September 2010
Stewardship in Deddington (but Hemptonians and Barfordians, please read also).
I know some frustration has been felt over Deddington’s stewardship campaign. For a start, people were expecting something more directly about money than Robin Brunner-Ellis offered us and then the PCC didn’t do what Robin wanted in advance of the last meeting he led. As to the first issue, the rationale vis-a vis stewardship as traditionally understood (using well in God’s cause our time, talents and money) of inviting us to look at our future development was that, if we could come up with a plan for that development to which many people had contributed and on which most agreed, the resources for implementing that plan (time, talents and money) would be more likely to be made available. As to the second problem, the PCC has now considered the comments, criticisms, aspirations and suggestions offered by the Parish at the Stewardship meetings. It has further considered what is implied for our future by the way we are now; what directions are indicated, for instance, by our existing commitments, activities and personnel. It has considered comments I presented to last year’s Parish Forum. In the light of these considerations some formal resolutions have been taken and some further possibilities for future action have emerged.
We have resolved to have a Worship Committee, the brief of which will be to examine our patterns and forms of worship and, if it seems appropriate, propose changes. This move is made in response to views expressed at the stewardship meetings that we do not find younger people in Church on Sunday much; that a less traditional adult-orientated service might be appropriately included in our regular pattern of worship; that our worship is not as good as it might be in leading us towards encounter with Christ. Could we change things so as to make our worship more authentic and more attractive?
The PCC recognises the importance for the Church’s establishing and maintaining connections with young people of the Boys’ Brigade and the Youth Group. We have therefore resolved to encourage more people to volunteer their time to support these groups. We have also decided to ask people to contribute financially specifically to the Youth Work Project, in the hope that we can fund a Youth Worker for more than the one year to which we are currently committed. Please arrange your donations with Iain Gillespie.
We have resolved also to encourage more people to join our Pastoral Care Group and have agreed in principle to fund some training for its members.
We have resolved to bring into being a New Media committee which will report to the PCC on our internet operation and propose further developments. The work of this committee should improve our outreach and our communication, particular with younger people.
We have resolved in principle to open an Internet Cafe in Church (we are researching interest in this venture in the community, but already have reason to think the facility would be used). We shall need people to steward the Church if and when this Cafe opens.
If you would like to offer time to one or more of these committees, groups or operations, please let me know.
We are committed to the training of our Curate, Dan, and that training will involve his exercising a particular special responsibility. Given Dan’s expertise in Church History and the importance of the subject, it would seem appropriate to have him run some teaching in that general area.
Some members of the Parish will be involved in a visit to Sweden around the beginning of June next year. Whether, and, if so, how to cultivate further our connection with Sweden will be assessed following that visit. (There will be a general invitation to members of the congregations of our Benefice, the Deddington Deanery and neighbouring deaneries to make this trip to Sweden.)
Our link with the Church of the Resurrection and the Tsogo Projects will be reviewed at the next PCC meeting.
The PCC invites your comments on all of the above and on any other matters of concern at the Parish Forum, which will be held in Deddington Parish Church on October 21, beginning at 7.30pm. David Rogers, our Webmaster, will make a presentation on our IT operation on that occasion.
Please be aware, if you are not already, that a service of Evening Prayer now takes place each weekday in Deddington Parish Church at 6.00pm. It lasts about 20 minutes and is broadcast via the internet. It is currently attracting (not counting the internet attenders) about the same sort of numbers as Morning Prayer. Do come along. We currently use the Church of England’s Common Worship provision, but shall shortly be experimenting with a less formal service and would welcome other suggestions as to the shape of Evening Prayer.
Hugh
August 2010
Comments received on a couple of sermons recently remind me that I and others have for years felt the need for some forum in which sermons could be discussed. All preachers want to hear what their listeners have thought of the sermon (nothing worse than no response) and all preachers need to hear the views of their audience if they are to go further with their own thinking on a subject.
Those who preach regularly in the Benefice are more than happy to try to answer queries, doubts or requests for further explanation. Conversations after the service can help, but they can only go so far and the church door is certainly not the place for group consideration of sermons. I wonder whether we might use 'Church Matters' as the forum for discussion A month's worth of sermons should throw up enough questions for a regular column.
If you would like to give this a try, the best thing would be to place comment with Sue Addison via email or the red plastic folder in Deddington Church. This means that your comments or questions will have been thought through (perhaps difficult to manage immediately in the heat of an adverse reaction to something said in a sermon) and that the response can, likewise, be a considered one. A debate could then take place over several months with different people joining in.
A process of debate seems a better way of exploring God's truth than our current system which allows Vicars and Co to pontificate and gives little opportunity for the views of others on the matter in hand to be properly developed and expounded and then heard by the whole Church community. Certainly, lay people can and should have a view on the Scripture on which clergy sermons are based: that is why the Bible got translated into English.
And on the matter of translation, the King James version of the Bible is 400 years old next year. Should we join the celebrations? How about a Bibliathon - a reading through of the KJV - in a group, starting in September? A chance to increase your Bible knowledge and to find our whether this Authorised version is really all it's cracked up to be. Let me know what you think.
Hugh
If you do want to post a comment about one of Hugh or Dan's sermons then we have created a Facebook discussion page which is available here.
From the Curate…...
I come to the Benefice from a period of academic overkill at Oxford. In fact, this is my first real foray beyond the boundaries of educational institutions. Imagine, my surprise, then, when I found out recently that I had become the institution!
I was born in Guildford during the Miners’ Strike and grew up in Hindhead, Surrey, on the edge of the Devil’s Punchbowl. During my teenage years I lived for a time in San Diego, Woking, and, more recently, the tropical paradise that is Hayling Island, several mudflats removed from Portsmouth. I was schooled at Lord Wandsworth College in north Hampshire (famous principally for its contributions to the England rugby squad), before reading Theology at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. From there, I went to The Queen’s College where I wrote a DPhil on the development of theology as an academic discipline in nineteenth-century Oxford. It really is more interesting than it sounds.
I’ve moved to Church Street in Barford from Ripon College Cuddesdon, the veritable Eton of theological colleges but without the same fees (or, indeed, many of the amenities of Eton). In preparation for parish ministry, I’ve enjoyed placements in rural south Oxfordshire, a fantastic church in north Fulham, a college chapel, and St Paul’s Cathedral (for some of which, I worked with a curate of yore, Ed Newell). It’s great to be finally starting ministry, despite the inevitable disorientation.
