Rural Mission Sunday 2017
Everybody Welcome!
The highlight of the Arthur Rank Centre’s summer is Rural Mission Sunday, an annual opportunity for rural churches to celebrate who they are. In 2017 over 300 churches from across the denominations registered to take part on (or around) Sunday 16 July; here are some of their stories…
‘Just give it a try: you’ve nothing to lose and much to gain!’
Lesley Leon, St Mary’s Newton Valence, Hampshire
Lesley Leon, St Mary’s Newton Valence, Diocese of Winchester
To celebrate Rural Mission Sunday we held a Pet Service which turned out to be an unintentional ‘Bring-your-dog-to-church’ Service, although we did have a baby tortoise and an African land snail too! There was lots of conversation during the ‘meet the pets’ element of the service and the refreshments afterwards. In a small village most people tend to know one another and everyone enjoyed hearing the stories of their pets. So we gained knowledge about animals, read some scripture, sang some fun music, heard a brief talk about God’s love and then hit the refreshments.
It was great fun and showed that worship isn’t all about liturgies and ‘Sunday best’. Why not give it a try next year; you’ve nothing to lose and much to gain!
‘It was a wonderful celebration of local community.’
Revd Becky Stephens, The Parish of The Whitacres, Lea Marston and Shustoke, Birmingham
Revd Becky Stephens, The Parish of The Whitacres, Lea Marston and Shustoke, Diocese of Birmingham
Having just arrived as rector here, we used Rural Mission Sunday as an opportunity to invite people to meet the new rector. We had a BBQ using local sausages followed by homemade cakes for pudding. There was a treasure hunt around the churchyard and a prayer station in the church, where people wrote prayers on teapot cards. The afternoon ended with a celebratory service using some of the recommended liturgy.
More people came than we expected, many from outside of the church community. When it came to the start of the service many more people stayed than we hoped. It was a wonderful celebration of local community.
Rural Mission Sunday needn’t be difficult to plan. A simple get together with local or homemade food and a service designed quickly drawing on the materials from the Arthur Rank Centre. It’s a great opportunity to do something together!
‘Rural Mission Sunday is FUN!!! It shows the joy of being a follower of Jesus to people who see the rural church as hide-bound and boring.’
Revd Doreen Sparey-Delacassa, Camelford and Week St Mary Methodist Circuit, Cornwall
Revd Doreen Sparey-Delacassa, Camelford and Week St Mary Methodist Circuit, Cornwall
For Rural Mission Sunday we held a celebration called Fun, Frogs and Bishops, a community outreach event with a bouncy castle and games, Open the Book displays and Messy Church crafts. The church building hosted a teddy bears’ picnic, a bear hunt and a quiet cafe area. The event was supported by Rt Revd Tim Thornton, Bishop of Truro, and Revd Steve Wild, chair of Cornwall District, who opened the celebrations by racing over the bouncy assault course! The event brought people from across the circuit together, along with their children and grandchildren and attracted people from the community, a very small Cornish hamlet.
Our evening café church was very upbeat and inspirational and demonstrated how things could be if we worked together more.
Rural Mission Sunday was FUN!!! It showed the joy of being a follower of Jesus to people who see the rural church as hide bound and boring.
‘Rural Mission Sunday confounds those who would say rural churches are too small and cannot be involved in mission.’
Revd Dr Andrew Tatham, Quantock Coast Benefice, Somerset
Revd Dr Andrew Tatham, Quantock Coast Benefice, Diocese of Bath and Wells
Rural Mission Sunday has always provided a useful and challenging focus for our July Benefice service and this year we used the material for our regular monthly Benefice Eucharist on 23 July. The theme, Everybody Welcome!, coincided with one element of our Quantock Deanery plan – reaching out to a ‘hard-to-reach’ group – so the talk was given by the lead of our local Dementia Action Alliance.
The immediate response to Rural Mission Sunday is that a number of our parishes are considering working towards becoming dementia friendly churches. Its bigger impact is to confound those who would say that rural churches are too small and cannot be involved in mission.
