‘I know modern slavery happens, but it doesn’t happen here’.

That’s the refrain of the average person in Britain. We may have read the news reports with story after story, but still we insist, ‘it doesn’t happen here’. Where does modern slavery happen? The reality is that modern slavery is anywhere and everywhere. The big city, the market town, the picturesque village; all of them are touched by this pernicious crime.

A Christian presence in every community is more than a strap-line – it is the heart of English Anglicanism. It is the expression of our obligation, as the church for all the people of the nation, to leave no community untouched by the gospel of Jesus Christ, lived out among the people of every place. Ministry and mission in the rural church is highly demanding of energy and imagination. Growth is being realised, but much more remains to be done.

Rt Revd James Bell, retired Bishop of Ripon

The Church of England has over 10,000 rural churches and on any given Sunday 40% of all the people worshipping with the Church of England can be found in these places. Even these figures hide their bigger significance for rural communities across the country as places of hope, peace and comfort, nurturing social action projects that enrich communities.

Built around 1050, St Mary’s is a beautiful church situated in Acton, a small village west of Nantwich in Cheshire. In March 2017, our group of volunteers established a café under the tower. The vision was for a weekly opportunity for people to come together and enjoy some refreshments in a caring and compassionate environment. We called our café ‘Tea at The Tower’ and our purpose was simply to establish a vehicle for outreach and pastoral care and an environment whereby a compassionate community could grow.

Alister McGrath: Mere Discipleship: Growing in Wisdom and Hope (SPCK, 2018)

David Grieve: Love in Thin Places: Confessions of a Cathedral Chaplain (Sacristy Press, 2019)

Lyn McCrave: The Geese Flew Over My Heart (Sacristy Press, 2019)

A new book on small places of worship has picked St Leonard’s, Chapel-le-Dale, as one of Britain’s finest examples. Sitting high in the Dales, north of Ingleton, this beautiful church began life as a chapel of ease for isolated farming folk in the 17th century. It then served as a graveyard for the Settle to Carlisle railway workers and their families who lived in a nearby shanty town while building the Ribblehead Viaduct and nearby Blea Moor tunnel. A stone memorial to those workers is held within the church.