I became a Christian as a teenager. Some friends dragged me along to a Bible study at the Chaplain’s house at school and before I knew it, I seemed to be a signed-up follower of this rather curious Galilean chap, being baptized and confirmed when I was sixteen. Since then, I’ve taken a variety of rather odd life-choices that have led me to be a deacon in God’s Church, much to the aggravation of my more rational side, which would have had me clambering for a job in the Foreign Office or the City. I tell myself that there’s still time to become Ambassador to the White House and many clergymen over the years have been competent spies. I’ve yet to hear from MI6 and rather suspect I should stop watching Spooks.
When not being ‘professionally religious’, I’m a keen singer, enthusiastic walker, cook, traveller, terrible squash-player and - since arriving in Barford - gardener. My only claim to fame is several recordings of Portuguese polyphony with the choir of Queen’s and, rather more excitingly, the soundtrack to the last Harry Potter film in which the basses sang one note continuously for about three minutes as a funeral lament for Dumbledore: celebrity indeed.
My first month has been tremendous fun, if somewhat tiring. I’ve been really touched by everyone’s generosity and kindness whilst I’ve been trying to find my feet, and am enormously grateful to you all. I hope you’ll bear with me as I continue to settle into the rhythms of the Benefice and that, in due course, I will remember your name. I’m trying (‘very trying’, as my stepmother would say…)!
Dan
A Goodbye
This month we say goodbye to Judith Tinsley, Head teacher at our School. Judith, with her astonishing energy and vision and her admirable clarity of purpose has achieved remarkable things at the School. It is a very good place for children to learn and to grow. That is partly because, thanks very much to Judith, it is a School with a marked Christian ethos, its religious and spiritual provision noted as excellent in the latest official report. Our Parish Church links with the School contribute to that excellent provision, and Judith has promoted those links vigorously. The Church, of course, has strong representation on the School’s Governing Body. Clergy and members of the congregations at Deddington and Hempton contribute significantly to Collective Worship at the School; church people help with pupils’ reading. The School regularly comes to the Parish Church to worship and on some of these occasions joins our Wednesday congregation for the Eucharist. That Eucharist is a context in which we have recently been trialling the Church of England’s new, child-friendly Eucharist Prayers. The School has made, and we hope will continue to make, a strong contribution to our First Sunday Service.
Besides worship, School and Church have worked together on our links to the Church of the Resurrection in Mmabatho, the Tsogo Centre and Thelesho Primary School. These links have helped Deddington children become aware of the HIV/AIDS issue in Southern Africa. The visit of teacher s from our School to South Africa in 2009 was an inspired and inspirational idea (Judith again). One of its fruits will be the visit to Deddington this month of Marina, Head teacher at Thelesho. Make sure you meet Marina, if you can; she is a remarkable woman. You could say that our Church of England School is in the front line of the reevangelisation of our community – more so, in fact, than are we, the Parish Church. The School involves many more people, children and parents, in its regular activities than does the Parish Church and so has enormous potential in the recommendation of Christ to those who do not know Him. Judith has made sure that this potential has in great measure been realised; many school families will be aware that the excellence of the School has do with its explicit and conscious Christian character. The School asks gently the great question: ‘What of Jesus of Nazareth?’ Thinking about the regulations on admitting children to Communion before Confirmation, regulations which require strong links between children who might be admitted and a Church, I have wondered whether our School is not in fact a Church. What doesn’t it so that we, the Parish Church, do in terms of belief in and worship of Christ and in the working out of that belief in the way its members meet the world? The School isn’t a Eucharistic community, but it could easily be if the rules on admission to Communion before Confirmation allowed Church Schools to be the communities within which the appropriate instruction in the faith was delivered. Does the Church of England really believe in its Schools?
I have come to believe in our School as an ecclesiastical community where worship is offered, the Gospel preached and lives touched and shaped and healed by Christ.
I was about to write to Bishop Colin about the School as Church and the rules on Admission to Communion when I heard that Judith had resigned. That made a difference, because how much a Church School is in fact a Church depends greatly on its Head teacher.
Let us, then, thank Judith for what she has done for School, Church and community, what she has done for the cause of Christ in Deddington, and let us wish her well in pursuing that cause in her new school in Witney. And, thanking her, let us thank God for Judith. Let us pray, too, for the process of the appointment of Judith’s successor,
for wisdom for all those involved in that process. Let us pray for the continuing well-being of the School and for the maintenance and continuing development of links between School and Parish Church. Let us pray that the School may continue to be a place in which children are taught excellently and are brought towards Christ through the School’s ethos and worship.
Hugh
A Welcome
This month, too, Dan Inman starts his curacy with us. We pray that his time with us will be a blessing for him and a blessing for us. We pray that he will learn from us and we from him. Dan comes to us at a time of change in the Church of England’s practice over curacy. The Church’s Initial Ministerial Education programme which starts this year puts the emphasis very clearly on curacy as a training post. Curates are now going to have to ‘evidence competencies’ to show that at the end of their training period they are fit to be let loose on Parishes as Incumbents or for other roles within the Church. (Why, oh why, was this system not in place ten years ago, you ask!? We shall need to make sure than Daniel does what he needs to do and is assessed as he needs to be assessed so that he can take further steps within the Church of England – so that, in fact, his gifts can be properly recognised and then properly used within a Church that feels it needs to submit to pressures for a fairly rigorous accreditation of its new employees as qualified, professional persons. How the Holy Spirit can operate in appropriate liberty within that system is a question one might ponder, but like it or not, that is the reality within which Dan’s curacy takes place. We can certainly make that work to the satisfaction of the C of E, and it may turn out in any case that the old apprenticeship model of curacy still fits quite well within the new professionalised understanding of what a Curate’s training should be. In a way these are technical issues.
What most matters is that we should welcome Dan with enthusiasm and joy, with commitment to his growth and to our growth through him, and with love. If we do that, he and we will indeed be blessed. Dan will be telling us about himself and how he got here in the next issue of Church Matters.
