Rector's Letter for July

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

What has caught your attention? COVID-19? Black Lives Matter? The easing of Lockdown? The car-crash of the economy? Maybe none of these. Despite the constant narrow-casting of just a few news items, maybe your attention has been focussed closer to home; how your family has coped, the longing for a hug, a touch, a reminder of basic, earthy humanity? We are, after all, whole human beings, not just cyphers for a select, repetitious cycle of news.

For myself, although those key news items have held my attention, my prayers and my concern, as a priest, has been on another layer of concern these past weeks. Let me share it with you. Read More…

Rector's Letter for March

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

“Australia is on fire” shouted the headlines. And, for once, the picture images and the maps and the messages from family who live down under, concurred. Storm Ciara hit the UK and flooding (again) impacted Bury, among other places. Water temperature under the icecaps is rising, the caps themselves are shrinking. Something is happening on a global scale.

The Pope wrote an encyclical, a formal letter, to the church in 2015. It was called “Laudato si’”, the subtitle of which was “care for our common home”. Read More…

Rector's Letter for February

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

The phrase 2020 Vision is often used to describe what it is like to see perfectly. Those who know about eyes would say that this is not precisely the case. For the rest of us, it is a shorthand phrase that we use, either about sight or, more commonly, about insight, about how we perceive the world and the issues that lie before us. To have 2020 vision is to know what is happening and what will happen. And, at that point, we realise that none of us have that gift.

So, welcome to 2020. Welcome to a world where we sense that we do not know, with confidence, what the future will bring. Cultural observers have noted that the confidence that was around in the mid-1990s (‘Things can only get better’ was the song, if you recall, of New Labour), has evaporated. It has been replaced by hesitancy, distrust and unashamed flagrant lying. We are not in a good place.

What has the Christian faith to offer? What has it to offer to us, as individuals, as a Church and to our wider society?

Those who closely observe Jesus in the bible are clear that he did not know what the exact outline of his life would be. What they say is that Jesus was clear that his deep awareness of God as Father would not bring an easy life. It would bring tension, confrontation and conflict. What we read, when we open the bible, is the impact on others who were attracted to Jesus. There are two basic reactions.

Some found following Jesus too hard and bailed out. Yes, Judas but if you read the bible you may wonder where the 5,000, the 4,000, those healed, those touched, those who listened to the sermon on the Mount, went. They appear to have evaporated. Looking around the Church today, we may recognise this story all too well.

Some tried following Jesus, made a mess and tried again. Think Peter. Think all the other disciples. Even the women who popped up at the Resurrection, in Mark’s gospel, ran away afraid. It’s the trying again that is the point. You are reading this because they tried again. They stuck to the programme. So did you. So, one of the clues, for us as individuals, is the trick of simply turning up. The word in the bible for this is “Faithful”. It’s a good word. Perhaps a 2020 Word?

What about the Church? We rightly talk of ‘Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever’ (Hebrews 13.8). Our vocation is to hand on the Good News of God’s love. Our faithfulness as a Church, witnessing here in Bury, lies here. To come to Christ is to have your life transformed. To come to Christ is to become an agent of transformation in the world for his sake. And to “be Christ”, to live his life, is to stand up for those things for which Jesus stood; justice, equality, dignity, truth, peace, hope, reconciliation, often in the face of those who wished he would simply be quiet. A quiet Church is one that is not taking Jesus seriously.

And do we have anything to say to the world? Faith has been pushed to the margins of public discourse. ‘You have your beliefs and I have mine’ is a common mantra. This will not do. The values of the Christian faith, seen in that list above, should be the criteria we use to assess our world, our leaders, their statements and decisions. The values of our faith should drive us into conversations in our homes, places of work, pubs and gyms, into our town hall. We should be talking about education, social care, the justice system, health and well-being. The bible talks about the people of faith being like salt, yeast and light in the world. There is our mandate.

2020 Vision? Not clarity for the future but confidence in the presence of God who, when we pay attention, reveals himself in the disciplines of the faith.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for December

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

Advent Calendars. I hope you have yours if you are an Advent Calendar person. There is something rather special about opening those doors, seeing what images appear. For a number of years. we had a calendar which invited us to read about examples of Christian witness and gave us a short prayer to say. Sitting around the meal table when we did this was rather special and more to do with God and less to do with chocolate. We mark Advent, now, by abstaining from eating meat. I can commend this. It makes you think about the season at every meal.

Advent is the gift of waiting on God. We generally are poor at waiting. And waiting for Christmas is particularly difficult. Just as children find it difficult to wait for Christmas, so adults in church want those carols now and get grumpy when we roll up to Church and are offered Advent hymns/carols instead. We are blessed to have an Advent Carol Service on 1 December. Before rushing on to what we might think of as the ‘main event’, come along and enter this season with its own richness of music and scripture.

That said, we are going to try something a little different this year with the Nativity. Instead of having it on the Sunday before Christmas, we are holding it on Parade Sunday (8 December). We want to offer something when the maximum number of younger families will be present. We will also be receiving toys which will be distributed by the Salvation Army. Do please bring something. Unwrapped, please. We hope that you will come and support this venture.

Last year we had our first Christmas Tree Festival. We asked groups within our Church community to decorate a tree and we enhanced our church with these. We are doing the same, only larger. We have invited local companies to bring a tree into church and we have asked them to donate a small sum to a homeless charity here in Bury. We hope, over time, to make this a significant part of our seasonal fund-raising and use this as an opportunity to welcome people into Church. As I write, an invitation has gone out to the Mayor of Bury to open the Festival on 10 December at about 6 pm. Our own Christmas Tree is arriving on Saturday 7 December. If you are able to flex a muscle and help us bring the tree into Church and manoeuvre it into position, we will be gathering on a Saturday morning. Closer to the time we will know the time we need to be in position. Do ask! Many hands and all that.

For many people outside the worshipping community, the Christmas Carol Service is one of those occasions when stepping inside Church is seen as safe. Our Christmas Carol Service is on 22 December at 6.30 pm and will be followed by mulled wine and mince pies. We encourage you to extend an invitation to family and friends to come and join us on this occasion. This is Church at its most accessible. Research tells us that people really like to be invited (and offered lifts!). We have little cards that we can give you to pass onto friends with the highlight services across the season. Do take and do give to those in your circle of friends. Your invitation might be just the gift that they need this Christmas.

We welcome lots of people to our Christingle on Christmas Eve. This service is at 3.30 pm. We need help in putting the Christingles together. Over the last couple of years, we have had a great team of volunteers gathering on 23 December in the Ashton Room. If you are able to join us, we will be in a creative mood at 9.00 am that morning. Previous occasions suggest that it will be all done by 11.00 am – lots of time to go and do that last-minute shopping, if that is your thing.

We have a tremendous cycle of services right at the start of the Christmas Season. Our Midnight Mass starts at 11.30 pm on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day itself we have a quiet 8.00 am Prayer Book Communion and will sing our hearts out at 10.00 am Sung Eucharist. The following days, St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day) there will be a communion as there will be on St John’s Day (27 December) both at 10 am. Access will be through the Choir Vestry.

Note that these services are the start of the Christmas Season. That season, as the song says, has twelve days. If you receive our e-bulletin (and you can always ask via the Rector to have an e-bulletin) we invite you to search the internet for resources with the hashtag #FollowTheStar. We are each encouraged not to stop our observance of Christmas just because we have reached Christmas Day but rather to start our observance of twelve days closely following Jesus.

On the First Sunday of Christmas (29 December), there will be open house at the Rectory from when coffee finishes to 4 pm. Jackie and I invite you to drop in and spend time chatting to whoever is present. There will be nibbles and refreshment.

One of our key concerns is reaching out to those families whose children we have had the privilege of baptising. We are going to invite them to our Parade Service on 12 January when the Church celebrates the Baptism of Christ. The service will have all the usual elements to our Parade service with the addition of blending in some of the habits we are learning at Story-Telling Church. Your support, as regular members of the congregation, is really important. Let’s welcome those who come with the love of Christ.

