”. Each human being had equal worth, in law, in deed and in dignity.

The urban church, if we adopt the urban and working class connotation of the French word ‘populaire’, is the place where the contrasts and disparities of our global society are shown up most starkly, and the silent presence of the marginalised is most visible. The concept of human equality – which translates into equality before the law and equality in individual dignity and is a matter of human justice in deed – has to be the concept which shapes the vision of those who live and share ministry in an urban context, and the engagement of the whole church with the experience of the urban church.

Ultimately the whole church needs the presence and the ministry of the urban church just as much as the urban church needs the presence and the ministry of the whole church. The church cannot be complete, as the body of Christ, and in its mission, without ministering amongst, with and to the poor and the marginalised of not only our local communities but also of our global society.

Mission Populaire was founded by Robert MacAll, a Scottish Congregational minister, in 1871 in response to the massacre of the ‘Communards’ and the poverty that he saw around him in Paris at that time. The Scottish Congregational Churches subsequently set up a trust to support the MacAll’s work, and the British Committee oversees this historic trust and contributes to the funding of the mission and ministry that continue today. Mission Populaire will send a group of French delegates to Newcastle upon Tyne, where I live and work, in October to take part in a meeting of the British Committee and see some of the ministry in which we are engaged in a British urban working class area. For more information about Mission Populaire visit its website www.mpef@free.fr

Lindisfarne is here to help you

By Cathy Rowling

It's now four months since I arrived as Principal of Lindisfarne, the Regional Training Partnership established to provide learning opportunities for adult Christians from the Tees to the Tweed. You may have seen an article and picture in the last edition of The Link about the licensing service in St. Paul's Jarrow. I'm writing now to say 'Hello' and to let you know something of what we'll be offering.

We are here to help you develop as a confident, faithful witness to the Gospel in your church/ workplace/community. Wherever you are in your journey of faith, we offer something to take you further. The Developing Discipleship programme offers a range of opportunities for all people to explore questions of faith. Some people are called to Reader or ordained ministry; if you think this might be you be brave and speak with your parish clergy! If you think that you can see such a calling in someone you know, why not encourage them to explore it? A new course for public ministry students who have been recommended by their diocese for training will begin in September.

We also welcome independent students who wish to take one or more individual modules or study for a H.E. Certificate over 2 or 3 years, or a Diploma – or perhaps even for an entire Degree, all part-time. As an introductory offer we can provide a bursary for independent students who provide a letter of support from their church, leaving them to pay just £50 per module. It may be that you would like to take one or more modules simply out of interest without completing any assessed work; you can do this for just £25 per module.

The key word is flexibility; we can help you to decide what is right for you and can tailor an individual learning pathway to meet your needs. Lindisfarne staff are here to guide you; we look forward to talking with you by email, by phone or face to face.

Much more information, along with how to contact us, will be found on the website, which 'goes live' in July: www.lindisfarnertp.org; why not take a look at the possibilities on offer there and then drop us a line ... (or telephone 0191 270 4100 and ask for a member of the Lindisfarne Staff). Places are available for autumn 2009, we are waiting to hear from you.

Lindisfarne goes North! (as if it wasn't there already!)

Developing Discipleship Courses

Developing Discipleship Courses from Rev Alastair Macnaughton (Lindisfarne Regional Training Partnership)

The ‘range’ at this stage includes:

1. Short-six session courses – a variety, suitable especially for inter-church groups of varied background and ability (please contact us for the leaflet or see the Diocesan Website ‘Growing disciples’. )

2. The Faith and Life Course –

We are planning for local area groups to meet at

Berwick, Belford, Morpeth, Fawdon, St John Lee, Hexham, and Percy Main.

Faith and Life is a chance for us to stretch our wings beyond our parish setting, mix with folk from other churches and grow in our discipleship. Some of this year’s group are saying ‘it’s not long enough!’

The course starts with Bishop Martin at Kingston Park on 24th September and runs till June, with long gaps for Christmas and Easter.
(we are taking bookings for this now) Please contact Josie (below) to register your interest and ask for a booking leaflet.

3. Living theology today (only for those in reach of Durham)
An approach to theology through the heart, not just the head. A gentle way of exploring theology a little more formally. Starts September runs till June.
(we are taking bookings for this now)

4. Accredited Level One modules, e.g Introduction to the Old and New Testaments.
For those willing to attempt an essay and an assignment, these courses will provide an element of challenge alongside some who are studying for Reader and Ordination. It is planned to run this course in the autumn both at Percy Main and somewhere further north.
(we are taking bookings for this now)

For information on any of the above, please contact Josie Pinnegar at Church House j.pinnegar@newcastle.anglican.org or ring 01912704142 There is no charge for the short courses, but there is a small fee involved for the others. Please ask Josie about this.

