Minister’s Letter (2025)
[2022 letters], [2023 letters], [2024 letters]

How Long is a Piece of String …. or a Vacancy?

To meet the early deadline, I am submitting this shortly before Alice Goodall’s farewell service and wondering what lies ahead. How long will it be until we get a new Team Rector? Around 30 years ago appointments used to be made quite quickly, perhaps within three months. Now the average length of a vacancy is over a year.

Q Why are vacancies so long these days?
(a) Because there are more posts than available clergy. (b) To save money. (c) To give time for the Rectory to be refurbished. (d) To give space for reflection between one Rector and the next.
A Probably a combination of the above.
Q How many Anglicans does it take to change a lightbulb?
A Six. One to change the bulb and five to form a society to remember how good the old one was.
However long the vacancy, we will still remember Alice and Joe and the light and love they shared in the Shelswell Benefice.

The snippets of information below are taken from an article in The Church Times on 7th February 2025. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/7-february/features/features/how-long-should-an-interregnum-be

Keeping the show on the road in a vacancy requires a great deal of effort. The danger is people can become tired and discouraged. It is important to remember how vital it is to get the right person as priest for the parish. This can take time.

Above all, pray. Pray more together than you were doing before. God is at work during the vacancy. He may be working on bringing things to the surface, strengthening unity, or the confidence and discipleship of individual members of the congregation.

The co-operative model of ministry is the one that usually bears fruit during a vacancy, where people are empowered and feel involved.

Some factors to help a vacancy to run well

Q During the vacancy will it be business as usual?
A As much as possible. The Churches in the Benefice will continue to serve their local communities. There is still a Ministry Team and baptisms, weddings and funerals will still take place, along with Sunday and midweek services of worship and other activities. And we would love to welcome newcomers to join us on the journey of faith.

August

We have always been aware that we would be a temporary fixture in the Shelswell patch – the Rector swoops into your villages for a short time and then is off again. But you have generously made space for us and welcomed us. There have been some wonderful times – and, to be fair, some not so wonderful times. There are so many memories that I will treasure including those Plough Sunday and Harvest Home Celebrations with folk from the farming community and church gathered together, the joy of Lighthouse and school assemblies, our link with Wulu and the visit from Bishop Zechariah and Mama Monica, Shelswell by the Sea, some wonderful Christmas services – especially the crib services – especially the one where I had the opportunity to play the wicked King Herod. It has been a privilege to be able to accompany some of you through those significant times of life in funerals, weddings and christenings. I have really valued things shared during Lent groups and confirmation preparation. And a particular delight of late has been joining in with the choir. We will miss feeling a part of the community, being able to wave at friendly faces we know, that sense of belonging.

The thing I think that will stick with me most, though, is the dedication and devotion of those regular members of our church communities, doing their absolute best to live out their faith in their day to day lives. I am so struck by the way they go out of their way to help others, of the kindnesses that they have shown to me and others. I am so struck by how they hold fast to their faith in difficult and challenging times. So often, they are giving of their time, not just to church and church activities, but to other village institutions, to involvement in charities of one sort or another, and to the community in general. And they are doing it because their faith is so central to their lives, God matters to them. They want to show his love, his care, to others, and they long that others may come to share their faith and the blessings that it brings.

At a funeral, I will say some words taken from psalm 103:
'our days are like the grass; we flourish like a flower of the field; when the wind goes over it, it is gone and its place will know it no more'

I know that after we leave, things will carry on. The churches will continue to function, thanks to the efforts of the ministry team, the church officers and all who are involved in church life one way or another doing what they do. You may think of Joe and myself occasionally, but mostly we will, quite rightly, be forgotten. And then there will be a new Rector who will have their own ideas of how things should progress, and I hope that you will welcome them as you welcomed us, and I hope that you will do your best to work with them as they try to take our churches forward.

They will have a difficult job – life for our churches is increasingly difficult. The regular congregations are small and generally ageing. The ancient church buildings are a nightmare to maintain. It would be a mistake to assume that these churches will just continue – they will only stay open and functioning if there are people attending them, and people stepping up to take responsibility for them by getting involved, and sufficient money coming in to pay for their upkeep and for the clergy to work in them.

But even if the worst were to happen and all the churches were to close, the one thing I am absolutely certain of is that God won’t be shutting up shop. His love will continue, his blessings will continue and his work will continue. That’s what comes next in psalm 103:
'But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures for ever and ever towards those that fear Him and His righteousness upon their children.s children - with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts'

Whether Christians are meeting in a church or a village hall or someone’s home, God will continue to pour out his love and care, and those who follow him will continue to find deep joy and peace, strength and guidance, in good times and in bad. Because God is utterly faithful.