As the new calendar year begins, so we step into a new era in the Diocese. There is a consultation on the Diocesan Vision at All Saints, Brandlesholme on the evening of 8 January. If you want to know what that’s about and contribute to the thinking, that is the occasion to attend.

So much going on. And sometimes, in all that, we can forget God, forget the reason why we gather, why we do all we do at Church. If you look elsewhere in this edition of the magazine, you will find a few electronic tools we are offering. But for those who like their time with God in “old school” ways, here’s a simple idea. As Christmas Cards arrive, take one or two to that place where you say your prayers. Hold them. Remember who sent them. Give thanks for that friendship over the years. And ask for the grace that you, like Mary, may carry Jesus into the world. No need to be sophisticated or complicated. Be a channel of love and hope, as Mary is for us. If you want more, then read Matthew’s Gospel. That will be the main source of our Gospel Readings this year from Advent to Christ the King. It’s long. So perhaps start at Matthew 5, which is the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. Read that. Slowly. There will be plenty for the most spiritually hungry person to chew on for many weeks.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for November

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

Are you affected by SAD (Seasonally affected disorder)? Do the darker nights, the shorter days, play with your heart? Many people are. We seem to squeeze all sorts of things into the daylight hours and hunker down at night. The bible has lots to say about light and dark. The straightforward message seems to be that light is good and dark is, well, dark. Darkness seems to play into a sense of the absence of God. In the darkness, sin, death and the powers of Evil stalk us, apparently.

So, let me suggest some ways in which, in the dark evenings, we may challenge this narrative in our hearts and minds.

Light a candle. I know, old fashioned, superseded by electricity and, should you want to go down that line, a health and safety nightmare. But there is something immensely powerful about a flickering flame, dancing shadows and a sense of presence. Sitting quietly in a room with a flame burning, listening to some beautiful music (whatever that may be for you), having a visual reminder that light overcomes darkness, that God is and is present, may turn a nightly fear of fading light into a daily period of quiet joy.

Compline. Not Complan. That’s food for the body. Compline is food for the soul. It is the short service of Night Prayer, said before retiring to bed (or said in bed, for those who say their prayers there). It’s available in a variety of ways, in paper form (see House on the Rock books if you would like to pursue this), as podcasts, on the internet, on the phone. Short psalms and readings, brief prayers and that sense that we are handing over ourselves to God.

Intercession. When we pray, one of the things we are doing is joining in with a whole worldwide stream of prayers. To slowly go through our list of family and friends, to hold them before God, is to become aware that we are doing so with countless other people. Suddenly, we are not alone. Our quiet voice joins theirs.

Learn a prayer. One of my favourite night-time prayers was written by St Augustine. It goes like this;

Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ.
Rest your weary ones.
Bless your dying ones.
Soothe your suffering ones.
Pity your afflicted ones.
Shield your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

I love it because it keys into the fact that, at night, those who are sick and those who are caring for them, can feel enormously isolated and those who spend so many of their night hours looking up at the ceiling can feel so burdened and lonely. It is a prayer for them. It puts my issues, whatever they are, into some sort of perspective.

And why this theme of prayer this November? Simply because the Church invites us to focus on saints in November and invites us to think about our place as counted among their number. God calls us to be beacons of light and hope and joy in this world, to be bearers of resistance against all those narratives of decay and despair. And to do that, we ourselves need to be in touch with him.

There is much going on, in daylight and in the hours of darkness. Have a flick through this edition of the magazine. Be tempted out to come to something that is not a usual part of your life. But don’t miss out on the opportunity the darker nights give you to reacquaint yourself with the Lord and with your inner life.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Welcoming Hannah Lane to the ministry at Bury Parish Church

My name is Hannah and I am from Westhoughton, where I have lived for most of my life apart from when I was away studying at University in Keele. I live with my husband, Dean and our Sealyham Terrier, Oscar. Up until the beginning of September I was a teacher. I initially trained as a Science teacher. Following 2 years in a big mainstream school in Manchester, moved to Rumworth Special School in Bolton. I spent most of my teaching career there until I left to take up my place on the course I am now on. In my spare time I am a Brown Owl and I play tuba in Astley Youth Band.

I have always had a faith, I have grown up in the church and I find it impossible to separate my faith from who I am. I started exploring a call to public ministry in 2014. I initially put myself forward for Reader Ministry but quickly realised that I didn’t feel like it was the right thing to be doing. As I discussed this more with Vocations Advisors it became apparent that I should look deeper into ordained ministry training. I followed this through to an interview at a Bishop’s Advisory Panel earlier this year where I was recommended for training.

And so, I find myself placed here at Bury Parish Church and St Pauls. I have weekly college days at St Mellitus College which is based at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and my time as part of the worshipping community in Bury forms my '“on the job” training. I am delighted to be here, and I would like to thank you for a wonderful welcome. I look forward to getting to know you all, finding out about your faith and the good news shared here in Bury.

Rector's Letter for October

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Among the various articles in this month’s edition of the Magazine, you will find one by Hannah Lane. Hannah is an ordinand, a candidate for the priesthood. The way we train people for anything changes over time. Apprentices used to spend seven years watching and slowly doing whatever trade they were learning. Now they go off to work and have day release woven into their contract. Teachers used to learn their subject, go to teacher training college and then hit the classroom. Now, one option is to plunge straight into work once their subject studies have been completed. When I was training for the priesthood, the usual route was to drink deeply from the tradition in two/three years residential formation; some folks were trained, as indeed Sheila Beattie was, by evening, weekend and weekly study periods. Now there is a new kid on the block (actually an 11 year old kid); St Mellitus.

Now, as you all know, St Mellitus was the first Bishop of London (d 624 AD) and the theological college which takes his name was founded for ordinands in London and Chelmsford Dioceses. There are a number of St Mellitus centres, the North West one being in the grounds of Liverpool Cathedral. The training route is different from previous approaches. Students receive teaching a day a week. They study two days a week at home. And they then spend the rest of their time (barring a rest day), in the parlance of the training, Sunday + two days on placement;. And Hannah has come here on placement.

What does this mean? It means, above all, that Hannah is here to learn. She is not the “finished article” (I’m pretty sure that none of us are that). Whereas Sheila took up her role among us as one who had been through training, Hannah is learning; learning about the tradition, the faith, through study and writing and thinking and praying; learning about the practice of ministry and priesthood, through watching, and trying and asking.

Which is where you, dear reader, come in. If you’ve done the maths, you will have spotted that half Hannah’s training is with us. We have the task of helping shape and form Hannah, to share with her the hopes and expectations we hold as to what a clergy person should be like, what we expect from them, need from them, would like from them. Hannah will learn as you share with her those ideas that float around in your head. In other words, you are key to her growth and development. Crudely put, the vicars we get in the future will be the vicars we deserve because they will be the vicars we ourselves have created. It’s quite a thought. No pressure, then.

So, can I ask you to make yourself known to Hannah? Make her feel welcome. She is the guest, we the host. Our task is to approach, to begin the conversation, to talk, to invite her into our spaces, our homes, to help her understand why this faith community means what it means to us. Having Hannah around will challenge us to think about why we come here. We will need to learn to put those thoughts into words.

Hannah and I will be meeting regularly as part of her training. I look forward to hearing her experience of life among us. Her days around Bury will be Wednesdays and Fridays.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for September

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

September. The month when, whatever age we are, there is a sense of “Back to School” after a long break.

New shoes, new blazer, new shirt. And, as you will read in this edition of the Magazine, lots of new initiatives. I was reading an article from the Bury Times in the Bury Archives written by the Bishop of Manchester (The Rt Revd Patrick Rodger) who installed Canon Smith back in 1966. In it he wrote about the vital importance of town centre churches being places of lively Christian witness and recognising, even then, that the culture was changing and that places like our own parish, which have few residents, have the potential to become more like museums to the past than flourishing Christian communities serving the present and contributing to the future of our town.

