By Revd Dr Susan Salt

At first glance the account of Nehemiah rebuilding the city walls of Jerusalem appears to have little in common with rural ministry in the twenty-first century.

However, biblical historian Lena-Sofia Tiemayer has suggested that by the second half of the sixth century, the city’s population were scattered throughout the countryside surviving on subsistence agriculture.

Many Jerusalemites had endured occupation, famine, and outbreaks of disease. Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Senior Lecturer of Hebrew Bible at Tel Aviv University, has said: “Land orientation underlies the entire process of intergroup negotiations among the three Judean groups: the exiles, the repatriates, and those who remained.”

A not dissimilar situation faces many modern rural communities, balancing the need for housing, agriculture, the need for sustainable use of land and tourism.

Nehemiah was trying to rebuild a scattered community at a time when there was considerable tension between the returning exiles and those who remained. Old Testament scholar David M. Carr points out that those who returned had a shared “communal near-death experience of diaspora living” making them distinct from the poor of the land who had remained. He goes on to say, “before exile they had been marked as special by high positions, by genealogy, and often literacy”. Now these formerly elite exiles “felt that their nation’s downfall and decades of exile had been caused by the failure of past generations to achieve the kind of purity they had come to value during exile.”

Nehemiah rebuilt a wall to create an exclusive enclave for those willing to accept the Torah and its teachings as a key part of their faith, and as a guide to the way the community should conduct itself from then on.

There is a sense of similar, if less clear cut, expectations placed on those moving into some rural communities. Many such communities have a strong sense of identity based on geographical location and genealogy, particularly around farming and land-owning families. Those core members of a community may struggle with the categorisation of insiders and outsider and how to define what is required to be considered a ‘member of that community.’  When that sense of identity is under threat, for example because of expansion in new-build houses, then it is relatively easy to see how inclusive groups form networks to maintain their exclusive claim on the place they live and the values they perceive are important to the life of the village.

Contemporary rural ministry has a key role in reconciling the ongoing tension around identity by considering people’s desire to protect the identity of their community, whilst discouraging the creation of walls that exclude those who call the community their home but are not considered an ‘insider.’ Rural ministers need to find ways of encompassing those who live within the community but hold different or even opposing views to those of the ‘insiders.’

Part of the solution, which is also one that Nehemiah used, is recognising the differing circles of engagement, and belonging. Unlike Nehemiah where those circles involved family and occupational links, in a modern rural community is more likely to come from community groups such as the village hall committee, school or the walking group.

Finding ways to inhabit and build bridges requires a ministerial presence beyond the walls of their place of worship and an ability to build connections.

By Catherine Butcher, HOPE Together

During 2021 Christians all over the UK have been using the Oikos prayer app to track where they have walked and prayed for their communities. The app was developed in the USA and was launched in the UK by Hope for Every Home as part of their Prayer Walk 21 challenge.

The Oikos Outreach App allows you to tag where you have prayed, cared and shared the love of Jesus with people in your street, road, lane… it starts wherever you are. The tags are saved on the app. You can see where you have been and where others have prayed, cared and shared too.

As the year-long Prayer Walk 21 challenge comes to an end, Sammy Jordan, project leader for Hope for Every Home, said: ‘It’s not too late to become part of a movement trying to reach the whole nation for Jesus street by street, home by home… to the last home. Don’t worry if you’ve never prayer-walked before. There are many ways to do it and you can find your own. Think of it as praying whilst you walk…but it’s a good idea to keep your eyes open!

“You might want to pray for particular things you see on your walk – people and places. You might want to ask God to help you notice things as you walk and pray about them.”

In the run-up to Christmas 2021 you could also use the app to track where you have delivered HOPE magazines with invitations to your in-person and online church events during the festive season.

“Do what the Lord is telling you to do, and trust that he’ll bring fruit from the seed you’ve planted!” That’s the simple but beautiful attitude to mission from David Morgan, an 80-year-old from the village of Cookhill in Worcestershire.

Alongside fellow members of the congregation at Cookhill Baptist Church, in partnership with local Anglicans, David has been finding creative ways to reach out to the people in their village. “The big challenge is to bridge the gap between practical activity and the spiritual message underlying it,’ said David. ‘And how to communicate with folk around us, which are mainly those we meet on daily dog-walks!”

One way in which Cookhill Baptist Church has shared the good news with their village has been through the distribution of HOPE’s magazines. They gave away 1,000 copies at Christmas 2020, as a way of the church maintaining its focus on looking outwards into the community.

David has found that giving out the magazines is most effective when it’s done face-to-face. He described how he always tries to identify an article that he knows will connect with someone’s particular interests. For example, the church organised some Easter-themed activities for local families and used that as a chance to pass out copies of the 2021 undated edition of HOPE for All. David is hoping and praying that God will use them to touch hearts in his community.

The HOPE magazines are published by Hope for Every Home in partnership with HOPE Together. Copies of the latest magazine are available from the HOPE shop – www.hopetogether.org.uk/shop. There are also resources for children and toddlers, as well as video courses and other resources.

