Features (March 2009)
Wonderful Place, Wonderful People
This the month the diocese says au revoir – but not a final farewell – to one of its best known faces. Philip Davies, diocesan secretary for the past ten years, takes his leave of Newcastle to become chapter clerk of Durham Cathedral and clerk to the Lord Crewe Trust. LINK snatched a window in his busy pre-departure schedule and invited him to look back on his time in the diocese.
He thinks it over carefully: What has he achieved during his ten years at the helm, administratively speaking, of the Diocese of Newcastle ?
“I’m not sure,” he says slowly, “I know what’s happened during the time I’ve been here, but that’s a different thing…”
One of the major things to happen, of course, was the move of diocesan staff from two ramshackle buildings in Newcastle to the “one-site, one-stop shop the diocese told me it wanted”, the airy offices set in a field of green at Percy Main.
The redundant primary school, now known from the Tyne to the Tweed as Church House, has become something of a benchmark in the Church of England since then, admired by wealthier dioceses lumbered with splendid but impractical buildings as their staff headquarters, and envied for its open aspect, both the surroundings and the atmosphere inside the building.
“I feel it’s true to say that we’ve changed the culture of the office,” Philip reflects, “Both that, and the way the Church House is now perceived in the diocese. I like to think that it is seen as a place of welcome and a source of support for clergy and parishes.”
But no one person can do that, he stresses. “It’s a team thing,” he says, “And that’s what makes it the place it is.”
In terms of space, equipment, facilities and meeting rooms, the Percy Main office is on a par with anything offered by a modern organisation, but if it has an added extra, that, perhaps, lies in its spirit. “There was resistance to the move,” Philip recalls with a wry smile, “Not least from some of the staff themselves. Now I think everyone is proud of it, and feels it is something of which the whole diocese can be proud.”
He will, without doubt, miss the life at Percy Main, but Philip Davies is man who likes to move on when the moment seems right
After graduating from Leeds University at the turn of the 80’s, he went to work for Customs and Excise in London, leaving behind the North which still felt like home, even though his roots were further West at Barrow, where he grew up. It was a canny move, as they say in these parts, for in London, poring over a pile VAT returns, he met his future wife, Michelle.
This job, he believes, did much to equip him for working in the Church.
“It introduced me to all kinds of situations and people, and of course, businesses,” he says. “Some of those were well run, and some were poorly run. I was trained to see whether something was working or whether it wasn’t. I gained a lot of insight into which type or organisation worked, and which didn’t. Not to mention how the people in them worked, and why things sometimes went wrong…”
After four years with Customs and Excise, he saw a job advertised in the Diocese of Sheffield: Opportunity for a graduate in Church administration. He applied, and so began a very fruitful working period and a happy family time in which his son Tom, and daughter Laura, were born.
But why the Church ?
Philip had been brought up as an Anglican, joining the local church choir where his father was organist and choir-master, and was confirmed, aged 11, by the then Bishop of Carlisle.
In his teens, like so many of his contemporaries, he drifted away from church-going but at Leeds University, the church found him again.
“I came into contact with Campus Crusade for Christ,” he explains, “An American evangelical organisation who really knew how to do their job. They got me along to social gatherings, and before I quite knew what was happening, I found myself back in the Anglican church…”
Campus Crusade wasn’t pushing one denomination, or one style of worship, encouraging its members to find the Christian community that was right for them, a church where they would feel at home. For all that, Philip – perhaps with the instinct of a true Anglican – made straight for his parish church and found a congregation of Christians rather different in their approach to the traditional kind of worship he’d known at home in Barrow.
“It was a charismatic church with much speaking in tongues,” he says. “ I found I was expected to do it too, and I did! It was a disconcerting experience at the time because I was studying language at university, and here was I speaking in a language I didn’t understand myself.”
Some research on the subject of speaking in tongues led him to conclude that his experience had indeed been “real”, evidence of the Spirit working. And although he concluded that this style of worship wasn’t for him, and quickly returned to the liberal catholic tradition of his childhood, he remains grateful for the time spent with this particular group of Christians.