Our initiatives are all around who we seek to share the Gospel in this generation. From encouraging us not to drift from Sunday worship straight home, but to get to know each other, to seeking to tell bible stories to infants and their families; from encouraging locals to come in and explore our amazing church to offering space to remember loved ones, we are grateful to all those who generously are enabling us to continue in that ministry and mission to which the Lord calls us. Do read, pray and, where possible, offer your gifts of time and creativity.

The Diocese is not standing still, either. Manchester Diocese is in a challenging place at the moment; financially we are struggling; fabric-wise, many of our buildings are showing their age; numerically, like churches across the western world, we are discovering that the things of faith are edged out by our increasingly self-absorbed world. Each of us will have stories of family members, brought up in church, who no longer attend.

One of the things the Diocese is doing is looking at its patterns of work. It has made redundancies in Church House. It is looking to see what areas of life are essential. And, in this, it is looking at the strategic shape of the Church. Presently, for instance, we are part of Bury Deanery, one of nineteen deaneries across the Diocese (a deanery is a group of churches that work together, pray and think together). In the future, this will change. Consultations are taking place. It is a reminder that nothing is fixed. Remaining the same in this quickly changing world leaves any organisation as an irrelevance.

Part of our evolution here is the addition of three members of the Ministry Team. Dawn Wight, Jackie Heaton and John Vale are to become Authorised Lay Ministers on 22 September. The service, during which they will be authorised by the Bishop, will be in the Cathedral. We will hear more about their work and responsibilities in future editions of this Magazine. Please pray for them.

The Church of England is part of the Anglican Communion. And the Anglican Communion has committed us to play our part in the “Five Marks of Mission”. This is something that we don’t talk about very much. We tend to think that we have “done church” if we offer worship and read the bible. The Five Marks push us to think in much wider terms about what it means to be a Christian Community. Look them up if you want to know more. I want to ask you to think about the Fifth Mark of Mission. It says this; ‘To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth”. So, here’s a question for all of us to think about; how can we do that? How can I do anything to contribute to the “integrity of creation”? There are things we can do at home; where do we get our energy from? How many miles do we have to travel? Do I really need this food/these clothes/this item?

Banksy’s art is prophetic. It makes us think about our own place in the life of the world and whether we, too, are motivated by the values that shape us (Gospel values, I hope) to play our part in tackling the earth’s situation. Sometimes, in the bible, God uses those beyond the circle of faith to teach those who claim faith something about what it means to live. Perhaps Banksy is one of those people?

Have a great September.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for August

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

The Revd Dr Sheila Beattie was ordained priest on 22nd June and presided at the Eucharist for the first time on 23rd June. If we have been going to church for a bit, we can forget what this means (other than someone else will take the service) and if we are new to church, the nuance of what a priest is (as opposed to the generality of someone in a clerical collar). So, I thought I would share with you an edited version of the sermon preached on the occasion of Sheila’s first Eucharist.

Yesterday, Sheila was ordained Priest. Sometime priestly ministry is described as ABC Ministry. Sheila is to call us to repentance and to declare in Christ’s name the absolution and forgiveness of their sins. That’s the A bit. Absolve. She is to bless the people in God’s name; that’s the B bit. Bless. And she is to preside at the Lord’s table; that’s the C bit. Consecrate.

When we read the New Testament, what we begin to see, once we get over its strangeness, is how those early followers of Jesus tried to organise their lives together. We read about what they decided they could eat, how to deal with arguments, debated issues of money, health, behaviour, sex, gender, failure, hope, the future and a whole bunch of topics.

And one of those topics was; who could make those decisions in the first place? So, we read about various sorts of ministries (preachers, teachers, prophets), hear about various specifically named people (Peter, James, John, Mark, Titus, Timothy, Barnabas), listen in to major regional meetings, learn about key people, often women, with houses big enough to host the church. And then the New Testament stops.

And, as the New Testament stops, so the history of Church, the ekklesia, the gathering, continues. Christian history is full of writing; writing about Jesus, about God, about Church, prayer, ethics, pastoral care. The question of how church should organise itself, a question going all the way back to Paul’s letters, was also hammered out.

Bishops (‘people with oversight’ is what the word means) appear to take charge of Christians firstly in cities, then across a bigger area. With growth comes the need for order; bishops can’t do everything, so they hand out responsibility to others. The writings of the early Church Fathers talk about priests, deacons, sub-deacons, and so on. Over time, the writers clarified their specific function in the life of the Church.

What we are left with, in the Western church, in our heritage within the Anglican Communion, are the threefold structures of Bishop, Priest and Deacon. Sheila, as a Deacon (she’s still a deacon) and as a Priest, is here to make Christ known through the ministry of ABC.

Absolve. I know it’s old school, in these days when people are relaxed about sin, economical with the truth, careless with facts, unprincipled with integrity, but the ministry of absolution, of handling the sacrament of reconciliation, goes hand in glove with a vocation to call us to humility, transparency and goodness. The Church is honest about human frailty and this ministry is part of that.

Sheila, you will notice that this ministry requires you to announce that, in Christ, God has set us free. This is your place in the ecology of the Church; to announce the power of the Cross. It is Good News.

Be bold. This is not about you. It is about God.

Bless. Which means, among other things, to set aside for God; to declare holy; to transmit something of the holiness of God onto other people or things.

Sheila, when you bless us, hear this; that people need to hear that the world is richer, more intoxicating, more resonant with the things of God than we give credit.

To announce God’s presence, his abiding love, joy and delight in creation, is a great ministry. It speaks of a faith that is confident that God is, and that he is desiring to channel his grace into the world. You, for all your humanity, are one of those gateways through which the Lord will come.

Be bold. Announce this. This is not about you. It is about God.

Consecrate. Sheila, you are about to set apart these tokens of our daily life, the bread and wine, ordinary stuff, and present them to us as divine presents, holy food, real presence.

You will have spotted that Christians have become over-excited about what precisely consecrate means, what happens, who can do it and so on.

You will have spotted that in our parishes, St Mary’s and St Paul’s, we frame this consecration with particular things; vestments, robes, music, gesture, candles, movement, body language, in an attempt to convey meaning beyond the limitation of words.

You will have spotted that we do this, not because there are not enough words or too many words but that words, in the end, fail.

You have spotted that God spotted that he chose to circumvent words and come in person, in a form we can understand, to present himself to us in the Christ child and on the Cross.

Sheila, it is a great ministry to which you have been called, this ministry of consecration. You will be a channel of transforming grace.

Help us. Help us hear the words that the Church has given us. Speak them with passion, and faith and a constant level of utter surprise.

Help those of us who find listening to words much more difficult than watching gestures by boldly enriching our worship with extravagant actions that speak of an extravagant God.

ABC. It makes it sound easy. It’s not. But, like laying the foundations of language with those letters, may you, as you begin your priestly ministry among us, find your route to convey something of the transformative grace of God that comes to us through the Church, through the priestly channels in the life of the Church, through the sacraments of the New Covenant, through you in person, as our priest in these parishes.

Have a conversation with Sheila. Ask her about the day. Ask her about presiding at the Eucharist, about exercising this ABC ministry. And then ask her about her ministry more generally. And, as you do, expect her to ask you about your ministry. As a priest, she has this particular ABC element. She shares with us all the vocation to live the life of the baptised people of God.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for July

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Every so often, I see or hear people talk about their summer reading. It sounds lovely. It sounds as if they have rearranged their commitments and given space and time to sit down to read and think, to enter into a different world and, for a period, zone out. Perhaps you recognise this? Perhaps you put a book/tablet/kindle-type thing in your holiday bag, so you can sit and soak up the sun and read? As I say, it sounds lovely. It is not something, I admit, that I have ever been very good at.

What I like about it is the idea of absorbing other people’s stories, other people’s ideas, insights and vision. For myself, I garner these from books (though not enough) but more often and, personally, more effectively and efficiently, by listening. If you see me with earphones on, it’s because I am absorbed in an audio-world. I recently discovered that Bury Library Service offer spoken books for its members. What joy.