Also you may be interested to know:

‘Sense making faith’ , ‘Body, Spirit, Journey’ by Anne Richards offers a way of exploring Christian faith (with various age groups) through the five senses. For example, Journey into seeing. Journey into hearing. Journey into Smell. Journey into touching. Journey into tasting. Journey into imagination………..

There are really colourful and imaginative resources here. It’s from Churches together in Britain and Ireland (ISBN 978 0851 347 7) and there’s a copy for loan in the NE Religious Learning Resources Centre, too (01912704161)

Bishop Tom Wright

Justification by Faith is probably not a burning topic in the Diocese of Durham but it has plunged the Bishop of that diocese into the midst of a controversy that is raging across the evangelical world, especially in North America. Bishop Tom Wright published his new book, Justification, at the beginning of the year, partly to respond to criticisms from John Piper, an American theologian, but mainly to set out his own views on the subject.

One thing that quickly became clear when I interviewed Bishop Tom in the Close at Durham is that he thinks Justification has been given too much attention by Protestant theologians. ‘It is not explicitly taught in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’, he points out. ‘It is explicitly argued out in Romans and Galatians and left to be inferred everywhere else. I do have a fear that some parts of the church concentrate on just some themes in Romans and Galatians as a way of avoiding the challenge of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Really the New Testament is about the Kingdom of God and about the Kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. I do think Justification is important – I wouldn’t have written a book about it otherwise- but I am wary of saying it is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. If that were so, we are saying there is something odd about Matthew, Mark, Luke or John and the other New Testament writings apart from Romans and Galatians. That cannot be if we are seeking to be fully based in scripture’.

In his book Bishop Tom describes Justification as’ becoming a member of a family’. What about forgiveness of sins and a new relationship with God.

‘It is not either/or’, he responds. ‘Justification first appears in Galatians 2 where the question is not ‘How do you go to heaven?’ or ‘How do you get your sins forgiven?’, it is ‘Are Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians allowed to, or indeed obliged to, sit and eat at the same table?’ Paul invokes Justification to say that Jewish and Gentile Christians necessarily belong at the same table. If you don’t see that, you are giving to those who follow the Jewish law a special, inner membership in the church which gentile Christians do not have. Forgiveness of sins is part of the larger whole but to understand what Paul had in his mind you have to have the whole of the Old Testament in your mind with the key role of Abraham and the nexus between Abraham and Adam which is clear in Romans. God calls Abraham to launch the family through whom the problem of Adam will be dealt with. Membership of the family comes with the tag ‘This is how God is dealing with sin’. It isn’t a choice between family membership and the forgiveness of sins. Membership of the family is how God deals with sin and its consequences. It only when you grasp that unbreakable nexus between sin and the family that you start to understand the texts that you are dealing with’.

How does the cross fit into all this?

‘The cross fits in, as Paul would say, because with Abraham God launched a story that was meant to lead to the coming of the Messiah as the representative of Israel and the world who would ultimately take upon himself the problem of Adam,’ is the firm reply.

I press further. ‘Was all this done to re-establish the relationship with God that was broken with Adam?’ ‘Yes’, the bishop argues, ‘but the thing about the relationship with God is that right from the beginning when God creates men and women in his image it is not so that they can be in relationship with him just for the sake of the relationship but so that they will be the creatures through God will act in the world. When humans rebel against God, their stewardship of creation goes badly wrong. It is that project that is put back on track with Jesus.’

But how does this seem to someone who has had a conversion experience in which she feels she has been plucked from a life of sin and been forgiven by God and invited to enter into a new relationship with him? Does Bishop Tom’s theology really speak to someone who has had this experience?

‘Of course it does’, I am told. ‘If we start with Ephesians 2 we can see the link. This chapter talks of how we are raised from sin to new life in Christ but then immediately goes on to stress that this means the barriers between Jews and gentiles have been brought down. For Paul the individual experience of the love and grace of God is part of a larger sense of God’s purpose for his people and for the world. The individual sense of forgiveness by God is very, very important, but the danger in our western culture is that we become so individualistic that we think this is all that matters. God brings us into a great multiethnic family in order to overcome the principalities and powers of the world. As a Swedish Lutheran theologian, Krister Stendahl, put it, we mustn’t shrink Christianity to me wanting to find my own little corner in God’s love. This is an infantile faith of a child who thinks he or she is the centre of the universe. The child has to realise that there are plenty of other people out there.’