“I value my exposure to that different kind of Anglicanism,” he says, “And I remember Campus Crusade with gratitude. Through them I met all sorts of Christians from different denominations, and some of them remain friends to this day…”
A job in the Church, therefore, seemed a natural move, and during his six years in the Sheffield Diocese as assistant diocesan secretary, Philip found himself responsible for the pastoral committee, redundant churches, and the day to day running of the diocesan office. He also had to deputise for the diocesan secretary. It was, he says, a great time, but when he saw an advert for the top job in the diocese of Bangor, he didn’t hesitate. The only drawback was that the successful candidate had to speak Welsh.
He is still a little perplexed that they gave him the job, albeit that they sent him on a six-week intensive course to learn the language.
“When I came back, I had to be interviewed again – in Welsh! The deal was that if I pulled it off, I had the job. If not, I’d be going back to Sheffield.” Asked if he can speak Welsh after 10 years of Geordie, Philip produces an elegant-sounding sentence which means – apparently - “Welsh is a very difficult language”.
The culture shock was huge. One day he was sitting in his city-centre office in Sheffield watching the traffic fly by, and just two days later he was in a bungalow – Bangor’s temporary offices – “staring out on a field of cows, some of whom were only three feet from the window!”
There were tears in the office, the day he left Bangor, and looking back, he’s not entirely sure why he left, except, perhaps, that he’s a man who likes a challenge and who seems, instinctively, to know when the moment has come to find a new one.
“I remember I was asked: ‘Why Newcastle ?’ and I replied: ‘Why not Newcastle ?’”
By this he indicates that mistaken perceptions of the North have bothered him, and that he felt, perhaps, a calling back to a part of England whose ways and means he not only understood, but loved.
The Newcastle job, he told his interviewers that fateful day in 1998, was one he “would have to grow into” and so, he says, it proved.
He came to an old Church House, creaking at its joints, with low staff morale and a view in the diocese that the whole operation was “a waste of space”. He knew he had a lot of work to do “building up the confidence of the staff, and explaining to the diocese exactly what we did and what we were there for.”
He worked with senior staff on the far-reaching review of decision-making procedures, a process designed to produce lighter structures and greater participation from people in the diocese. In addition, he has helped implement changes bringing the Synod and the Board of Finance together, policy and resourcing more closely in line, restructuring the Parsonages Board into the Houses and Glebe Committee, setting the Task groups on their way, and overseeing a modern IT system for the diocese with a new website.
He has also helped develop the “synod forum” in which single issues such as the environment, rural affairs or interfaith relations can be explored and an approach developed by a wide group of people from throughout the diocese.
But it is, perhaps, the “administrative convergence” of Newcastle with the Diocese of Durham that will remain with him as his single greatest contribution to the ongoing life of the Anglican church in this region. This significance of this work will grow, he believes, and Church House in Percy Main will increasingly emerge as a base for the two dioceses, not least because the Regional Training Partnership is already set to move in. In terms of location and accessibility, he says, Percy Main is well placed.
It is a fitting legacy, and surely one that will last. And for Philip himself, the legacy of his time at Newcastle can be swiftly summed up: “Wonderful place, wonderful people,” he says. “It’s the reason that although I’m leaving, I’m not going very far. I’m committed to working for the Church here in the North-East. That’s my challenge – and my privilege.”
Sue Scott
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Faith and Life
Hungry for Spirtuality
In the North of the diocese groups from different parishes have been joining a Faith and Life course which examines varying ways of approaching worship and spirituality.
Jane Skelton from Felton says: I have found the different spirituality types very interesting. I was right in my guess, or perhaps predictio,n before the questionnaire as to what ‘type’ I would be. Realising this is opening all sorts of doors for me. I feel buoyed up. It is reassuring to feel that I can now pursue with confidence the ways of praying that suit my personality.”