Hugh
Hello, new technology
Should we welcome the new computers in the Vestry and what they can do for us – or should we, Ludditely, smash them up? Before we raise the mallets against the future, let’s recognise that those computers can do a lot for us. Fundamental to the provision of the internet connections we now have in Deddington Parish Church were the recognitions that this would allow us both to offer our community internet access in the Church and also to offer access to our services over the internet to our community and whoever else might wish to have that access. As to the latter, we thought first of the residential homes for the elderly. But our experiments in broadcast have shown that the constituency we might serve is wider than these homes. Deddington, Switzerland, Burundi, Sweden: in these places and others people can and do listen in. We could kit the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman up with a mobile internet station at moderate cost. Church services both ways, school links both ways, AIDS education via that mobile internet station...and so forth. We don’t yet know all that we could do; we know that the Diocese is very interested in what we have started on – it’s cutting edge stuff. Oxford i-church wants to stream all our services and Bishop Colin is as near to frothing at the mouth as a respectable Bishop can get at the prospect. Keeping those who can’t be there in touch with their Church is for him the crux of the matter.
But there are problems. Deddington PCC proved pretty enthusiastic at its last meeting about broadcasting our Sunday services, but it didn’t like the idea of doing the same for
Morning Prayer. That’s understandable: Morning Prayer is an intimate occasion and feeding it out to the universe on video and audio is to invite a sense of intrusion on something private. Should the surrender of one’s privacy be made, nevertheless ? Possibly – we are in the business of service of others, not self-satisfaction, after all. But maybe self-sacrifice has its limits – certainly knowing you are being broadcast makes a difference and a difficulty.
And this leads into the big question – what do you, the Deddington congregation, think about being broadcast and recorded for play back on a Sunday? How happy would the
Wednesday congregation be? Do let me know, but before you take a view, tune in to a recorded service on www.deddingtonchurch.org and see how you feel.
And what might you in Hempton and Barford like to happen in your Churches. Broadband or that mobile internet station? Think about it. Think about in terms of what you could
offer to your villages and beyond. Yes, it’s new, yes, it costs, but with imagination and faith, the problems of novelty and finance might be surpassable.
Hugh
July 2010
Volcanic ash, visa issues and the British Airways strike added to the excitement in the days leading up to the Maurice Frost Festival. Would our visiting choirs from Sweden and South Africa get here?
Preparations for the Festival began over two years ago and it would be a shame if things fell apart at the last minute. But, as they say, ‘Che sera, sera’ … . But everyone got here, no one, through the generosity of Deddingtonians and others, had to sleep on the street, complicated catering was managed with aplomb, the Deddington hostelries and Bakers Coaches did us proud, bishops preached, the community gathered – and the singing was great. The Choir of the Church of the Resurrection sang (and danced) to raise awareness of the huge problem of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. At the signoff concert in Bloxham School, pupils and staff were wowed by the energy and verve of African sound and movement. An extremely large donation from the School towards the Tsogo Centre for children infected or affected by HIV/AIDS in Mafikeng/Mmabatho was received with great gratitude. It went beyond Deddington on Radio Oxford and over the internet – people in Sweden and elsewhere tuned in to the Sunday morning Eucharist – some service! The Swedes joined our own choir and the Boys’Brigade brass to bring off a difficult Vaughan Williams piece, there was African – and Swedish – music and Setswana and Swedish as well as English were used in said parts of the service, which has probably never happened before anywhere. You can find a recording of this service and other Festival items (and a lot else besides) on www.deddingtonchurch.org. Maurice Frost, our former Vicar, would have liked best the traditional Evensong sung splendidly on the Saturday evening by the Choir of St George’s Chapel, Windsor and featuring a composition commissioned for the occasion by the distinguished composer Cecilia McDowall. Dr Frost would have been intrigued, too, by the hymn and reminiscence session on Sunday afternoon when a number of those who knew him contributed anecdotes – always interesting to find out how others see you! – and he would have been touched by the exhibition mounted about him and the Deddington Choir of which he was such a supporter. (Copies of the excellent brochure produced to complement the exhibition are still available in the Church.) There were many other wonderful moments: the Africans and the School together in Church for an Ascension Day Eucharist, and balloons flying away from the tower; the Swedish rite Eucharist in Hempton the same day, and that cake! the Afro-Anglo-Swedish toyi-toyi in celebration across the green, which brought people running with their cameras. The Festival was about recognising a contribution to Church music made by a Deddingtonian and about demonstrating how Church music can help to bind together communities widely separated geographically and culturally. It was also about having fun: there was much joy and our visitors loved it. Thanks to all of you who joined in and made it happen.
Hugh
June 2010
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A big thank you to everyone who helped in so many ways with the Maurice Frost Festival and the Choir visits. For me there were many highlights; among them the sound of the mens’ voices of St George’s Choir; Peter - the Desmond Tutu look-a-like; the Anglo/Afro/Swedish toyi-toyi in celebration across the Market Square; the Hempton Cake; Balloons after the Ascension Day service at Deddington; the Setswana reading from Acts; the Vaughan Williams sung by our choir and the Swedes with Boys’ Brigade brass; the exhibition and pamphlet on Dr Frost; the hymn karaoke with reminiscences: a brilliant concert at Bloxham School from the Africans; the anthem Psallite Domino; the co-ordination of the catering, particularly on Saturday afternoon; the prosecco-filled ‘fridge in the Nave; the relief of having it all over... Hugh |
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June 2010
From Canon Hugh Marshall
This year marks the 50th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood on Trinity Sunday 1960 in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. The Vicar has generously invited me to keep the anniversary by celebrating the 10.30 a.m. Eucharist in Deddington Parish Church on Sunday June 13th, the Sunday nearest to the anniversary.
This is to be less of a celebration than an occasion to give thanks for all the opportunities of worship and service that there have been during these years of ministry, to repent of the many that were missed or fumbled, and to give praise for God’s presence in them all.
Along with our family, a number of those who have shared in this ministry at various stages, enriching and supporting it, will be joining us for the service and we hope that lots of our friends in Deddington will also be there. Do come, and please stay for a drink afterwards.
June 2010
I had this by email from someone who attended the morning service and the evening concert in Deddington on May 16 during the Maurice Frost Festival:
A few years ago I was on a mini-bus trip to a Christian Aid rally in Brighton, along with people from various churches around the Bicester area, and was struck by the enthusiasm of the people from Deddington for their church. It seemed quite unusual to hear such enthusiasm for a village church so I vaguely made a mental note to come to a service in Deddington one day. Then late last night it suddenly occurred to me to look up the service times so that I could give it a try this morning.