And I like listening to speakers. In late summer, we are off to a Christian Festival centred around the themes of Art, Justice and Faith. For some people, the highlights are to be found in music or dance or worship or theatre or the arts. For me, it’s people talking; activists wrestling with the environment/poverty/justice/migration, authors talking about their novels, theologians exploring the faith, journalists investigating the boundaries of truth.

I go occasionally to hear a speaker. Recently I heard Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, talk about “What does National Identity mean?” Because we live in such fractious times, I thought I would share his ideas with you. You might want to talk with someone else about what he said. You might want to start a conversation.

We are not born with a National Identity. It is something we learn. And we have learned it in different ways over history. Look at Genesis after the flood. We find images of all the nations moving out to cover the earth, all flowing from one family. Different nations but all equal. As history moved on, so the “group” or tribe to which someone belonged began to sense it was special. Think about the Israelites. Or, if you read the oldest history book written about Britain, by Bede, you find the Saxons thought they were pretty amazing.

If those Saxons identified themselves as belonging to a nation (essentially the word means “where I was born”) it was not the most important form of identity. It mattered more who your Lord was, who you paid rent to and (in Britain) that you were a member of the Church. Obligations and connections to people you knew mattered way more than any sense of belonging to a “Nation”.

When Nation States began to appear (Henry VII for us in England), then the need for centralised control of money, ideas and commitment also appeared. The Church of England is a complex thing and one of its drivers is controlling people’s morals (to God) and loyalty (to the crown). This idea lasted until about 1975. Quite recently, in other words. Then things happened. Mainly economic things.

Globalisation. A nation can’t control how money or goods or people move – except through extreme force. Boundaries have dissolved. And we know this because, even if we could erect barriers, global changes, like the environmental changes, technology, health, human aspiration, don’t obey maps. Global changes bewilder those of us brought up with maps on our school walls and those committed to the idea that we can choose things just for our own nation.

One reaction to all this has been to try and define “our nation”. Nations with many different ethnic groups (think Spain and the Basque Region or Turkey and Armenia) try and suppress the differences, suppress minority language and culture and faith and traditions. Much violence has flowed from this. Attempts to require nation and state to be the same is a doomed project.

Williams, after diagnosing the problems we face and how we have arrived at them, sketched out possible ways forward. He noted the way China and the USA want to turn the clock back and protect their borders. He noted that global efforts at cooperation (like the United Nations) are not efficient. He warmed to regional patterns of cooperation (like the EU!). And he really warmed to bottom-up movements, citizen assemblies, giving voice to those who feel they are unheard. In this, he noted that we often blame “them”. There needs to be, for each of us, a personal involvement. To do that, to be personally involved, we need to articulate what we think our vision for society should be. And this is where our faith tradition has something to offer the wider society.

We need, he said, to recognise and not be embarrassed by a sense of kinship, of brother/sisterhood. To pretend we belong to the ‘human race’ without also noting that we belong to a sub-set of that, would be nonsense. For me, it is a gift to be a white, northern, British male, for instance.

However, we do belong to the human race; and that means we belong to a wider community where people are different, have different traditions, languages, faith, etc. We need to be confident of our own traditions so that we can contribute to a wider community. To draw on St Paul’s body language (1 Corinthians 12), it is great to be an eye but we need feet and arms too. I am a better person, more whole, more likely to thrive and flourish, when I welcome, work with and appreciate my neighbours who are different to me.

Which brings us back to the “Table of the Nations” in Genesis. We might inhabit different parts of the world but we all can trace our roots back to one source. We forget that at our peril.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for June

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

A friend of mine is a great bird watcher. Maybe you are? Some sit in their gardens and put out nuts and seeds and see what comes in; others put on boots and coats and march off to windy hills and lakes to watch the seasonal birds flock to their temporary resting places. Learning to sit still, to wait, to pay attention, is a great lesson in our urgent world where usually we decide what is going to happen.

I have found myself, increasingly over the years, becoming a “Jesus watcher”. By this, I mean that when I read the gospels, I find myself paying attention to what Jesus is saying, doing, how he is relating to all that is going on around him and how he reacts to people. The more I watch, the more I realise that I have made up much about Jesus, projected my ideas, the ideas of teachers, preachers and Sunday School, onto the man who is there in the writings. It is both sobering and exhilarating. Sobering, because I suspect that I, in turn, have passed on ideas that have no basis. Exhilarating, because it is as if I am meeting Jesus for the first time.

Jesus talks about the Kingdom. That is, he talks about life now, life as it is and life as it could and should be. And he invites his followers (disciples, me, you) to pursue the Kingdom. And he frames this in terms of seeking God, not engineering the world to our own ends by our own power.

Archbishop Justin, the Archbishop of Canterbury, drew on this idea when he and Archbishop John of York created the “Thy Kingdom Come” season, the 11 days from Ascension Day to Pentecost. This season is a season of prayer. They put it this way; Thy Kingdom Come is a global prayer movement that invites Christians around the world to pray for more people to come to know Jesus.

I invite you, then, to join me in a season of “Jesus watching”. Watching as we pray for people we know around Bury (who may even live in our houses!) who have not encountered Jesus, not found a deep awareness of his presence in our world. We shall be offering prayer cards for you to name the people you will be praying for at the end of May. Sometimes we think Mission is not our thing, beyond us or impossible. Here is an invitation to make possible God’s Mission among us.

A key date in the Church’s Calendar is the Feast of Pentecost. This year it falls on 9th June. We are going to make a big thing of this. We are inviting you to our Parish Eucharist at 10am when the congregation will be swelled with our Uniformed Organisations. After the service, there will be a Parish Garden Party and activities in the Rectory Garden. The Scouts are cooking reasonably priced food. I know that the temptation for some is to keep to your usual habits. We invite you to break those habits and make new friends at this party to celebrate the birth of the Church. There is an article about helping at this event on Page 6 of the Parish Magazine.

And then…. in the evening, we have Bishop Mark coming for the confirmation service at 6.30pm. We will be joined by folks from Ainsworth Parish. We have a whole bunch of candidates and it would be utterly fabulous if as many people from the congregation can join them at this service. It is a great reminder to each of you who are baptised and confirmed, of our steps on the journey of faith.

Sunday by Sunday we gather to worship the Lord in the Eucharist. Which suggests that the Eucharist is at the heart of our offering to God. Confirmation is often understood to be the gateway to communion (it’s not but that is a long story). And, in the Church calendar, there is one day when the Church invites us to pause and think about what it means to encounter the Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. That day is Corpus Christi (formally called “Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion), the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. This year it will be 20 June. We will celebrate the Eucharist at 7.30pm. We invite you to come and join the Lay Assistants and those who are “on the altar”.

And finally, 30 June is the Bury Show in Burrs Country Park. Last year, I was delighted to observe the Mothers’ Union out in force, staffing the Lost Children’s tent and ministering to younger families. A wonderful event to round off this very full month.

And…. If you’re wondering about Sheila and her ordination on 22 June…. You will find more in the Parish Magazine.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for May

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

May Day (in this case, 1 May, not the Bank Holiday) triggers all sorts of rather wonderful, earthy, deeply rooted traditions; choirs singing from church roof tops, Morris Dancing, May Queens, Beehive moving. In some Church traditions, May is observed as the Month of Mary. The whole “May Queen” thing is a bit of an echo of that. Mentioning Mary, I have found over the years, triggers all sorts of reactions about church attendees. Some find great encouragement in the person of Mary; her “yes” to God’s invitation to make space for his purposes in her life, her care of Jesus, our willingness to learn from her son and, at the Cross, Jesus’ returning of all that affection by making provision for her. Others find any talk about Mary rubbing up against half-understood, barely articulated but deeply ingrained prejudice, as if, somehow, Mary is a paid-up member of the “other lot”.