By Revd Dr Stephen Skuce, Methodist Church in Ireland Northwestern District Superintendent

What does reconciliation look like in a rural community that has been attacked for simply being the people we are?  The answer is ‘complicated’.

The Northwestern district of the Methodist Church in Ireland includes the full border between the two jurisdictions, with about a quarter of our district in the Republic of Ireland.  Most of the northern churches are fairly close to the border.

You will know perhaps of the Enniskillen Remembrance Day bomb, and the Omagh bombing. Both included our members among the dead and injured. The Warrenpoint attack in which 18 soldiers died is at one side of our district and on the western edge of the district, Lord Mountbatten and three others were murdered. Dozens of our members have been killed and countless others attacked, threatened and so on. The memorial tablets in our border churches sometimes refer to 1914-18 or 1939-45, but all too often refer to those of us murdered far more recently.

That was then, but still also now. The long shadow of our history still affects us. Brexit and its clear implications significantly jeopardise peace. We want to move on, but Brexit pulls us back.

I currently live in Strabane/Lifford. The two parts of the town are separated by a river that is also an international border. Brexit has made that border harder again.

It’s hard to focus on reconciliation when you live near the border and experience systematic attacks over generations.  We are far from claiming a monopoly of suffering. That is sadly a widely shared experience but is sharpened in rural areas where we know each other. We work with each other. We farm alongside each other, lend each other equipment and buy our livestock from each other.

We may be educated separately, largely socialise separately and follow some different sports, but we are neighbours.  So, when we have been attacked, it was by those who live close by. We live beside neighbours who somehow saw nothing and knew nothing about an attack. These aren’t distant wars. This is over the hedge. Reconciliation is a decades long struggle.

Methodists have been outstanding in the search for peace. The work and price paid by Gordon Wilson after his injury and death of Marie, his daughter, in the Enniskillen bombing is perhaps well known. A Methodist minister, Harold Good, was one of two witnesses to the IRA’s decommissioning of their weapons and the UVF announced their ceasefire in a Belfast Methodist church.

We’re trying our best. On the same day as the Enniskillen bombing the border village of Pettigo/Tullyhommon was also targeted by a bomb aimed at the children gathering for the Remembrance Day parade at the Methodist church. That bomb failed to go off but the legacy of the attempted attack on the Protestant children of that community, all part of a systematic ethnic cleansing campaign, is hard. But today we enjoy a shared community building in the Methodist Church that is used by all.

The price of peace is very high.  We have been required to let murderers walk free.  We have to stop searching for justice and accept government from those who targeted us. We are willing to pay that price because we are Christian people of hope and a future.  It will get better, although it’s not guaranteed. But it’s even harder to overcome barriers when you live on the border.

By Lord Curry of Kirkharle, Crossbench peer and former chair of NFU Mutual

What a problem it was deciding where to go on holiday this year. ‘Let’s go to Portugal or Iceland because they are on the green list. Oh dear, they have now been changed to amber so we have to quarantine when we return! Why don’t we find a staycation somewhere in the UK instead?’

A staycation! We used to search for a B&B, or a cottage, or a campsite, or a nice little hotel in the Lake District or Devon, but now it’s a staycation – whatever that is! Isn’t it remarkable how new words and phrases become embedded in our vocabulary.

This has been a particular feature of the pandemic. We now talk very glibly about ‘self-isolation’ and ‘social distancing’, phrases never used until 2020. How heartbreaking it has been for so many families when loved ones have died in a care home or a hospital bed, alone. Another distressing aspect has been coping with separation. Separation from family and friends, and worst of all, unable to enjoy much needed hugs.

‘Levelling up’ is another new phrase and is now an important Government policy, but it is a complex issue given the North – South divide and the Government’s efforts concentrated on the, so called, ‘red wall’ parliamentary constituencies.
Sadly, similar divisions exists between rural and urban so if you live in the rural north, as I do, we have a double ‘levelling up’ whammy to be addressed.

I was a member of the House of Lords’ Rural Economy Committee whose report in 2020 included the need to ‘rural proof’ Government policies to ensure they consider rural communities. Government accepted this, but rejected the recommendation to produce a ‘rural strategy.’ Too often in the past policies have been drafted by those who live in cities with no knowledge of the countryside and those who live in it.

Lots of new bills are progressing through Parliament, having left the EU, such as the Agriculture Bill, the Trade Bill, the Environment Bill and the Skills Bill. All will impact the countryside, in particular the way farming will be encouraged to deliver ‘public goods’ through the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, replacing direct support farmers have received since 1947. It is essential that family farms are given sound advice on how to benefit from this change to survive and, hopefully, prosper.