When I suggest that a past generation of evangelicals who concentrated on Paul and ignored the ethical teaching of the gospels about such issues as poverty were really going along with Bultmann and Dennis Nineham and those scholars who downplayed the historicity of the gospels, Bishop Tom agrees. ‘It is a great irony’, he comments. ‘Much evangelical theology and practice has been more or less the same in terms of its shape as Bultmann’s theology. The gospels exist to tell you the background story of the crucifixion which was your salvation on some supposedly Pauline account. As long as Jesus was born of a virgin and died on a cross after leading a sinless life nothing else was important. That kind of a theology was a way of avoiding the challenge of the kingdom.’

A leading Anglican theologian in Sydney once told me that Tom Wright has politicised the gospels. ‘His tradition has depoliticised them’, Bp Tom hits back. ‘Of course the gospels are political. They talk about God becoming King on earth. It is only since the C18th that we have invented separate categories of religion and politics. I am not trying to drag theology down so that is only about politics but politics and theology have to be put back together again.

As well as evangelicals, Bishop Tom’s new book is likely to provoke some controversy with Jewish readers. ‘Is he a supercessionist?’, I ask. He dislikes the term. ‘There is a line of theology that says God has finished with the Jews and is doing something new and Paul tells us not even to dare to think this way’, he tells me. ‘But Paul does not say there are parallel tracks to heaven. There is a mystery about what God will do in the future. But Paul takes over the titles given to Israel and applies them to the church. He does this because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Part of the problem is that people have been so brow-beaten by Holocaust theology that they don’t allow themselves to make the Messianic claim for Jesus. But this is to miss the whole point of the Resurrection. If you take this away you miss the whole point’.

Do we still have to try to convert Jews?

‘Paul doesn’t say that’, Bishop Tom answers. ‘Paul says the Jews are God’s business. I don’t know how God will bring us together, but it would be great to be in the same family. For me one of the most moving moments at the Lambeth Conference was when Jonathan Sacks was asked about what the church has done and he replied that Christians have done what Jews were supposed to do and taken the news of the Covenant God the ends of the earth. Paul’s complaint against his fellow Jews is not that they are Pelagians in disguise but that they are trying to keep the covenant to themselves.’

We turn to the question of grace and the old debate between imputed and imparted righteousness. Some evangelical blogs (who obviously haven’t read his book on the Saints) have accused Tom Wright of taking the line he does on justification because he wants to get close to Catholics.

Bishop Tom thinks Protestant theologians have been more influenced by Luther than by Paul. ‘It was Luther who rejected the concept of virtue, tying it with hypocrisy. But if we hadn’t had Luther we might conclude that Paul is giving us a Christianised version of Aristotle which I believe is exactly what he is doing. Our characters are shaped and transformed by grace but we must always remember this is God’s work in us, not ours alone’, Bishop Tom affirms. He goes on to argue that Protestant theology has been wrong to elevate the distinction between justification and sanctification. He clearly doesn’t share the old Protestant fears of created grace.

Disputes about the doctrine of Justification can seem remote from ordinary Christian life but as Tom Wright makes clear, how we understand this issue has profound implications for how we live our lives. After last year’s US election many evangelicals are rethinking the relationship between their faith and politics. A younger generation of Americans is identifying evangelicalism with the Religious Right and turning away from institutional religion as a result. With his stress on the kingdom and kingdom values, Tom Wright is pointing evangelicals in a different direction from the one along which many of them have been travelling.

He agrees that connections can be made between his theology and the challenges facing contemporary evangelicalism but on one issue he does not want to see change. He is ready to resist the pressure from some young evangelicals for a change in attitudes to sexuality. To make that move, he believes, would be to throw the baby out with the bath water.

‘The sixties revolution and the way it has played out in my lifetime has been systematically dehumanising,’ Bishop Tom concludes. ‘The problem is that the right thinks in terms of a rule-based morality, the left thinks in terms of spontaneity, and neither gets close to the New Testament picture of being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the creator. Authenticity is what you get at the end of the character building process, not at the beginning’.

PAUL RICHARDSON

Justification by Tom Wright is published by SPCK at £12.99

A Pilgrim's Reflection

It’s now a month since the diocesan pilgrims returned from the Holy Land. Here Anne Marr offers a considered reflection on the welcome the pilgrims received there, and Pat Wright tells of her experience which grew from initial doubts.