What a great day it's turned out to be! My favourite preacher (Bishop Colin) AND a South African choir! And then a knock-out concert in the evening which even my non-church-going husband had to admit was fantastic and with amazing acoustics.
I hope to be back soon for an 'ordinary' service. Although any church that can get a day like today together, however infrequently, is definitely no ordinary village church...
A generous compliment from an outsider, but is it a compliment we are happy to accept? Does Deddington really want to be ‘no ordinary village church’? And what constitutes ‘extraordinary’ in this context? Part of what the writer has in mind, I suppose, is the measure of commitment, enthusiasm and energy in its congregation on which Deddington Parish Church is able to draw, But that commitment and that energy might find their outlet in doing - doing as well as possible, of course - the more routine things in which the life of a country Parish Church should be grounded. We can probably all agree in broad terms on what it is definitely proper for a village church to aim at; rich Sunday worship, strong fellowship in the congregation, proper care of one another and our neighbours when we or they are in trouble, attention to the Church building, fund raising are some of the things that rightly make up the normal brief for a village church. To fulfil that brief you don’t have to venture upon what might be called extravagances such as the Frost Festival. Or for, that matter, on extravagances such as Sculpture exhibitions, high-powered considerations of immigration or Islam, celebrations of Saints’ days, having a Boys’ Brigade Company, or a Youth Worker, or overseas links –all fairly unusual for village churches.
Extraordinary commitment doesn’t mean we have to do extraordinary things, though it seems almost certain that the emailer quoted above was rejoicing not just in the commitment and energy that went into mounting the events she attended, but in the events themselves. For her, what happened was special and therefore good, not just the spirit in the congregation that made possible what happened.
Does Deddington want to be ‘no ordinary village church’ if that means doing out-of-the-ordinary things as well as doing the ordinary things excellently? Doing things village churches don’t normally attempt is costly first of all in terms of the effort required to think carefully about whether one can and should be doing the things in question, even before one gets to the costs of the projects in terms of time and energy and money. There is an ordinary and honourable routine of work in the Church that needs to be pursued and as you pursue that, you know where you are. Doing things differently, going beyond the routine, is variously problematic and inevitably taxing of resources – and tempers; changing things, as we know, often stirs up anger. On the other hand, not changing things, not pushing beyond inherited boundaries of practice, often breeds frustration and leads to decay.
So do we, in Deddington, but also in Hempton and Barford, aspire to be out of the ordinary or just to do the ordinary things well? In the end, the whole idea of an ‘ordinary’ village church is a little off-key. All churches are different and particular and therefore special; each Church is called to a particular work of its own, in its own particular circumstances. So we need to review those different circumstances and take stock of the available gifts, enthusiasms, energies, resources which can be brought to bear in and on those circumstances. This will help us to assess, with open minds and without prejudging the issue with reference to a stereotyped idea of what is appropriate for village churches, what it is possible and right for each of our different churches in their particularity and specialness to attempt in the cause of God’s kingdom.
We will almost certainly find that there is some extraordinary thing we can and should do (Hempton’s Ride and Stride Teas – not ordinary, but spectacular; Barford St John’s Labyrinth - by no means unique, of course, these days but still provokingly unusual; Deddington’s probably unique Setswana-Swedish-English Eucharist). The Holy Spirit doesn’t, work to set one-size-fits-all patterns, though it might be more comfortable for us if he did, because then we would know where we were. As it is, the action of the Spirit, if we are open to it and prepared to let it work on us, draws us away from what we might suppose we know (‘village churches always do it like this, always work within these parameters’) towards questions about what might, surprisingly, be possible, towards the taking of risks, towards ventures in uncertainty – that is, towards the discovery and implementation of what the God who goes always ahead of us truly wants from the particular unordinariness with which he has blessed us. Further, that blessing will be renewed as we respond to Spirit’s drawing, for we will be changed into a fresh distinctiveness, blessed with new particular capacities and opportunities which we must use to make some newly extraordinary offering in God’s cause. This is a process that doesn’t end. This is disturbing, but it is exhilarating, too. To seek to meet the Spirit’s challenge is to live fully.
Welcome to post-Pentecost ‘Ordinary’ time!
Hugh
May 2010
May this year in the Church calendar is a month particularly full of joy. It brings Ascension Day and Pentecost, two of the highest Feasts of the Church. Jesus, completing the mission his incarnation inaugurated, returns in triumph to the Father, reascending to a throne of glory. He does not leave the disciples comfortless, however, but sends the Holy Spirit to empower them for the mission that remains the Church’s today, to proclaim to all the world the good news of Christ’s victory over sin and death, to proclaim what his Ascension marks, ‘Christ triumphant, ever reigning’.
That the Gospel both is to be, and can be, proclaimed throughout the world is apparent at the first Pentecost in the miraculous gift of languages to the disciples, or perhaps better ‘apostles’ – for now the disciples are sent out into the world in the cause of their Lord. We shall be able to experience immediately and celebrate appropriately the spread of the Gospel through the world and its expression in different languages at our Maurice Frost Festival and associated events, when some of the lessons and the liturgy will be rendered in Swedish and Setswana by our friends from Jonkoping and Mafikeng. Ascension Day is the anniversary of the Dedication of St John’s Hempton and the Choir from Sofiakyrkan will sing at a special Eucharist that evening, whilst in Deddington earlier that day the Choir of the Resurrection will lead a Eucharist with the School attending at 1.15 pm. The Festival should produce in us the joy and excitement appropriate to the conclusion of the Easter season, but which isn’t always very apparent in the services at that period. May I thank all those who have been, are now, and will be helping with the Festival in whatever way. The Festival is a major and difficult undertaking, but worth the time and the trouble for a number of reasons, not least of which is its contribution to the cause of Christian unity. Let us pray that it will be a great success.
Before that, other joyful occasions: on May 2 in Deddington First Sunday is themed to joy and in Barford the following week (May 9) we have a Rogationtide procession from St Michael to St John with the blessing of crops and animals. On the morning of May 9 the service at Deddington will mark the beginning of Christian Aid week: Easter joy should lead to a glad serving of those in need – and thank you to those who will be involved in the distributing and collection of Christian Aid envelopes. The current arrangement of services in the Benefice means that you can attend both these important services on May 9. You will remember how after Pentecost the apostles ‘spent much time together in the temple’, which seems to have much to do with the Lord adding to their number those who were being saved. How much time can you afford to give to Sunday worship?
