A final word

It has been a privilege to serve as your interim priest-in-charge/Vicar over the last three years and seven months. I know that it has not been an easy time. Forging one new parish out of two and developing a new service pattern with one priest has meant that there have had to be uncomfortable changes and upheaval. It has been a great pleasure to see the long-planned reordering of St John’s church building accomplished – and frustrating that we have not yet been able to show it off and put it to the uses which we hope to develop. St Andrew’s church building continues to face major challenges, with no firm plan to secure its future (although much hard work continues in this area). Not living in the parish (as was the original intention) has been an additional issue. And over the last 16 months, the pandemic changed all our lives, causing additional stress to us all as individuals, and as the people of the parish of Kildwick, Cononley and Bradley.

In his address to the diocesan Synod on 12th June, Bishop Nick reflected on a recent visit to Whitby:

…we spent some time in the ruins of the abbey. There is a plaque there that (rather blithely) says that the Vikings paid a visit in the late eighth century, after which there wasn’t a Christian community there until one returned two hundred years later…

Did you notice that timeframe? Two hundred years. Two centuries. Now, doesn’t that provide a bit of perspective on whatever is happening in the immediate present? (I was speaking…with Imam Qari Asim at an online Common Purpose event for senior leaders in the north, and was asked about resilience in leaders. I responded with my own perspective-calibrator for when I hit major problems or challenges: in the context of the entire history of the known universe, will we survive this? The answer is usually ‘yes.)

Now, I know I bang on about time and perspective a lot, but I make no apology for this. We cannot read the Scriptures unless we have a proper sense of how long time takes. The Exodus followed four hundred years of exile and growing oppression in Egypt – fine if you lived at the beginning or towards the end and, therefore, have a memory of ‘home’ to hold onto or some hope of resolution to inspire you; but, what if you were born two hundred years in and none of your preceding or succeeding three or four generations had known anything other than captivity? Following liberation, the people spent a generation in the desert having to either die off or sort themselves out for what they had been freed for. Only then could they enter the land of promise and even begin to establish a different sort of society in which justice and mercy were the dominant contours of their common life.

So, we too easily read a plaque about two hundred years of defeated vacancy in Whitby and breeze over to the next bit of ‘interesting information’ without attempting to live into that experience and how it might have shaped our Christian ancestors in Yorkshire.

Why am I talking about this today? Well, I want to encourage us in this final Synod of the extended triennium to keep a sense of perspective as we look back at an extraordinary couple of years and look ahead to what the world – and the church – might look like in the next few years. We know in our heads that the only constant in this world is ‘change’, but we find it equally hard to navigate change (a) proactively and (b) where it is thrust upon us. Change is always changing: we either shape our future or complain about being victims of other people’s decisions and choices. The former is healthier for both individuals and communities.

It’s a helpful (I hope) reminder that change is usually uncomfortable for those living through it, whilst reminding us of the need to hold on to a wider perspective. The appointment of a new Vicar for this parish will be yet another change. I hope and pray that it will be a beneficial one that promotes the future wellbeing and flourishing of the parish of Kildwick, Cononley and Bradley. You will all remain in my prayers.

With every blessing