Veronica Simpson, who lives and worships in Longframlington, says: “ I found looking at the different ‘spirituality types’ enormously relevant. It helps me understand where people are coming from. In the Psalms sessions with the Revd. Mike Catling we looked at psalms of anger and crying out. Through the psalms, I found that I was tending yet further towards the ‘mystic prayer’ type. When Mike offered us 20 minutes and a choice of ways , I tried incense (as I hadn’t experienced it before) Once I started to pray, I felt bathed in God’s love. I will never forget it. I’m hungry for more now.”
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Face to face with Darwin
Would we expect the issues raised by a man born 200 years ago last month still to be contemporary?
If the man’s name was Charles Darwin, then the answer is yes! Every other television programme seems to have been about Darwin recently, and even the BBC news carried an item about the last giant tortoise of a line recorded by Darwin on the Galapagos Islands.
But what is the precise relevance of Darwin for us as Christians ? In the Faith and Life course ‘Struggling with Suffering’ (see the review of ‘The Shack’ in last month’s Link) we have come face-to-face with Darwin’s issues, says Alastair Macnaughton, Developing Discipleship Officer. Why ? Because In 1851 the naturalist’s daughter Annie died at a sanatorium at Malvern, aged 10.
Alastair quotes the author Mike Higton, who writes: “It was a very ordinary tragedy and the ripples of loss and grief spread no further than they normally do, and eventually dissipated as they normally do, leaving lasting pain only for her family. But for her father the event crushed what remained of his Christian faith. The death of his beloved daughter finally made real and personal the blank, impartial cruelty of nature that his botanical and zoological researches had uncovered” (Deliver Us from Evil by Mike Higton, Canterbury Press 2007).
In the Faith and Life course ‘Struggling with Suffering’ led by Janet Appleby, group members consider the various partial and hugely inadequate ‘answers’ to the problem of suffering, Alastair says. “We learn too that at the heart of the Trinity is Christ’s suffering, and the creator God - who seems to have forsaken his Son – is in fact there with him in the pain. Present also is the Spirit bringing light and breakthrough at the point of darkness and despair.”
Another short course ‘Science and Christian faith’ has just been trialled for the first time, in Durham diocese, by Brett Vallis (previously at St Mary’s Monkseaton). This was inspired by David Wilkinson’s awesome presentation on Science and Faith at the 2008 clergy conference. ‘Just the ticket’ for any of us who might feel that somehow Darwin’s evolutionary theories exclude Christian faith!
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Meeting Christ in the Other
A group from North Sunderland/Seahouses have been following a Faith and Life course called ‘Meeting Christ in the Other’ which saw them making a visit to St Silas’ Byker, a very different community from their own.
It was a thought-provoking day, and two of the visitors were moved to offer their comments for Link.
Maureen Palmer says: “I was very impressed at what I saw. The church really is meeting needs in its community. And they are such different needs to ours in Seahouses. Myself, I have a heart for the homeless. This year I gave to Crisis at Christmas. Here in Byker, we saw care for the homeless in action. There is the Byker Bridge Housing Association hostel. There are flats built on what used to be church land, and the church is used by many different community groups. The front area is carpeted, with seating only in one third of the building. And yet the carvings remain unspoilt, there is a great sense of space, and the original building is in good and beautiful order. But its usage is relevant for today. I am often concerned that the world is evolving fast, but that the image of God which we project lags behind. But in Byker the church does portray itself in a relevant manner. This was really very striking.”
Pat Tucker says: “As we walked into St Silas’ Byker, I was struck by the beauty of the building. They had kept the old and mingled it with the new. There was a warm welcome. I was impressed at the way in which the project includes homes for people who might not otherwise have them. It made us all think that in Seahouses we live a slightly sheltered life. The building in Byker was ordered and well-equipped and so well-used by community groups. I realise that in the church we can do more than we think we can do. If we set out to do something worthwhile, the funds tend to come.
We expected to find great deprivation (and we know that there is that in the city), but. we found a well-appointed church responding in relevant ways to people’s need.”
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