The Pentecost service in Deddington at 10.30 am will include the baptism of Ruby Spengler-Peck, and we hope that there will be a link to New Zealand via the internet to enable a godparent to take part. On Trinity Sunday (30th) Sue Footner will talk about the Mercy Ships Charity at the 10.30 am service in Deddington. Finishing off the month with an occasion of great biblical joy, on 31st we celebrate the Visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth. Gerard Maley Hopkins associates this Feast with ‘Spring’s universal bliss’ and writes ‘This ecstasy all through mothering earth / Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth / To remember and exultation / In God who was her salvation. We should exult too, Christ being also our salvation, but it being a Monday, I don’t suppose many will attend the Eucharist in Deddington. That won’t, for once, worry me immediately, since I shall be away in Sweden. Mary, Elizabeth, Jesus and John the Baptist may, however, be a little disappointed.
Hugh
Vicars report on 2009
So how is the Parish doing? Statistics don’t really capture it; for what it’s worth the raw Sunday average body count for Deddington was 98 in the calendar year 2009 as opposed to 99 in 2008 and both those counts are just below what we had in 2002 and 2003. In the years between we were up above 100, sometimes substantially so. In Hempton the 2009 average was 17, lower than 2008’s 20, when a couple of special services raised the figure, but only very slightly down on the average over the last seven years. My impression, (for what it’s worth, again) is that we have a greater number of regular attenders in the Parish than we did a few years back, but that these regulars by and large attend Sunday worship less frequently than regulars used to.
What’s clear is that we have enough people on board in both Churches to do some excellent work - and the degree of a congregation's preparedness to be actively involved in a Church’s work may be a better measure of how that Church is doing than attendance statistics. Certainly, we score very high on this active commitment measure. We are fortunate to have our retired priests who contribute strongly to our worship, providing us with a breadth of style and perspective.
At Deddington we have a fine and committed choir and organist and so we are able to perform traditional liturgies to a high standard. We also have a music group that provides a good lead for our more modern services.
Readers, intercessors, sidespersons, welcomers, sacristans, servers, presenters, sound-system managers, service-sheet producers, cleaners, flower arrangers, kitchen-staff and the group which designs our First Sunday worship all give of their time and trouble to make our acts of worship offerings of the whole church, offerings which, though we must always be on the look-out for ways to improve them, we may reasonably hope are acceptable to God. And our faithful bell ringers week-on-week let our community know that we are very much in business. Hempton operates on a smaller scale but the degree of commitment is similar.
That’s just Sunday worship – which, by the way, we are now able to broadcast from Deddington over the internet. We also have a thriving and growing Wednesday Communion service at Deddington. A group of about a dozen maintains Morning Prayer daily in Church. The Saturday prayer group enacts our corporate commitment to seek the will of God for our Church. Squeals and Wheels for the very young and their carers has just gone weekly by popular request and is staffed by a small Church group now, not just by the Vicar. As far as weekday worship goes, my only regret is that the Eucharists on Saints Days and other special Festivals are so poorly attended. I have yet to hear a convincing justification for the general non-attendance. It’s good to have occasional weekday services also at Hempton (eg Good Friday and Ascension Day).
A number of small groups meet for prayer, study and fellowship. We should perhaps be developing more of these groups and increasing the membership of the existing ones. Recognising how important a part of our work it is for us to cultivate our relationship with God, we should also, I think, make sure that Quiet Day and pilgrimage opportunities are regularly offered to the whole congregation.
We maintain our rather heroic commitment to a full-time paid Youth Worker, having seen what Clare Cardy achieved for young people in our community during her time with us.
We would, of course, love to have more young people (and their parents) in our Churches on Sunday - and our First Sunday services are helping this to happen - but we should not underestimate what we already do for this sector of our community, as if what happens on Sunday is all that matters. That said, whilst we show strong commitment to our Children’s Activity Mornings, we could probably be more supportive than we have been of the Boys’ Brigade and the activities any Youth Worker we appoint may arrange.
We exercise a ministry of hospitality at both Churches just through having them open. Comments in the Visitors’ books show that this is much appreciated. At Deddington our offering the Church for use at the Farmers’ Market contributes greatly to a hugely successful community enterprise. Hempton’s hospitality on the Historic Churches’ Ride and Stride day is probably the best in the County. At Deddington we offer a regular welcome to members of our community and others through our Teas on Sunday and by hosting the Katharine House Coffee Morning.
There may be opportunities to expand this ministry of hospitality. The installation of a broadband connection in Deddington Church has made the provision of computer facilities there a realistic possibility. Offering these facilities would require us to steward the Church regularly. If this could be managed (perhaps only for certain periods of the day), our general ministry to visitors would be enhanced. One thing, by the way, that I should like to see on offer to visitors is a more spiritually-oriented guide to Deddington Church, good and useful though our current historical/architectural guide is.
One area of need which we don’t, as yet, meet involves the Mothers’ and Toddlers’ group which meets at the Windmill Centre on Fridays. This group would love Church members to help with serving the refreshments.
It’s a pity it’s a Friday morning, and so clashes with the Katharine House occasion, but maybe we could organise a rota. It would be more going out in the name of Christ to meet and serve people where they are.
All of the above could not happen without a huge investment of time and energy by members of the congregations in the work of the Churches. In a sense, this is only doing what we should as disciples of Jesus, but I am, nevertheless, enormously grateful to you for doing it. Your commitment brings a lot of excitement, stimulation and fulfilment to me personally, because it means we can consider, attempt and achieve things that could not be countenanced in a less vigorous Parish. That being so, the question that arises is where do the limits for us lie; how far, as the Jabez prayer has it, should we be seeking to ‘increase our territory’, the terrain we cultivate for God? We shall be addressing that question as we continue with our Stewardship programme under Robin Brunner-Ellis’ guidance.
Mention of Stewardship brings me to a thank you to all who give money to the churches and to all who help raise it through bazaars, operating the kitchens, helping at income-bringing events and so forth. But a warning: if we do want to increase our territory, our income will have to increase likewise.