Being Rector of a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary for the first time, and being interested in these sorts of reactions, one of the things I did on arrival is to look to see how our church’s architects and craftsman responded to the invitation to create a Christian worship space dedicated to her. Here’s what I think I find. I think

I find that the artists who wove their skills into building our church found Mary utterly fascinating and present her, in the grandeur of our place of worship, as the channel through which we, mere humans, can approach the Lord. At the high Altar and in the South Chapel, at the visual centre of the Altar pieces, we find Mary holding Jesus. It is as if she is saying; come here and meet my Son.

How do you feel about this? Where is Mary in your spirituality? If it helps, this is approximately where I find her to be in my spiritual life. Mary sets before me an example; an example of prayer and openness to God’s will and learning from the things Jesus taught her. And an example of evangelism, of pointing others to Jesus, just as she did at the Wedding Feast. And an example of compassion, of staying with those in pain and sorrow, just as Mary stayed and watched her son die. Do I pray to Mary? I do, sort of. I ask for her prayers (‘pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death’ as the Hail Mary puts it) in the same way that I ask for your prayers and the prayers of the saints. Christian spirituality is a corporate thing; it’s ‘us and the Lord’, never ‘me and the Lord’. The New Testament is written with verbs in the plural, not singular and the New Testament tells me that nothing, not even death, separates us from the love of God – which is why it makes utter sense to ask the saints to pray with us and for us. On Saturday 4th May I am going to a Shrine of Mary outside Preston with a group of fellow priests. If anyone fancies joining me (I’ve not been there before), do ask.

We held our Annual General Meeting and our Annual Parochial Church Meeting on 7 April. We elected Pat Webber and Eric Duckworth as our Wardens. I cannot tell you how delighted I am about this. We also elected a new PCC. We do ask you to pray for them as we approach new tasks in our life together. The Church Wardens are formerly sworn into office at the Archdeacon’s Visitation, which falls on 23 May. The service will be at St John and St Marks, off Walmersley Road. A gentle reminder that Sidespersons are formerly invited to this service.

At the end of May, we enter into this new Season of Thy Kingdom Come. This starts on Ascension Day (30 May) and ends on Pentecost Sunday (9 June). What is this season about? Thy Kingdom Come is a global prayer movement that invites Christians around the world to pray for more people to come to know Jesus. What started in 2016 as an invitation from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to the Church of England has grown into an international and ecumenical call to prayer. In other words, we here in Bury Parish (or St Mary the Virgin, Bury, to give us our real name [see above]), are invited to actively participate in a period of prayer.

Praying for what and for whom?

• For ourselves, that we may know God more profoundly

• For our family, friends and neighbours, that they may encounter Christ through us.

• For our world, that it may be transformed by the presence of Christ.

See elsewhere in this edition of the Magazine about what we are inviting you to do.

And finally, just a heads up about the priesting of our curate, the Revd Dr Sheila Beattie. Sheila is to be ordained priest on Saturday 22 June. She will preside at the Eucharist on 23 June at 10.30am. This will be followed by a ‘Jacob’s Feast’. We will be joined by the godly folks of St Paul’s, Bury. Please pray for Sheila as she prepares for her ordination.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for April

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

Here’s something I have learnt recently. Easter more commonly happens in April than in March. And, for those who like their facts, there is a possible 35 day window in which Easter can happen; 22 March to 25 April. So this year’s Easter, though late, is not out of the ordinary. It’s all to do with the timing of the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. One of the great historians of our country, Bede, a monk (673-735AD) spent a lot of time working this date out. We still use the system that intrigued him, the ‘Computus’, to calculate Easter.

The problem with a moveable feast is that sometimes we get more excited about the date than about the feast itself. So, we get surprised by when Lent has started and fumble some sort of ‘discipline’ (how’s that going, by the way?); Mothering Sunday creeps up on us, bringing a kaleidoscope of thoughts, depending where we are in life; Holy Week services are not in our diary and commit ourselves to doing something rather than spending time with the Church. In other words, unlike Christmas with its fixed rhythm, we find inhabiting this Season so much more difficult.

This year, however, we have a bit more time to prepare ourselves and, if necessary, to re-set the heart. The Church of England gives the name “Passion Sunday” to the fifth Sunday of Lent (7th April this year). Our services shift their focus at this point, moving from following Jesus as he walks towards Jerusalem to thinking more about the Cross. Our liturgical colour changes from the purple of Lent to the red of Passiontide. We shall put up a large cross in Church, made from our Christmas tree of last year. This visually reminds us not only about that this is Passiontide but also that this story, the Jesus-dying-outside-Jerusalem story is intimately linked with the birth story. The wood of the Crib and the wood of the Cross both carry Jesus. Christmas and Easter are the two pegs on which we hang our faith.

Traditionally throughout Lent, the crosses in Church would be covered with a purple cloth. On Passion Sunday, this would change to a rough unbleached linen cloth. It might seem odd that the focus of Lent, the Cross, be hidden. The point is that the Cross, which in Church is often rather beautifully decorated, is veiled to make us think more deeply about the mystery of God’s love for us. Familiarity, as we know, can lead us not to see the sheer nature of our Lord’s sacrifice. Sometimes, when we think we are making religious things beautiful, we are merely making them pretty and evacuating their impact.

Our former Christmas tree Cross is meant to challenge us, not make us feel good.

The Holy Week Services can be found here, and hard copies are available at the back of church.

When I was a student I had a remarkable experience in Holy Week. Before then, I had attended Palm Sunday service and, because I was in the Church Choir, I went to Maundy Thursday evening service, the “first hour” on Good Friday, which was part of a three hour marathon (when I was never too sure whether to pity the preacher or the nether regions of the congregation) and then the main service on Easter morning. As a student, when we were encouraged to turn up to as much as possible (as I am doing to you now), my eyes were opened to the capacity of the Church’s worship to understand what being a disciple of Jesus Christ was all about. So, if you are one of those who only come to Church on a Sunday, add one extra occasion to the list. If you come to Good Friday (and there is so much of me that wonders why people come to Church on Easter Day if they have not been on Good Friday – Easter only makes sense if we spend time with Christ on the Cross), then come to an additional service…. These services, which draw on ancient texts of the Church, truly inspire the heart.

And finally, back to practicalities. The Church, though it is the Body of Christ, is also a functioning community, needing the immense generosity of volunteers and helpers to run all the things that God is calling us to do in Christ’s name. We have our Annual Parochial Church Meeting after our 10.00am Service on Sunday 7th April in the Blackburne Hall. We will receive the Report, hear of activities in the past year, plans for the future, appoint Sidespeople and elect our new Church Wardens and PCC members. We do encourage you to come.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for December and January

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

We are about to plunge into that season of the year that goes by many names; Advent, Christmas, New Year, Winter. All these are good. The Church has a particular and slightly technical name for the season that covers the whole two months of this edition; the Incarnational Cycle. This starts on our “New Year’s Day”, on Advent Sunday and carries through to the observance of that occasion when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple, which we remember on 2nd February at Candlemas. The secular world, of course, does not take much notice of this. There is a rather grim truth that Christmas is over for many when they eat their first mouthful of turkey on Christmas Day. The idea of sustaining an awareness of season for a whole month, let alone two, is not something that is easy. Shops rush on to the next sales and we sadly, taking the cue from that, barely manage to keep  our  cards  up  for  the  twelve  days of Christmas.

I was thinking about this whilst sitting in Church saying Morning Prayer a couple of weeks after Remembrance Sunday. The poppies were still cascading down from the choir, the window sills still had their austere display, the banners calling us to remembrance and reconciliation. There is the temptation to put all the energy and imagination into the run-up to events and then feel awkward when the decorations are still up a day or two later. However the message of our Armistice decorations was about more than 11th November. The displays invited us to embed the truth and appalling reality of war and its aftermath in our hearts and heads. So let me say again, at this point, a huge thank you to all those who put such energy into creating such an amazing and thoughtful series of displays. 

Just as we were deliberately slow to take down the Armistice displays, so we will be consciously leaving up those things which remind us of the Incarnational Cycle. The Crib will demand our attention as we move towards communion. The Tree will remain in place. The Stars (there’s more about that below), will be part of our decorations. When people will ask (and they will) why we still have our Christmas decorations up, we will be able to say that we are still thinking about what it means for us, that God entered our history in the Christ Child.

