How can a handful of people from a little ‘shabby chic’ chapel in a small village on the edge of the Cotswolds Way even think of mission? Well I suppose the answer is… we don’t! Call it mission that is. What we do is try to make connections; connections with each other, our communities and with God.
The concept of hospitality has changed down the centuries. For most of us today it conjures up shared meals with friends or the ‘hospitality industry’, hotels and restaurants – places where people ‘buy hospitality’. This latter picture is perhaps as far as you can get from the original meaning of hospitality. Hospitality is about our relationship with God and calls us to welcome and care for ‘those who are strangers, enemies, or distressed, without regard for reciprocation’.
In the last twelve months, Brexit has come to dominate our public, and often our private, discourse. With polarising rhetoric and binary choice between ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ it has left fault lines running through communities across the UK. George Dunn, CEO of the Tenant Farmers Association, considers how churches might respond.
People and the DALES is an award-winning outreach project delivered by local charity Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust (YDMT) which enables people from disadvantaged backgrounds to visit the Yorkshire Dales for health and well-being. One group leader working with refugees and asylum seekers in Blackburn and Darwen said:
‘Doctors should prescribe a dose of the countryside instead of anti-depressants, as being in the great outdoors is so good for people.’
‘What would you say to setting up a residential community of 20s-30s in Charlecote’s vicarage?’
Two years ago this was the question Coventry Diocese’s Archdeacon Missioner posed to me. I was half-way through ordination training and the question was completely unexpected. My response was, ‘Are you setting me up for a fall?!’
Having a parent who is a minister means I have grown up in and around churches for most of my life. I have been using a wheelchair for 12 years so thought I would share some of my observations. Obviously there are listed buildings which have limitations on what adaptions can be made but there are still things that can be done to help wheelchair users feel more comfortable visiting your building.
My father-in-law, an Ulsterman, was an enthusiast collector of books by AG Street. His collection of Street’s books now sits on my book shelves, and adds a bit of variety to the bible commentaries. AG Street was a Wiltshire born farmer who lived through the years of the depression in the 1930s, and found that he was able to supplement his meagre income by turning his hand to writing, and later broadcasting.
What if the church were to see itself as a guest rather than a host?
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