Many people living in the countryside felt ‘socially distanced’ from their urban cousins long before Covid so the challenge is not new! Indeed, there are lots of biblical examples of social divisions – rich and poor, Jew and Gentile. In the story Jesus told of the Good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10, ‘the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans’ but that social gap was resolved in that instance by a ‘good’ and generous person who cared. Stating we care about rural issues and recognising the concerns about ‘levelling up’, about ‘social isolation’ has to be demonstrated by action on ‘rural proofing’ to ensure rural communities and rural business do enjoy ‘shared prosperity’.

Jesus set the perfect example, of course, through His humility and loving care, and ultimately through His reconciling sacrifice. He gave His disciples and us the personal instruction to ‘follow me.’

From rift to reconciliation: occasions to come together

Dr Anne Richards

National Adviser: Mission and Public Affairs, Church of England

What’s the difference between God and a wedding planner? Well, I was recently at a meeting with a wedding planner who was talking to two young people about the arrangements for their wedding reception. As they pored over a possible seating plan, she enquired, quite discreetly, whether there were any guests who should be kept apart.

I was interested in this, because I have been at funerals where social workers and even police have been on hand in the expectation of trouble, but when I talked to the wedding planner, she said there had been not a few, but many occasions, where, fuelled by alcohol and emotion, tempers fray and family rifts flare out, spoiling the event and causing tears for everyone. Now, the planners ask beforehand to try and iron out potential confrontations and difficulties by seating people who are known to be unhappy with each other out of their direct eyelines and putting distance between difficult relationships.

We think about the occasional offices as events which celebrate and mourn the big moments in people’s lives. We rejoice when a person, child or adult, is received into the Christian church through baptism. We are filled with the feeling of new beginning and hopeful future when two people are joined before God in holy matrimony and we weep and give thanks at the closure of a person’s life as we commend them to God at a funeral.

In rural places, these events are often the bedrock of a village or town’s engagement of the church in relation to the community. I have been at events where every person in the village has turned out to celebrate a marriage or stood outside in the rain to mourn a long-known person at their funeral. Such events can draw churchgoers and non-churchgoers together and cement a feeling of social solidarity radiating outwards from the church. But the other side of it is also there. Occasional offices can be places where family history and rifts going back generations can flare up. Some of those things can be family breakdowns and separations, and friends who land on one side or the other of the division. Sometimes it’s jealousies and competitiveness or lost loves that burst outwards in the face of others’ happiness. Sometimes it’s just an inability to hold back emotion or resentment, or a life of poverty or pain that makes someone start something that escalates.

Talking to a rural vicar just recently, he mused that the worst fight that ever broke out in church was over a disputed decision in a cricket match on the village green two years previously. All kinds of things from huge trauma to the completely trivial can become rivers of resentment carving canyons of bitterness etched into long memories. So ministry which offers the space and time to express joy and wonder before God also has to consider an underbelly of negative emotions which can be simmering away and which themselves need addressing.

How then, can the occasional offices of the rural church be occasions for joy, for mission, but also for healing, for reconciliation?

In Unreconciled? a book I wrote with my friends and colleagues in the Mission Theology Advisory Group, we looked closely at the sort of rifts and unhealed divisions which perpetuate in the Church but which are rarely, if ever, really addressed in Christian reconciliation.

One of the things we noted was that reconciliation is not just about patching things up, papering over the cracks, or even getting relationships on to an even keel. It is about more than mending, but the creation of something new in which everyone concerned can now flourish as God intends us to flourish. That place of mutual flourishing which is such a powerful witness to God working among us, is the place we need to get to.

So suppose we think of every baptism, wedding or funeral, as a place where brokenness and pain can be laid to rest and then transmuted into new peace, freedom and joy. It’s all very well saying it like that, but nothing in that process is automatic; it takes real preparatory work, careful pastoral care, sensitivity to the performative nature of liturgy, its spaces for acknowledging falling short and occasions for forgiveness, and the creation of room for the Holy Spirit to work in the hearts of all who attend.

As we emerge out of the pandemic, we are obliged now to think of the further damage that lockdowns and isolation have inflicted on people. There has been trauma, increased family tensions where people have had to spend time struggling with work and school at home, occasions of fragile mental health, bereavements, separations, guilts and fears.

People have fallen out about whether churches have been open or shut, whether the vicar phoned enough, whether their Christian neighbours helped enough or not. All kinds of issues now lie behind attendance at Church and these need a place and time to be addressed. And so we are now faced with a complex task, but also an opportunity. What skills in reconciliation, restoration, forgiveness and assurance in the faithfulness and steadfastness of God, do we now need in order to create something new? How do we make the things the rural church is often so best at, in creating and sustaining community, the basis of real reconciliation for people which leads us all from pain to peace and joy?

What is the difference between God and the wedding planner? Psalm 23 says that God restores our failing lives and that God comforts even when we walk in the darkest valley, the valley of the shadow of death. But more to the point, the psalm ends with a table being set in the presence of the psalmist’s enemies. And there, the cup overflows in safety and security where all can flourish. It is enmity that the wedding planner hopes to mitigate; with God, enmity means nothing in the face of God’s overwhelming, forgiving love. Let’s choose God’s way.