If we decorate our church with traditional features, we do so as a backdrop to worship. I gather that one of my esteemed predecessors used to say, of Easter, that it was not appropriate to turn up to the wake (Easter Day) if you had not been to the funeral (Good Friday). Amen to that. In the same vein, our Advent services are there, not to fill in the waiting time before Christmas, but to enable us to centre the mind and heart so that we are ready, as the medieval writers used to say, to give birth to Jesus at the Feast of the Nativity. There is a rich round of services with additional services for us to attend; Carol Services, Nativity Play, Crib and Christingle, Midnight Mass and then onwards to Epiphany and Candlemas. Not only are Christmas services rather lovely, they are a great opportunity to invite family members to come along and join in. I wonder how many of us will dare to invite someone along? If we are serious about wanting BPC to grow, this season is the place to start inviting folks.

One of the things we have learnt from preparing the church for the Centenary of the Armistice has been that visitors have responded really well to the work people did by way of decoration. The Church of England has an new initiative called #FollowTheStar. It invites church congregations to both engage personally and also invite others to join in the journey towards Jesus. For those readers who like receiving inspiring messages by email, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York invite us to sign up for daily emails to take the life-changing Christmas journey. Each one includes a picture, a short  Bible  passage,  a  simple  prayer and an action to reflect on. Here’s the link; www.churchofengland.org/followthestar. Our wonderful team who decorate the Church have taken the “star” theme seriously and you will see stars populating the Church. Let’s embrace this initiative and play our part by  inviting  others  to  see  what  we  see in Jesus. 

As part of our attempt to maximise the impact of our church building, we are going to have a Christmas Tree Festival. These are becoming immensely popular and involve inviting groups to surround the inside of a Church with trees. This year, as a trial, we are inviting “in-house” groups to decorate a tree and to display it during the week 8th-15th December. If this works well, we hope to roll it out next year, inviting local businesses/organisations to put their tree in Church and using it as a fund raiser for a charity.

The Incarnational cycle; Advent - Christmas - Epiphany - Candlemas. The temptation is to shorten the whole process, perhaps from the Christmas Carol Service to Epiphany. That, certainly, is what the world hopes we will do, keeping Jesus barely in the picture. Perhaps one of our tasks, as Christians, is to tell a different story, a story that needs time to explain why Jesus came, a story that takes to time to explain what happened to  the “baby Jesus”? Perhaps we can do that, not just by observing this long season in Church but also by doing so in our homes? I wonder whether we are ready to do that?

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for November

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

Allegedly Vladimir Putin has taken up letter writing. In an age when computers can be hacked (and he would know about that!) the old-fashioned letter has the capacity to keep its confidentiality. Letters tend to be specific and often part of an on-going dialogue with people we already know. Most of the letters in the New Testament are of this sort. One isn’t. It’s Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome and has this line in his opening paragraph; ‘To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Romans 1.7) 

I love that description; ‘Called to be saints’. November starts with All Saints’ Day. It is the day when we are invited to hear again that vocation to a life of holiness, a life where the grace of Jesus infiltrates our very being. This year, All Saints Day falls on a Thursday and we invite you to come and join us at the altar, to hear the scriptures and to receive the sacrament. 

On Sunday 4th November, in the evening, we will hold our annual service of commemoration of the faithful departed. Our journey through life involves love and loss and at the service we hold before the Lord, in love and thanksgiving as well as in sadness and grief, those whom we love but see no longer. There is still time to write names of people on the lists at the back of Church. My own ministerial experience has been that often perplexed people write names down and then don’t come to the service itself. I don’t know what the practice is here in Bury but can we encourage you to honour those whom you hold dear to your heart by coming to this service at 6.30pm?

Our whole nation will be caught up in observing the centenary of the Armistice at the end of the First World War. Remembrance Sunday will have a very special place in many families this year. Huge thanks to those who have put in such amazing effort to prepare our Church as we host a number of events over this weekend. The Church looks utterly amazing. The centenary, of course, does not mark the end of the war. It marks the cessation of hostilities. As such, it is a reminder that ending open conflict and creating lasting peace and reconciliation are different tasks and involve quite different methods. We fall into disagreement all too easily. It takes great patience and humility, heroic effort and amazing grace to fashion a future which all can embrace, which respects difference and enables any form of meaningful resolution. As we honour those who died in that first global conflict, we best pay them respect by investing ourselves and our nation in building a future that is indeed ‘fit for heroes’. We encourage you, this year, to come not only to the Parish Eucharist but to stay and welcome our Civic leaders and veterans to the Remembrance Sunday service on 11th November. Do note the other activities around this weekend.

If our month begins with one high note (All Saints) it ends with another. The final Sunday of the year is known as Christ the King and reminds us of the destination to which we, who are called to be saints, journey. We journey to our King. Our whole year, from Advent, through Christmas, Lent, Easter and on into Trinity time, is a spiritual pilgrimage, inviting us to see afresh the love that God has for us and shows us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. 

One of the great contemporary bible scholars, Tom Wright, has spent time trying to help Christians understand the writings of St Paul. One of the insights he shares is that we should see Jesus as being the fulfilment of the Jewish hope that God would reconcile (there’s that idea again) heaven and earth through the one he appointed Messiah (the anointed one, or more simply, King). So, the final Sunday of the Christian year is when we gather to worship Jesus as our King, king of our own lives and king of the creation.

Some Christians are weirdly and inconsistently selective about which Feasts they observe. There are some who come at Christmas but don’t mark the beginning of the Christian year at Advent. There are some people who come to Church on Easter Day and avoid Good Friday. Why do we do any of this? I am not advocating a sort of priority list when it comes to attending worship. The pattern of the early church that we read about in 1 Corinthians 16, that Christians worship weekly, is the benchmark for all Christians today. Christ the King, which we mark on 25th November, both rounds off one year and invites us to start afresh, as disciples of Jesus, into the new year.

‘Called to be saints’. That’s you. And me. May God bless us as we plunge into this month, it’s highs and lows, its celebrations and its periods of deep reflection. May this November renew our sense of God’s presence in history, our own and our world’s.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for October

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

A school friend once lured me to a “pick your own” farm, where you were paid by the weight. My memory is that it was hot, uncomfortable and extremely dirty. Frankly, it was so grim that it put me off strawberries for years. Pictures of unpicked fruit, going rotten for lack of workers, brings back those negative memories and makes my admiration for those who labour in the farming and food industry increase.

Churches traditionally celebrate the Harvest around this time. We will be doing so on 14th October. Our decorations will remind us about the beauty of creation and should prompt our hearts to think about the beauty of the Creator and fill our hearts with gratitude for the good things we have access to. At the same time, drawing on the bible’s insistence that the world is the Lord’s, our thoughts about Harvest should delve more deeply into where our food comes from (the whole and complex food industry) and also ask who does not benefit from creation’s bounty.

Two things, then, which we might do in this season. Firstly, pay our food a bit of attention. Some Italians have created a “slow eating” culture. It is a conscious attempt to enjoy food, when we have it, to enjoy the company of those we eat with and, above all, a conscious attempt to resist that inner mantra that tells us we should be doing something more important than eating. The monastics would approve. And Jesus, always hanging around food and friends if you notice, would get the point. And, whilst we do that, in our prayers and in our charitable practice and in our paying attention, we should note who is going without food and, where possible, play our part in responding to the reality of Food Poverty here in Bury.

October also sees the beginning of our observance of the centenary of the Armistice at the end of World War One. Our church will be enriched by all sorts of contributions which will help us and those who cross our doors to engage with the reality of that conflict and its aftermath. We are hugely grateful to those who have put so much work into preparing the church. We will, in addition to home grown art work, welcome contributions from Bury Church of England High School and from Bury Art Gallery. It is lovely to work with those beyond our walls who see Bury Parish Church as part of the cultural tapestry of our town.