That’s all largely positive but an honest reflection on the last year or so needs to register that there have been some problems at Deddington. Deddington Church has been re-floored and re-furnished to superb effect, but, unsurprisingly, not without some blood on the flagstones (Hempton has managed its programme of refurbishment to this point more harmoniously). The question as to whether the Vicar should stay has also tested us spiritually and brought tears. It now looks as if we have got past these issues without catastrophe, but difficult as they were, we should as a body have comported ourselves better in dealing with them. We can, as with any exposure of our failings, learn from what happened. I have had to do a lot of uncomfortable reflection in response to criticisms made of me, and I hope others have also looked at themselves critically. I know that some apologies have been made, but suspect that more ought still to be forthcoming. I fear ‘amendment of life’ may not have happened as much as it
should; it’s easier, after all, to justify oneself and continue behaving as before.
It would be a pity, though, to spurn the spiritual opportunity our difficulties have offered us. It comes down first to cultivating a proper humility and then to being true to our Christian calling in dealing with one another. That calling demands of us a generosity of spirit towards one another, a determination to try to think the best of one another, to put up with one another’s shortcomings, to make allowances for each another across the range of our differences, to see things from the other person’s point of view, to be concerned for the difficulties others may experience in our common life. Our calling commits us to loving one another, in fact. Without love, whatever we may achieve, we are nothing. The temper of our life together is something we need to work on.
Things get difficult when they matter to people, and conflict in a church body is at least a sign of the church’s mattering to people. Much better the energy of conflict than apathy. Engagement with our Churches has been fruitfully expressed in the activities detailed above; it is apparent too in the willingness of Church members to sit on the Parochial Church Council (not always unmitigated joy) and to bear office (always hard labour). I should like to thank all PCC members and particularly our outgoing PCC Secretary, Jen Childs, for her hard work and her humour, our Treasurer and Vice Chair, Iain Gillespie, for his computations and his chairing of a couple of difficult meetings and our Church Wardens, George Fenemore and Glynne Bianchi, who have been magnificently committed and efficient in fulfilling their duties - who habitually, in fact, go well beyond the call of duty. Les Chappell at Hempton does likewise and I should like to thank him and the Friends of Hempton Church for the smooth running of matters there.
I’d also like to recognise the contribution of those who aren’t exactly members but who help us greatly, nevertheless. For instance, Mike Ramsdale and James Greenwood our flag-flyers, Don Anderson, our Examiner of Accounts, Sue Shattock whose catering we have much enjoyed, David Rogers who has got us up and running on the internet and who supervises our website, Robin Nash who has looked after the Youth Group and Clare Cardy who has continued in her ministry to young people of the Parish. Clare’s husband, Jon Cardy has done and will continue to do a fine job for young people of our community through his work at the Warriner and in Bloxham Youth Club. Sue Addison manages a host of secretarial and administrative tasks with energy, skill and forbearance.
So we look forward to the future in a consciousness that we have been greatly blessed by God in the past and the faith that these blessings will continue if we seek to serve our Lord with full commitment. We look forward to greeting friends from Africa and Sweden, to welcoming Daniel Inman as our Curate, to going on with refurbishments at Hempton; we pray for success in our search for a Youth Worker and that the Holy Spirit will guide us as we attempt to discern God’s plans for our future.
Hugh
April 2010
‘April is the cruellest month’, says the poet. The statement’s meant to be felt as odd, counter-intuitive – don’t we all rejoice at the coming of Spring and its new life? That for the poet, though, is the trouble - the seasonal call to live anew, the challenge to break out of the cosiness of spiritual torpor (‘winter kept us warm’). The physical energies of Spring ask of us an energetic response of the spirit to the possibilities of life. The rising sap insists that we are part of a realm of change and growth and should embrace that reality. Comfortable as we are, we might rather stay as we are. In fact, we may fear moving on into difference. Change and growth, no thanks! (Q. How many Anglicans does it take to change a light bulb? A. Change?!)
It has been remarked that Christians concentrate more on the observance of Lent than of Eastertide. I wonder whether that has to do with a certain comfortableness regarding the self built into the customary practices of Lent. We are supposed to deny ourselves in Lent, but I’m not sure how much Lent as we do it helps us leave our old self behind. That old self rather calls the tune; it’s a prime point of reference, after all – it is what is to be examined and denied, but is it thereby transformed? I suspect Lent often ends with a relieved picking up again of the old self with its old routines and habits in blessed assurance that that self can’t be all that bad because it managed the Lenten disciplines it set itself.
If one were to be cynical about Lent, one might say that it dabbled in difference in order to leave us fundamentally unchanged. Really very cosy. We can deal with the Lent dabble happily enough. What we may not be happy to deal with are the implications for us, for our selves, of Easter – Easter that changes our predicament absolutely and should change us. Christ’s resurrection means that sin and death are not ultimate realities but that love and life are. Like the poet’s ‘cruel’ April, Easter thrusts new life in our faces and demands that we live it, live the new life presented to us by the cancellation of the terms and conditions set by sin and death. Their cancellation involves – or should involve - a cancelling of fear, including the fear of change and growth which locks us into our old selves and tends to leave us closed off from other people in their challengingness, too afraid to love. Easter tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and so there is nothing to fear. Even the losing of our lives will end in the joyful acquisition of our true selves.
Eastertide, then, ought to be about abandoning ourselves with joy and without fear to the new life of love which Christ’s Resurrection certifies as the ultimately valid way of living. Living that life will see us changing and growing, drawing closer to God. Perhaps if we are to observe Eas-tertide as we should, we ought to keep watch particularly for the presence and effects of fear in our lives – fear which inhibits our surrender in love to God and to one another - and to ask for grace to live fearlessly out of a Resurrection faith. The fearful attempt to manufacture se-curities of various kinds for ourselves should give way to a generous, loving openness to others and to a trusting abandonment of ourselves to God’s purposes for us, which are always loving purposes. In that openness and abandonment we enter on eternal life.
‘April is the cruellest month.’ This is one poet’s jaundiced reply to another. That other, earlier poet , like the later one, associated Nature’s Springtime with spiritual pressure, but for him the sweet showers and the mating songs of birds were met by a natural human longing to go on pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a venture of trust in God, a deliberate surrender of security, a deliberate stepping beyond the familiar to pursue the things of God, a journey in search of spiritual transformation. It is an accurate image of the truly Christian life. May we this April, this Eastertide, not find the spiritual demands of the season cruel; rather, may we find ourselves impelled, joyously, to go on pilgrimage.