Two warm and generous welcomes were offered on our arrival in the Holy Land. First of all, our Palestinian guide greeted us at Tel Aviv with: 'Welcome home, my brothers and sisters in Christ'.

The idea of coming 'home' had not occurred to us, but as we travelled and engaged in conversations we began to feel that this land was very much the 'home' of our history, our faith foundation, our family in Abraham and in Christ. The next day two of us were walking around the old city walls. We passed a smartly dressed young Jewish man who asked if we were English. He smiled broadly and gestured towards the temple mount, saying: 'Welcome to my castle'. We thanked him.

Two welcomes and two examples of the courtesy and generosity we met amongst both Israeli citizens and Palestinian residents of the Holy Land. They also illustrated the difference in the attitude and fortunes of the two communities. It is difficult for us to imagine living in a land where newcomers can have full citizenship but families who have lived there for generations, some since before Jesus time, only qualify as 'residents'. Wherever we travelled we were conscious of ancient walls telling the history of the land, and contemporary barricades (some appallingly visible, many frighteningly invisible) separating people from each other, from their families, from their land and from justice. On the wall in Bethlehem one graffitti message speaks: 'With Love and Kisses - nothing lasts for forever'.

Hope and peace are woven into the landscape, the theology and the lives of people. The olive tree can survive many centuries - some in Gethsemane are over 2000 years old. They stand as silent symbols of hope in adversity and the promise of peace. For the immigrant Israelis hope and peace are realities to be claimed in a promised land, whilst awaiting the messiah. For the Palestinian Muslims, they are foundations of faith and the legacy they desire for their children. For the minority Christians, they are the gifts of Christ to be taken, blessed, divided and distributed through action and service.
We saw and heard amazing evidence of sacrificial service bringing hope and peace to poor and destitute families, not least in the work of Sabeel (an ecumenical initiative working for peace and justice); in the witness of the (Jewish) 'women in black' at the city gates praying for an end to occupation; in the practical care of Holy Family Maternity Hospital in Bethlehem; in the creative initiatives of the International Lutheran Centre in Bethlehem (providing education and health care for all ages); in the hospitality generously offered by our Palestinian hosts.

What can we do? People care and are willing to offer their lives to sustain hope and bring peace and justice. One way of supporting such ministry is through PCDC (Practical Compassion for Destitute Chidren) which operates from our own diocese and visits many orphanages, schools and families in the Bethlehem region offering practical help with basic needs, health care and education. Contact Revd Malcolm Jones in Newburn Parish. Blank card notelets are available with photographs of flowers taken on the pilgrimage and supportive information. Profits will be contributed to PCDC. Samples can be viewed on www.chapelhouseholynativity.org under the community section. ANNE MARR

A Personal Pilgrimage – Go and Tell!

About this time last year I decided to join our Bishops’ Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Over the next months my excitement, due to personal reasons, dwindled and so it was with feelings of anxiety and disgruntlement that I met my fellow pilgrims at Newcastle Airport. Following orders and instructions through security I felt little like a pilgrim, rather a bad tempered schoolgirl, more ready to rebel than meet my Lord. Over the next 10 days it became clear why so many orders were necessary. Our schedule was tightly packed but at all times we were shepherded and cosseted by knowledgable guides and caring leaders - from the Kidron Valley to the Golan Heights, from the stillness of the privileged visit in the Garden of Gethsemane, to the bustle of the Holy Sepulchre.
Tradition after Tradition, layer after layer was stripped away, and we looked beyond the glitz and tackiness to the wondrous story. Yet after all this I still felt emotionally unconnected and envious of others who had been visibly moved. What was I lacking? And then it happened…… the last visit, and I was there, breakfasting with the disciples, sitting on a rock by Galilee, with Jesus asking Peter: “Do you love me?” I was humbled. Like Peter, I felt I had betrayed my Lord, but was cherished, forgiven and commissioned, and ready to “go and tell! ” Pat Wright

Ordination Candidates

Tim Sanderson

‘I come to Newcastle diocese having spent the last two years studying for my MA in theology and ministry, whilst undertaking ordination training at Cranmer Hall in Durham. I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to read, reflect and write, but now I’m ready to get on with the job!
Previously, I worked for various churches and organisations as a youth and children’s worker, most recently, at St Nic’s Church in the centre of Durham. In my spare time I enjoy going to the cinema, reading, eating out with friends and spending time with my family. I am married to Stephanie, a primary school teacher, and we have two children, Ellie aged 11, and Ben, aged nine. Ben is excited about moving closer to the ‘best football team on earth’ despite their recent relegation.
I’m looking forward to the coming months; getting involved in the local community; and working alongside the churches in mission and service. Please pray for me and my family as we adjust to our new life, and for the Reverend Mark Wroe and the parishes of Holy Trinity, Jesmond, and St Barnabas & St Jude, Newcastle, where I will serve as curate.’