July

A letter from the Joint Council’s Lay Chair, Flora Skinner

Trinity Sunday Service at Evenley Wood Gardens, June 15th 2025
‘the inter-connectedness of everything’

We were blessed with fine weather once again for our visit to Evenley Wood Gardens (many thanks for their hosting us!) to enjoy worship and sharing a BBQ together in the woods. We had all brought chairs - though we didn’t spend the whole service sitting in them.

Liz began by outlining the inter-connectedness of the Holy Trinity and, in parallel, our inter-connectedness with the wonder of Creation. Genesis reminds us that Adam was put into the garden of Eden to ‘work it and take care of it’ and we each took a label to identify ourselves as ‘sunshine’, ‘air’, ‘water’, ‘tree’, ‘plant’, ‘animal’ etc.so that we could then form a circle and connect to eachother using wool until we had formed an intricate web in the centre. Liz showed how easy it is for this to begin to breakdown by cutting a few strands … and the web began to fall away : Liz read Alice’s Reflection which recounted her experience of doing some school assemblies on the Trinity : a quiz where the children had to say whether some bible stories featured Father, Son or Holy Spirit and it turned out that there were all sorts of right answers - Father, Son and Holy Spirit are so interconnected. And God created a world that works similarly - all interconnected, a carefully balanced system that keeps itself going, renews itself. No one creature, no one plant lives in isolation. God entrusted the earth to us and asked us to care for it, but in the last couple of centuries we have managed to destabilise many of those wonderfully balanced natural cycles.

We heard words from Pope Francis :“Peace, justice and the preservation of creation are three absolutely interconnected themes, which cannot be separated and treated individually.”
The Choir sang to us about new beginnings, and then we were out of our chairs again to seek from among the trees the pieces of a big prayer jigsaw to link together as we said each prayer :

We took home a dibber marked with the Triquetra of the Holy Trinity and coated with mustard and cress seeds to plant in a windowsill pot, a symbol of new tomorrows – but not before we had written on them our own personal pledges to make one small positive change to help in the restoration and preservation of Creation.

The morning finished with a meat and veggie BBQ tended by Gary Skinner, along with our bring and share salads and desserts, and much relaxed fellowship in the afternoon sunshine.

The last word is also from Pope Francis:
“Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity."

June

MARRIAGE AND THE WEDDING AT CANA IN GALILEE (JOHN 2:1-11)b>

In ancient Judaism, wine represented a blessing and joy, and was associated with life, God’s blessing, and the Kingdom of God. It was a symbol of fertility and renewal, as grapes and vines were important agricultural staples in ancient Israel.

The Church has seven sacraments, and marriage is one of them. In John 2:1-11, we read that Jesus was invited at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. In fact, he went with twelve of his Apostles and we also hear that his mother was present. Most ancient Jewish scholars say that a proper Jewish wedding would run for about a week. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus and the Apostles arrived on the third day. Probably the twelve, being strong man and most of them being fisherman, joined in and drank all the wine, and it quickly ran out. Remember this was the third day and the wedding was supposed to run for eight days. In most cases in the weddings at which I have officiated, people will not remember how handsome the man was or how beautiful the woman was - instead they remember how much wine or beer they drank on the particular day. If Jesus had not intervened, the wedding at Cana was going to be disappointment and a talk of the village for a long time.

There were other weddings during the same week, that is why the gospel of John says Cana in Galilee, so that we focus on this one. Jesus was particularly invited to this one because it was a special wedding. In fact, it was a wedding of a poor couple but Jesus did not focus on that. Being the third day, and the wine having run out, people could have easily left the venue to go to other weddings out of Cana, but we read that everyone remained at the wedding. Eventually we know that people were instructed by Mary the mother of Jesus to do as Jesus would say and Jesus blessed the water and it became wine, and joy, blessings, the Kingdom of God and everything was restored at the wedding.

Now my dear friends let us draw parallels between marriage in general and the wedding at Cana in Galilee. Just like at the wedding, in marriage a lot of things can change or run out and to whom can we turn? Men and women take vows on their wedding day that they will love each other in poverty and in plenty, in sickness and in health, but in many cases, we see divorce or fighting if there is no more money or good health or if the husband or wife develops a pot belly. This means the wine in marriage will have run out just like it did at Cana. Blessed were the people at Cana for they depended on Jesus. Is there still wine in your marriage? if not where did it go? It is time to ask Jesus to restore joy, peace and happiness in our marriages because Jesus is the same yesterday, today and in the near and far future. Stay blessed and enjoy your marriage and ask Jesus to replenish it if love, money, peace and blessings have run out in your marriage. In the name of Jesus.

May

This article by Lucy Hannah was written in the Summer but seems equally appropriate for the dry, sunny weather we experienced in March and early April.