Hugh
Maurice Frost Festival
15th - 16th May
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Please click here for more information on the events taking place during the Festival. Quite a few people in Deddington remember the Revd Dr Maurice Frost, former Vicar of the Parish. Dr Frost was an eminent hymnologist and, to mark the 50th anniversary of the completion of his Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern, Deddington Parish Church is holding a Festival. On Saturday 15 May at 6.30pm the Choir of St George’s, Windsor (our Parish patrons) will sing Evensong, at which the Rt Revd John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford, will preach. An anthem by the distinguished composer, Cecilia McDowall, has been commissioned for this occasion. |
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There will be a lot of new faces around in Deddington in mid-May! I hope you will enjoy their presence and I’m sure you will make them welcome.
The next day, Sunday 16 May, our 10.30am Eucharist will be led by the choirs of the three linked parishes. The Rt Revd Colin Fletcher, Bishop of Dorchester, will preside and preach at this service. In the afternoon of 16 May (3.30pm) Tea and Hymns with Dr Frost will be an occasion for villagers to celebrate Maurice Frost and to reminisce over tea, coffee and cakes about him and church life in Deddington in his time in the Parish Church.
All Deddingtonians are cordially invited to take part in these celebrations of an important person in the history of our village. The Parish Church is hoping to mount an exhibition on Dr Frost for the Festival weekend and I should be most grateful if those who might contribute memories or materials about him would contact me.
Hugh
March 2010
Some surprise was expressed that Robin Brunner-Ellis’ morning on stewardship in Deddington devoted more time to animals and angels than to money. It makes sense, however, to try to identify areas of consensus as to a church’s shortcomings and some shared aspirations as to how it should be, if you want to devise a plan of action to take that church into the future - a plan, that is, which most people in the congregation will be happy to get behind enthusiasti-cally and to which they will offer their resources of time, energy - and money.
It was apparent at the stewardship morning that many thought a priority in our planning should be to get more young people into church. I think ‘young’ in this context probably means anyone under 50 and I suspect ‘into church’ means ‘in church regularly on Sunday mornings’. This aspiration seems fine, but a couple of points need to be made. Though none of us would say that church is all about Sunday, our proper respect and concern for Sunday ‘prime-time’ worship may distort our perspective on church life. Concentrating on Sunday morning may lead us to overlook the fact that many young people are ‘in church’ at other times in Deddington. If authentic church is about prayer and worship and hearing the good news of Jesus Christ, then the Primary School – our Church School - does pretty well as a church. Furthermore, its collective worship programme brings the School to the Parish Church regularly, sometimes to join our Wednesday congregation. Then we have more than 30 boys in our Boys’ Brigade Company. Christian devotions are conducted at each of their meetings and, of course, there are their regular Sunday Church parades. The Squeals and Wheels service brings babies and toddlers and their mothers, most of them not Sunday regulars, into Church and there have recently been requests from mothers that we should run these services weekly. Our Youth Group awaits the appointment of a new Youth Worker. All these church operations (and they have some degree of impact not only on the children but on their parents) need to be acknowledged and valued as we consider where exactly we should be putting our efforts in the years to come.
Then again, it’s by no means all doom and gloom in respect of younger attendance every Sunday. The First Sunday format is having some success already in bringing younger families to church. Maybe we should have more services of this kind. Certainly, if we are truly serious about having young people - children and parents - come in greater numbers regularly to Sunday Morning worship, it will surely mean, as Billie Goodway Ward’s letter (see below) points out, that our current way of worship will have to change radically. We should have to offer a way of worship that would attract younger people to church on Sunday even in the face of all the cultural pressures now militating against Sunday attendance. That would certainly be an exciting undertaking and, despite what I have noted above about the impact we are already having on the young, to attempt it might be the right and faithful thing to do.
May I invite members of the Deddington congregation this Lent to ponder and pray about our planning for the future. And do think about my suggestion of attending two services on the Sundays of Lent and think of Barford in particular. I know that the Barford congregation, for whom the future at the moment doesn’t look particularly rosy, would love to welcome Deddington people to their services.
Hugh
January 2010
January brings Epiphanytide. Epiphany means showing or manifestation and at this season, after celebrating the gift of Christ to the world at Christmas, we rejoice in the manifestation of Christ in his glory as the Son of God, glory made apparent through the adoration of the Wise Men, at his baptism by John, in the miracle at Cana - in the turning of water into wine - and, finally, at his Presentation in the Temple forty days after his birth, the Feast commonly known as Candlemas, with which the Epiphany season closes.
Epiphany is an appropriate time to think about how we, the Benefice churches, manifest the glory of Christ - and we do! - and how we might better do so. We shall be encouraged in that thinking by our Stewardship campaign, in the course of which we shall attend to how we can best put at the disposal of our Lord for his mission on earth all that we have been given by him. The campaign starts at 9.30 am on Saturday January 30th with a full morning session in Deddington Church led by Robin Brunner-Ellis, Diocesan Adviser on Christian Giving and Fund Raising. Please do come. (It would help if you let me or the Churchwardens know that you will be coming so that we can make appropriate provision at the lunch that will follow Robin's presentation.)
The Eve of Candlemas is a particularly appropriate moment to be concentrating on how we as churches manifest Christ's glory. Candlemas is a kind of hinge on which the Christian year turns; with it the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany sequence finishes and we turn towards Lent, Holy Week and Easter. It is in Holy Week, on Good Friday, that Christ's glory is fully manifested at the Crucifixion. At Candlemas Simeon, speaking of Mary's suffering, points us towards Christ's suffering on the Cross. However, we receive that Candlemas message fortified for the suffering it implies for us by the joy of Christmastide and Epiphany; God with us, the Son of God set openly before us for our recognition and adoration. Without second-guessing the Spirit's operations upon us, I'd be surprised if his teaching through our Stewardship campaign doesn't present us with the costs of manifesting Christ's glory, doesn't ask sacrifice of us, doesn't indicate that we should walk the way of cross. But we can walk that way because our glorious God, manifested in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son, born into our world, is with us - always - guiding, strengthening, reshaping, loving.