Rachel Cross

If anyone had told me six years ago that I was going to be ordained Deacon, and living in Newcastle, I really would have struggled to believe them - and yet here I am. I’m finishing off my final essays and looking forward to being ordained deacon, and starting my curacy at St. Mary’s, Ponteland.
I started the selection process more than five years ago in Guildford diocese. I had worked for eight years as an Intensive Care Nurse, but had felt that it was time for a change. I had a nagging sense to explore ordained ministry. This surprised me but the more I explored, discussed and read, the more I ‘felt a fit’. I was living in Surrey, and so I started my training on the Southern Theological Education and Training Scheme (STETS), which has been a really good experience. About a year ago, we moved to Newcastle for my husband’s job and have settled very quickly.
We are all excited about the next stage and are looking forward to the future.

Frances Dower

I am training for OLM ministry in the diocese and hope to be ordained deacon at Petertide and licensed to serve the parishes of Kirkwhelpington with Kirhharle and Kirkheaton and Cambo.
I have recently completed my training ‘placement’ at Hexham Abbey. It has been a very special time for me and I have felt so warmly welcomed into the worshipping community, finding myself entering fully into its life; from menial tasks to leading services, taking home communions, facilitating house groups, taking ‘Tots’ Praise’, preaching, struggling with a recalcitrant photocopier, attending the erudite gathering known as the Hexham Society for Sacred Studies, speaking on Radio 4’s ‘Sunday Worship’, to cuddling the Rector’s sleeping daughter during Evensong.

I was born at the Bridge End Maternity Home at Corbridge and baptised in St Peter’s Newbrough by the then Rector of Hexham, Bill Hardie. I was brought up in London and Kent and educated and confirmed in St Mary’s Calne, Wiltshire.

Robin and I were married in Kent, with Bill Hardie officiating, and we moved North soon afterwards. I then found myself juggling the nurturing of our growing family and a professional career, eventually moving to Cambo in 1987. We became regular worshippers at Holy Trinity. Our three children have now given us six grandchildren, in whom I take great delight. I enjoy playing the Northumbrian small pipes whenever I can.

I trained as a doctor at Westminster Hospital, London, and trod the wards as a young ‘houseman’ working long hours in a busy central London general hospital. After my first job in General Practice in Elswick, I joined the Rothbury Practice in 1980 and worked there for 25 years as a GP. I came to love the people of Upper Coquetdale and took my share of visiting at nights and weekends and serving in the Cottage Hospital. It was by attending my patients at home, often at times of anxiety or sudden illness, that I formed a special bond with them.

In order to support my patients further I trained as a psychodynamic counsellor in Edinburgh at the Scottish Institute of Human Relations [1994-1996]. When I retired from medicine, I was asked to continue as counsellor to the Practice and still see many of my old patients when in trouble or distress. I use my counselling qualifications to play a part in the diocesan Pastoral Counselling Network.
During my time in Rothbury, I was asked by the Churches Together in Upper Coquetdale to help them with a joint venture into pastoral care, so in 2005 we launched a Bereavement Visiting Service. We have trained two cohorts of visitors for the Service, which includes Coquetdale and the Kirkwhelpington Benefice, and for the North Northumberland Day Hospice; both initiatives are thriving, stimulated by monthly supervision sessions and half yearly training days.

I feel a huge sense of privilege working alongside people, entrusted by them, allowed into their confidence and holding them for a time by providing a safe place for them during their therapy. The space between us becomes a private, sacred space. I hope to use these skills for pastoral work in the Benefice.

Having worked as a rural GP for so long I am very conscious of the public role and the expectations of the community and look forward to serving in the Benefice of Kirkwhelpington with Kirkharle, Kirkheaton and Cambo in the future.

Almost within sight of the island, namely at Belford, there was a taster evening in June for Lindisfarne Courses. Fifteen people came to find out what was on offer, and some (from Seahouses, Newton-by-the-sea, and Swarland) came to share their experience of the Faith and Life course) There were enquiries on a very wide range of subjects and courses. There are exciting possibilities for learning in groups, in north Northumberland, as in other parts. Watch this space!

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