‘Rural Mission Sunday is a simple, effective way of concentrating on God’s reality in a rural context. The material is a rich springboard from which to emphasise a living, creative Christian presence.’
Revd David Harknett, Vicar, Parish of the Upper Wreake, Leicestershire
Revd David Harknett, Parish of the Upper Wreake, Diocese of Leicester
Rural Mission Sunday was a simple way to celebrate our both rural locality and our rural church.
We gathered in a barn for our main Sunday Service. Zion House belongs to Syd and Ant Woods and, though small, is the last remaining farm in the village. Several people contributed to the preparations and Canon Revd Glyn Evans, Rural Officer for the Diocese of Oxford, joined us for an interview before bringing a message about Zacchaeus.
It was an ecumenical venture, drawing in a number of people who don’t worship with us at other times. It was particularly nice to have all five sense stimulated – farmyard smells and gentle breeze especially! Worshippers and villagers were encouraged by being outside the historic building, in a new setting while the farming brothers were encouraged by the presence and support of local Christians and well-wishers. Conversations were stimulated and relationships formed and deepened.
Rural Mission Sunday is a simple, effective way of concentrating on God’s reality in a rural context. The material is a rich springboard from which to emphasise a living, creative Christian presence.
‘The materials available from the the Arthur Rank Centre website gave me a head-start on what I wanted to do and say and encouraged me to do some thinking.’
Revd Canon Dr Jean Coates, Rural Officer (Anglican) for Dorset
Revd Canon Dr Jean Coates, Rural Officer (Anglican) for Dorset
On Rural Mission Sunday itself I led a communion service in a Benefice in North Dorset (Stour Vale). The Benefice has seven churches but came together in West Stour Church which was decorated with special Rural Mission Sunday bunting (available via CPO). A fortnight later I preached at another communion service for the Puddletown Benefice in South Dorset on a farm in the Benefice. We decorated the barn with bunting and shared a bring-and-share lunch afterwards. From the barn the view was magnificent – out across a valley – and the farm’s sheep were practically grazing at my feet.
I hope participation in Rural Mission Sunday made people more aware that the rural church can celebrate its existence. So many small rural places seem not to have thought about their challenges and opportunities, and need to be encouraged in what they already do and challenged to try new things.
Revd Canon Gary Philbrick, Avon Valley Partnership, Diocese of Winchester
I used Rural Mission Sunday as my theme in various local churches on 15 July. I preached about how churches often say everyone is welcome… as long as they like the service as it is, and are the right sort of people, and have children who make no noise etc. … It went down well!
‘Our event [a family BBQ] was clearly enjoyed by those attending and will hopefully be the first of other events aimed at families and children.’
Howard Petch, Churchwarden Churchwarden, St Michael and All Angels, Cherry Burton, Diocese of York
Howard Petch, Churchwarden, St Michael & All Angels, Cherry Burton, Diocese of York
We took Rural Mission Sunday’s hospitality theme and held an open barbecue and fun day in the vicarage garden on the Sunday afternoon. Invitations had been issued via all children at the village school and there were various activities including a bouncy castle. Over twenty families came along, most of whom were not regular church attenders. We are hoping that some, perhaps most of these will want to come our first Messy Church in September.
‘It’s a good opportunity to help a rural church recover a vision for mission.’
Mike Sergeant, Melton Mowbray Methodist Circuit, Leicestershire
Susan Dutton, Local preacher, Shropshire and the Marches Methodist Circuit
Our church at Moreton Mill is very small with an average congregation of fifteen who travel in by car from various rural locations. For Rural Mission Sunday we planned a mini-series on hospitality and welcome alongside a bring-and-share lunch. There was plenty of material provided for both weeks and we found it both stimulating and encouraging.
We find mission a difficult area for various reasons and feel quite inadequate. However the material we shared on hospitality and welcome led to a discussion on the subject of dementia. As a result of this we have decided as a congregation to ask for Dementia Friend training (dementiafriends.org.uk). This will be done by a trained Dementia Champion and lasts just 45 minutes. We plan to incorporate it into a service of worship and are increasingly aware that it is mission in a wider sense.
Thank you for the impetus to begin this!