Hugh
December 2009
Advent looks towards the Second Coming of Christ and the Last Judgement. It is, therefore, an appropriate season for self-examination, for repentance and change of direction. Advent is also the beginning of the Church's year - an appropriate season for starting on something new. Following the Deddington Forum and the ideas and energy it has generated, we have a good opportunity to develop a new vision and new directions for the Benefice.
Perhaps we also need to look at developing a new character for ourselves as church communities: not all the energy around the Forum was positive. I wonder whether it was inevitable that the Forum should give rise to anger, hurt and ill-feeling, as it did. I would hope that a Christian community could find ways of speaking truthfully and generously and listening thoughtfully and considerately such that even difficult matters, matters, say, where opinions differ markedly, or where criticism needs to be expressed, may be discussed openly, graciously and without rancour. We might think about what disciplines we need to set ourselves under, as individuals and communities, to achieve this. Were we to achieve it, we would be exhibiting in this that love of one another which Christ demands of us and which is essential if we are to be effective witnesses for Christ in the world.
As to being effective witnesses, I should like you to consider these related and fundamental questions: what are our church communities - in Deddington, Barford, Hempton - for? and what should the extent of our ambitions be? Please tell me what you think.
We shall be helped in the development of new vision and in the discernment of new directions by Robin Brunner-Ellis from the Diocese, who will lead our Stewardship campaign. The first occasion in this campaign is an open meeting in Deddington on the morning of January 30th (see notice elsewhere in this issue.). Please attend if you possibly can.
Whatever else new happens in the coming year we will have a new Curate. Deddington PCC (with the approval of the Barford Churchwardens) has ratified the appointment of Daniel Inman, who will come to the Benefice in July 2010. Dan is in his mid-twenties, single and has a D.Phil in Church History. He is currently finishing his training at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. As a condition of having Dan with us, Bishop Colin expects me to stay in post in the Benefice at least until January 2012, which I am very happy to do. Please do not suppose that I shall in fact leave then. I might (if spared) stay until I have to retire, for all I know as yet. We shall in due course have to try to discern what God knows and wants.
Hugh
November 2009 - A long Walk in Sweden
Freezing to death seemed to be on the cards. How low would the temperatures have to go? The tent was basic, the sleeping bag of questionable quality. Yesterday spring had been coming to southern Sweden, but today, as I started my long-anticipated walk, there was snow on the ground. My exhilaration at getting under way hadn’t survived day one. I’d got lost more or less immediately, the snow causing confusion; the rucksack was painfully heavy and it looked as if I couldn’t keep to my timetable even if I stayed alive.
The idea had been to spend six weeks of my sabbatical investigating the Swedish Church. It is similar in many ways to the Church of England, to which it is now closely affiliated. I wanted to talk to Swedish Church people about their circumstances in general. More particularly, there’s a link between the Diocese of Oxford and the Diocese of Vaxjo and the beginnings of a Parish link between Jonkoping (Vaxjo Diocese) and Deddington – a choir from Jonkoping visited us last year. Could I do anything to strengthen these links? Then there was that romantic Swedish right to roam legislation which gives you liberty to pitch your tent more or less anywhere for a night or two. Did that really work? And perhaps I could improve my rudimentary Swedish by six weeks’ exposure to the language without my Swedish-speaking wife.
Good enough reasons to be worrying now about diminishing body temperature in a freezing forest in the Smaland Highlands? Possibly, but the comfortable hotel in Vaxjo from which I’d started in the morning seemed rather attractive that first night of the walk. At least I had several layers of clothing available, good gloves and, most important of all, a woolly hat.
Finding myself not dead the next morning, I could reflect that pilgrimages were not meant to be fun. For the walk was a pilgrimage. The shrine I was seeking was that of St Birgitta at Vadstena, about 130 miles north of Vaxjo. I wanted to spend the latter part of Holy Week and Easter at the great abbey built at Birgitta’s instructions in the 15th century for the religious community she founded. Through her community and through her writings Birgitta’s influence was considerable - in England greatest in the 15th century - and she is now a patron saint of Europe. Birgitta, you might say, is part of a Swedish Christian pay-back to us for the important role in the evangelisation of Sweden played by English churchmen in the 11th century, when St Sigfrid, an Englishman, is said to have founded Vaxjo Diocese.
So I went from Sigfrid to Birgitta, from Vaxjo to Vadstena. Dropping down out of the snow belt to Lake Vattern I reached Jonkoping – on schedule, amazingly – and the warm hospitality of friends in that charming city. I could rest and leave some baggage. Some days and about fifty miles later, having walked up the east side of Vattern under a lighter load and with spring now indisputably sprung I reached Vadstena. In the company of fellow pilgrims, I experienced the Swedish Church’s grave and decorous liturgies for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, familiar and followable despite the foreign language, and Holy Week’s culmination in the services of Easter Eve and Easter morning. The distribution of daffodils (‘Easter lilies’ in Swedish) at the end of the latter was just one of many moving moments in the services I attended. Most moving of all, however, was to know myself, or rather to feel myself, a member of the world-wide Church, united to my fellow Christians everywhere.
Priests in the Swedish Church, despite its wealth and high staffing levels, don’t get sabbaticals. The Church of England is in this respect, anyway, wiser. I came back from my three months away refreshed and restored, with new perspectives and maybe even actually changed. I’d like to thank all those in Deddington and Hempton who bore heavier burdens than usual in looking after the churches of the parish in my absence. I hope you will come to feel it was worth it!
Hugh
July 2009 - Changes at the Church
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The replacement of the tile flooring of the Parish Church should be completed in July. The tiling in the chancel will remain. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused by the building work, but it will be good not to have to worry about the safety problems occasioned by the numerous broken tiles, and the new Hornton stone paving will respond very sympathetically to the other stonework in the Church. It is worth noting that the floor of the Church was paved in stone before the tiles were introduced in the 19th century. The pews we have been removing (we may retain a few) are likewise of a relatively recent date. The new chairs will permit greater flexibility for both community and Church. Some will mourn the loss of the Church’s Victorian aspect, but others are already finding the new flooring and the chairs visually pleasing. We will experiment with various configurations of the chairs and remaining pews to see what arrangements work, whether we should provide additional seating and what kind of seating that should be.
Hugh Picture: Colin Robinson |
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