In addition to displays throughout October and November, we are hosting “A Victorian Wedding Revisited”. This is a display of the wedding dress worn by Sarah Fletcher on 27th March 1844, when she married James Kenyon, whose waistcoat we will also have on display. These are kindly loaned to us from Gawthorpe Hall and will be in church on Friday 2nd November and Saturday 3rd November. On the evening of 3rd November there will be a talk in the Blackburne Hall about the dress by Mike Hopkinson on the family history of the bride and groom.

A couple of weeks ago the Church of England released some research about the numbers attending church and research, too, about the beliefs of the nation. They made for extremely uncomfortable reading. The decline in attendance, in the decline in “life events”, baptisms, weddings and funerals, has been sharp. I know that people have noticed this. And I know, listening to people, that there is a huge temptation to imagine one cause and, thus one solution to these figures. And I know, because I have been privileged to be present, that many people at Bury Parish have wanted to be part of our journey to change that story here. Eldridge Cleaver once said that “If you are not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”. I am grateful to those who have rearranged their calendars to be part of that conversation, part of the solution. The PCC will reflect on the feedback from the numerous meetings and will listen to what God is calling us to do. This will take time. We look forward to your support and encouragement in this journey.

Collecting data is troubling but it allows us to be honest about the reality of life rather than pretending there is a blip locally (which is often all we really know about). We may know from our own family experience, that the place of faith, belief and the practice of Church attendance, so important to us, is not so important, if at all, to the next generation. This reality affects us all.

The Church, nationally, diocesan-wide and locally is looking into ideas that might explore God’s purposes for us. One of the possible routes on offer flows from St Martin in the Fields, in London. Their experience of being a church surrounded by lots of workers and few parishioners has been to explore a four-fold ministry based on the letter “C”; Congregation (offering worship that truly engages the longings of those who cross the door), Commerce (being unembarrassed about the requirement to generate funds), Compassion (responding to those battered by life who hang around Church) and Culture (inviting into Church those who touch our deepest selves in music, poetry and the arts). There is a conference in Manchester at the end of this month about this. If interested, please see one of the clergy.

Much going on at Bury Parish. Come and join the story. Be part of the Conversation. Be part of the solution.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for September

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

September brings with it a whole number of emotions. There is that “end of Summer” feeling, when the playfulness and the warmth of the past few months draw gently to a close and the seriousness of Autumn and the approach of a long Winter brood over the horizon. There is that “start of a new term” feeling, which those of us educated in Britain have wired into our DNA, bringing thoughts that excite and thoughts that make us anxious. There is that “long run into Christmas” feeling, which can derail the Church calendar and make us think too soon about that season and skip over the riches of the forthcoming months.

Before I flag up some of the things that we could note at Bury Parish over the next few weeks, here are a few God-thoughts to chew on, stimulated by a day out I was privileged to have.

We went, in mid-August, to Formby, to look for the red squirrels. Although we had a great day, walking through the woods, we only got to see a few precious seconds of some playing with each other in the distance before they disappeared up into the foliage of the trees. For a moment we were hopeful that one first glimpse would morph into something more but then, in the blink of an eye, they were up and gone.

I was reminded of part of poem by the Welsh Anglican priest, R.S. Thomas. In his poem Pilgrimages he tries to describe the divine in these terms;

He is such a fast

God, always before us and

leaving as we arrive.

Analogies of God are always on tricky ground. Trying to put our thoughts about God, our experiences of God, into words will always look a bit thin. Suggesting God is like a Red Squirrel certainly falls into that category. Yet, as Thomas suggests in his poem, to think of God as always there before us (there isn’t any place where God is not) and always escaping out of our attempts to define him (all descriptions of God fall short), is not a bad place to begin.

On Sunday 9th September, Joanne Nicolson, the Relationship Manager for the North West and Isle of Man for the Children’s Society, is coming. She will be leading a discussion at Adult Sunday School (8.45am - venue to be clarified) and then on to our 10.00am Service. We probably “know” the Children’s Society best through the Christingle service on Christmas Eve. If you have been reading the articles in the magazine over the past couple of months (and read the one in this edition) you, I hope, have a greater understanding of their work, in the name of the Church, with some of country’s most vulnerable young people. As we hear about cuts in local services, the contribution of charities in this sector is all the more important.

The following Sunday, 16th September, sees Bury town centre host the start of the Bury 10K run. Access to the Parish Church, I am assured, will be possible along Bolton Road and the Wylde. As this is the third Sunday of the month, Adult Sunday School will occur in the Robert Peel. For those who might find travelling as usual a tad more awkward, I might suggest either parking across the road at Tesco or you might want to change your rhythm and come along to Choral Evensong at 6.30pm.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for August

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

What a great delight and joy it was, to be at Manchester Cathedral for Sheila Beattie’s Ordination to the Diaconate. A full church, an amazing number of candidates (23 plus a former Roman Catholic priest being welcomed into the ministry of the Church of England), a deep sense of commitment to mission and ministry, not just in the candidates but  in  God’s  people  gathered  in  our Mother Church.

The preacher, the Revd Kate Bruce, spoke about Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Less Travelled. In that poem, Frost speaks of choices, the easy, well-signposted, oft walked path and the one that explores strange, uncharted territory. She took it as a metaphor both for those starting their role in the ordained ministry and us, facing the new challenges of being “Church for a different world”.

It is tempting, when there is a new “member of staff” to relax a little, to imagine that a bit more ministry is being done and therefore we are able to ease our foot off the pedal. I am rather hoping that Sheila’s new role in our community will have the opposite effect. I am hoping that Sheila’s role as “animator” (one of the tasks of the deacon in worship is to direct the congregation to change posture, to stand, sit, kneel) will also animate us all. Sheila’s particular role will contribute to pastoral care in our community. And that role, caring for each other, is something that we all can do. Sheila, along with Liz Dyson, our Pastoral Care Coordinator, will be looking to you to alert us to people whom we have not seen for a bit, people you know (and we may well not know) who are poorly or who would value a visit, value communion.

And a final note on the Ordination. One of the things that really has struck me is the number of people who expressed pleasure at being in our Cathedral and surprise at being among lots of other Christians. This suggested to me a couple of things. One is that perhaps many of our congregation have little experience of worshipping elsewhere and that our own experience of worship and of church more generally is essentially only at Bury. So, a request. When you go on holiday, bring back the pew sheet from the Church where you worshipped. Bring back the magazine. It’s always interesting to see what other Christian communities do. Bring back stories of what it was like being welcomed into another worshipping community. Bring back ideas of how we, here at Bury, might make what we have to offer really rather special. The other thing that has crossed my mind is that, given that the Cathedral is a short hop away on the tram, perhaps a visit to Manchester, to the Cathedral, perhaps to the Art Gallery, as a day out is something we might think about?

I belong to a group of clergy and among recent communication there was a request to share ideas for a “light Summer read”. I have read the book that the Book Group will have looked at at the end of July (Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor) so I suggested that. But the question made me think. What would I suggest to a church community as accessible, thoughtful, encouraging reading matter? Does this community read? (I’d love to know, by the way; and I’d love to know whether you read specifically around the Christian faith. Do let me know).

So here’s a suggestion; “Simply Good News” by Tom Wright. Tom Wright was a bishop and now teaches and writes under two names; NT Wright, his scholarly “hat” and Tom Wright, his books for the likes of you and me. And if not this, my challenge to you is, this Summer, to pick up a book about our faith and read. And then talk about it. To me, to Sheila, to Rhiannon, to your friends at church and friends you know.