Revd Deborah Caulk, Norwich Methodist Circuit, East Anglia Methodist District
On Rural Mission Sunday I was leading worship and preaching in a city centre church so I focused our morning and evening services on rural mission. The psalm and gospel lesson for that Sunday were perfect and I featured prayers, liturgy, and hymns on the theme. I also drew on some stories from my own rural ministry experiences as well as things I found on the Arthur Rank Centre website.
The impact was immediate with the congregation wanting to take a field trip after church! During fellowship time after the service, lots of people were sharing their stories about growing up on a farm or having been in rural areas for holidays. A few people asked me about possibilities of connecting with a rural church for ministry in the future, and several were interested in visiting the Arthur Rank Centre at their Warwickshire base sometime soon.
Rural Mission Sunday demonstrates that we don’t need to wait until Harvest in the autumn to think about farm life and struggles.
Revd Hermione Morris, Vyrnwy Mission Area, Diocese of St Asaph, Church in Wales
We celebrated the Eucharist at a Mission Area service where people from the congregations of the seven churches in our rural area came together. As part of the service we officially launched our Mobile Sacred Space/’Pop-up’ Church project which we will be taking to events during August and September. We hope this project will help us to welcome and connect with those who aren’t yet part of our church family or who are unable to attend regular worship for whatever reason.
We’ve valued the flexibility of Rural Mission Sunday: for the last two years we’ve celebrated a couple of weeks after the ‘official’ date as this fits with our pattern across the area.
Thank you for promoting, supporting and providing resources for Rural Mission Sunday – I think it’s a great opportunity for us to celebrate the good things that are happening!
‘The immediate impact of Rural Mission Sunday? Someone found a place to live!’
Revd Dr Robert Barlow, Teme Valley South Benefice, Diocese of Worcester
Revd Dr Robert Barlow, Teme Valley South Benefice, Diocese of Worcester
In a field next to Hanley Childe church, we had a BBQ and inter-village boules match followed by a short service using the Arthur Rank Centre’s Rural Mission Sunday material and picking up the theme of hospitality. One of the churches – Rochford – had had a rock concert the night before so the cider we hadn’t sold at that we gave away. Hanley Childe had had a wedding the day before – its first since the 1970s – and we were able to use the marquee and tables.
The impact of Rural Mission Sunday was immediate for one local resident. Her house had been was sold and her buyers wanted to complete but the place she had been going to buy had fallen through so she needed somewhere to live. During the day she spoke to the farmer who, it turned out, had a barn conversion looking for a tenant! They absented themselves from the BBQ, looked at the barn conversion, agreed a deal and were back in time for the service. I think there’s something about hospitality in that.
Revd Fiona Gibson, The Benefice of Cople, Moggerhanger and Willington, Diocese of St Albans
Each of the three churches in our Benefice did something special. One church had a celebration cake after the morning service. At the family service in another the children performed a brilliant sketch, involving members of the congregation, on the theme ‘everyone’s invited’! We used the parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14:15-24), and invited our friends and neighbours to come to an actual great banquet (well, a picnic!) in the garden of one of the church members afterwards.
In the third church we held an afternoon tea followed by a Songs of Praise service, at which people living in the village talked about what’s special about being part of a rural community and introduced a favourite hymn. The Chair of the Parish Council, a long term village resident, and a newer resident were among those who spoke.
Members of the congregations were excited about putting on special events. It raised the profile of Mission in our churches and the fact that it was specifically focused on rural churches made a real difference. So often rural churches have to try to adapt ideas geared at urban and suburban churches. This time we didn’t!
We had a fabulous day and we’re already looking forward to next year!
Did you take part in Rural Mission Sunday but haven’t quite got round to sending us your feedback yet? There’s still time! Go to the feedback form on our website where you can tell us about your event and even upload your photos – go to arthurrankcentre.org.uk and search ‘RMS feedback’!
SAVE THE DATE! Sunday 15 July 2018
Rural Mission Sunday 2018 will take place on Sunday 15 July and resources will be available by 1 May. Get the date in your diary now and start preparing to celebrate your rural church and community in 2018!