Many years ago we started to go to a Christian Festival that gathers over the August Bank Holiday Weekend. Greenbelt titles itself a Festival of Arts, Faith and Justice. It gathers speakers, musicians, artists, writers, poets, film makers, worship leaders, workers in Christian Charities across the world and in our most deprived towns and cities, children’s activities, spiritual space, drama, comedians, theologians, stirs the pot and sees what happens. I always come away with my heart surprised, my mind buzzing and my faith renewed. A bit like Sheila’s Ordination, I see and hear things I have not exposed myself to, some I like, some I think, frankly, a bit odd; I am encouraged to see Christians from across the spectrum of traditions, learning from each other, sharing worship, conversation and community. To draw on the imagery of Frost’s Poem, each of us needs to listen to God from the road we know well and also from roads less travelled. That way, we truly get to hear and experience the Lord in all his love and fullness. That way, we learn to speak of the Lord to others in language and imagery and enthusiasm in terms that they can hear. That way, we learn to be a “Church for a different world.”

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for July

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

This month marks the start of Sheila Beattie’s Ordination to the Diaconate. I know many of you have known Sheila for many years, have seen her ministering as a Lay Assistant at the 10.00am Eucharist and will have had conversations with her. You may have caught her preaching, leading intercessions or even leading Evening Prayer. Now, after a longish period of discernment and training, Sheila is to be ordained Deacon in Manchester Cathedral on 1st July.

What does this mean? It will mean different things to different people. Sheila will still be Sheila. Yes, she will be permitted to wear a dog collar (always a useful visual aid, I find). Yes, she will have a more active role in worship (wearing more ecclesiastical garb than before). Yes, she will have to step up more regularly to the preaching rota. But is that all?

The ministry of Deacon picks up the ministry that St Luke refers to in Acts 6. In the early church, they discovered that there was much to do, too much, in fact, so the leaders of the Church set aside some people to evolve ministry precisely in those areas where the church was falling short. Having decided on the parameters of that ministry, they discerned whom God was calling and, after praying for them and laying hands on them, set them to their task. This is precisely echoed in Sheila’s case. Bury Parish noted that its pastoral care of older people needed beefing up and the Church saw in Sheila the person whom God was calling to fulfil that ministry. Responding to the call of the Lord is a humbling thing and this month we pray fervently for Sheila that she (and all called to the ministry of Deacon) may find joy in their vocation.

Sheila will be ordained on a Sunday and in one of the smaller cathedrals in the country. She will be welcomed, in a joint service of St Mary’s and St Paul’s, on 8th July at 10.30am. Please note the time! After this service there will be a Jacob’s lunch (or bring and share as I think of it). Essentially we ask you to do two things on 8th July. The first thing is to stay for the meal. I know many of you tend to hurry on after Sunday service. I would like to encourage you, on this special day in the parish, to stay and to eat and drink with us. There will be free tickets available at the back of Church to help us work out how many plates and cups we need but if you don’t manage to get one, still please stay! The other thing, a bit more prosaic, is to encourage you to bring food. There will be a sheet to sign up at the back of church, to indicate whether you are bringing savoury or sweet food, but again that is secondary to just bringing something to share.

The PCC decided that, during July and August, we will trial having the same readings at the services of Holy Communion at 8.00am and 10.00am and at the 11.00am on Wednesday. The services (Book of Common Prayer and Common Worship) will remain the same; it’s just the readings that will change. Currently, if you only hear the Prayer Book Epistle and Gospel, you hear just 104 readings from the scriptures if you attend every service across the year and of these, only two are from the Old Testament. The newish system of readings (first published in 1994 - so 24 years old, not that new) offers the Christian Church over 600 passages over a three year cycle. It is a system used by the Anglicans world-wide, Methodists, Baptists, URCs and essentially by the Roman Catholics. Recent research has discovered that far too many Christians simply don’t open their bibles at home, have no sense of how the Jesus story and the Old Testament connect and look rather blank when asked about the scriptures. The report said, rather grimly, that too many Christians were biblically illiterate. And this report was written by Christians! Church worship should foster a hunger for the scriptures as a source of our nourishment from God. This trial is to see how we react to hearing parts of the bible with which we may not be but should be familiar.

At the end of the trial, we will invite response. We will automatically go back to the usual source of readings until the Worship Committee have reflected on your response. The PCC hope that, whatever the outcome, we recognise the need in each of us, to grow in confidence in the faith and in knowledge of our tradition, of which reading and praying the scriptures is a vital and life-giving element.

And finally, here’s a thing. I find myself visiting empty houses. Which is a poor use of time and a poor stewardship of the earth’s scarce resources. I wonder whether I can ask you, if you would like a visit (and this can be for any reason you like) to take the initiative and invite me round? I don’t need feeding (actually I am trying to avoid biscuits/cake so it’s not personal!). But I would love to listen. If you’d like to talk, catch me at church or phone/email me. I so look forward to hearing from you.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector

Rector's Letter for June

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS,

One of my reflections, on reaching this point, six months in as your Rector, is that almost all of my experience here has been one of the Church’s seasons; Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter have absorbed almost all of the weeks since I arrived. June, for me, brings in my first exposure to what the Church now calls “Ordinary Time”. We used to refer to this as “Sundays after Trinity”, suggesting they are in some way an after-thought, a pause between the real focus of Easter and Advent. One of the possible derivations of the word “Ordinary” stems from the Latin word “ordo”, which is about time and order. The change brings with it the intriguing and spiritually liberating insight that in this long season our hearts could be open to God in an ordered and rhythmical way. I am looking forward to sinking into this long period of deepening discipleship. I hope you are too.

This season may be “ordinary” but what we are invited to do during it will be anything but ordinary. There is much that the Lord is calling us to do and much that we each can offer.

I write this letter at the end of the Thy Kingdom Come period of prayer for renewal. I wonder whether you took up the opportunity to pray during it? At a recent parish meeting, I was struck by the awkwardness and ambivalence expressed about prayer. Liturgical prayer, the formal prayer of the Church offered in worship, is something we find we can participate in. After all, it is part of the reason we come to church. But the group indicated that the idea of praying on their own was something that they were unsure about. I am sure that they are not alone. And I am equally sure that there are readers of this letter for whom prayer, personal prayer, is simply part of daily life.

One of the outcomes of this meeting was that we will look to resource, encourage and equip our community in the whole area of prayer. It would be, for me as your still new Rector, really helpful to know from people where prayer fits into their Christian life. If any would like a conversation, whether you have found a pattern and rhythm that sustains your spiritual life or whether you find this whole area simply so difficult that talk of prayer causes guilt to rise in your heart or whether you fit somewhere in the middle, the clergy would be really interested. There is a great, if imperfect, saying about church life which goes like this; “Pray as if it all depends on God; work as if it all depends on us”. Both parts of this saying bear more than a grain of truth, I believe. And if so, then the “prayer” part needs actioning. Watch this space.

Mission Action Planning is something that we have already flagged up. Essentially it is a process whereby the people of a parish can, under God, focus their activity. We need to tell Bishop David what we are going to do by the end of November. The process we are going to use to discern our priorities here at Bury Parish is this. A group of us are going away (all the way to Bircle!) to come up with a “short list” of ideas that we think will help us in mission and ministry. This event will be on 16th June. I have asked specific people to come but would be more than happy to extend the invitation to anyone who thinks that they have ideas worth exploring or have a willingness to invest time and energy to help us implement the plans. God, you see, has secreted wisdom and creativity among us all. Once we have our “short list” of ideas, we will present these to you, in worship, over coffee, in the magazine and finally in a decision-making occasion. Whatever we decide will be decided by all. Do pray for this process (see previous paragraph for details...).

2018 sees the centenary of the 1918 Armistice. We are going to host a “taster” event on Saturday 23rd June. At this event, various groups will be displaying what is going to happen over Autumn in Bury. There will be refreshments and poetry and things to see. We do hope that you will come. We do hope that you will bring a friend or two.

And finally, Sheila Beattie is to be ordained Deacon on 1st July. This is a really special event and we ask you to hold Sheila in your prayers. Manchester Cathedral being the size it is, we cannot, sadly, encourage you all to decamp that Sunday. However, on 8th July we will be welcoming Sheila formally in our worship at 10.30am (note time - this is so as to include St Paul’s). We do hope that whatever service you usually attend, you might move your calendar around so you can join us, both at the worship and also at the Bring and Share lunch afterwards.

With love and prayers,

 Julian

Rector