As I write, summer has arrived with a wallop. Forgive me, dear reader, if it is lashing with rain where you are right now; here, my skies are an almost cloudless blue. The sun reigns uncontested in the sky. As an artist, I appreciate the value of light and shade; one without the other results in lack of depth. Shade is a veiling of light - a softening, so that the light we experience is not the full, relentless glare of the burning sun. As the earth turns on its daily cycle and the sun appears to ‘move’ across our skies, light and shade play with pattern and placement. Shadows can be mini works of art, the light painting a picture round the pieces it can’t fully reach.

Often when we talk about light and dark, we cast darkness as the metaphorical villain. We use it to describe the difficult, the distressing, even the ‘evil’ in life. But at another level, shade and shadow are valuable. The heat at the height of a summer day can be scorching. To find a shady corner of a garden where the leaves soften the glare and protect us from heat can be a huge relief! I struggle to sleep when it is light and appreciate the nurturing blanket of darkness over my tired eyes and busy mind.

Darkness can be seen as hiddenness or even protection. The darkness of ‘unknowing’ can be frustrating, but sometimes acts as a subtle veiling of something too bright for our eyes. I recently had my first experience of a flotation tank - floating in a big ‘bath’ of magnesium-salted water. I could choose to have gentle light or darkness. In the end I chose the dark. It gave me a sense of privacy and peace. In the darkness, I became aware of all the tension I was holding from past pain and present stress.

Depriving myself of external sight in some ways helped me ‘see’ more. The hidden places can hold for us great wonder; we can find those ‘treasures of darkness’ and encounter the God who sees in the dark. That’s not to say it is easy, not one bit. However, sometimes darkness - in the sense of hiddenness, of shelter, of unknowing - can be the gentlest place for us to grapple with our personal traumas and pain in manageable doses, until we are ready to walk out into the light.

God is described as light in the Bible, but at other points as ‘shade’ – a personal, protective presence giving shelter from the heat and dazzle of uninterrupted light. Sometimes we cry, quite rightly, ‘Lord, be my light’! I suggest it is equally valid to whisper, ‘Lord, be my shade’, when things are a little too bright for our weary, sensitive eyes.

The article is reproduced, with permission, from The Sign.
Lucy Hannah is a writer and artist: www.lucyhannah.com

Psalm 121.5-8
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and for evermore.

April

Saying Please, Sorry, Ouch, Wow ….. ..... and Saying Nothing at All

Our small home group has been looking at a Lent Course from the Diocese of Lincoln entitled ‘Teach us to Pray’. Prayer is a mystery that deepens with experience and understanding. The course explores prayer through the lens of some of the simplest things we learn to say: please; sorry; ouch; and wow. A final session looks at the kind of prayer in which nothing at all is said.

Saying Please
The Bible encourages us to ask for things for ourselves, also for other people and situations. But few Christians would claim that every time they ask God for something in prayer, they receive exactly what they have requested! The most important insight comes from a phrase in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. ‘Please’ prayers - petitions and intercessions - attempt to tune in to God and pray in accordance with God’s will.

Saying Sorry
Scripture teaches that that no one is without sin, that we need to confess our sins to God, and that if we do confess our sins God will forgive us (1 John 1.8-9). During Lent the focus for Christians is on turning away from wrongdoing and seeking to follow Jesus more faithfully. However, receiving God’s forgiveness does not take away our responsibility to seek others’ forgiveness for the wrong things we do to each other.

Saying Ouch
Sometimes the only thing we can bring to prayer is our pain. Expressing pain to God in prayer is sometimes called lamentation. Many of the Psalms come from a place of deep suffering and lamentation. On Good Friday we recall how Jesus took words from Psalm 22.1 as his own when he cried out on the cross, ‘my God, why have you forsaken me?’

Saying Wow!
There are many encouragements in Scripture to praise God, for example, Psalm 150.2,6: ‘Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!’ At Easter Christians praise God for the resurrection of Jesus, the ultimate reason for saying ‘wow!’. Hymns are particularly important in praise and thanksgiving. St Augustine observed that music joins the prayer of the mind to the prayer of the heart. At Easter hymns are full of alleluias. (Alleluia means ‘God be praised’.)

Saying Nothing
Some Christian groups practice silent prayer when they come together for worship. By contrast Anglican worship is ‘word-centered’ so it is sometimes a struggle to make space for silent contemplation. Contemplation involves stilling oneself to receive what God has to say and give, rather than over-filling prayers with words, so that God can’t get a word in edgeways! A helpful verse is Romans 8.26, ‘The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.’

These brief highlights do not do the course justice. The full course can be found at: https://learn.lincoln.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Diocese-of-Lincoln-Lent-Course-2025.pdf. It really is worth a look.

March

An opportunity to refocus Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the feast day before the start of Lent. This year it falls on Tuesday 4th March. It is apparently an ancient custom: Ælfric of Eynsham's "Ecclesiastical Institutes" from around 1000 AD states: "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him.” Hence ‘Shrove Tuesday’.

The pancake bit related to Lent traditionally being a time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Shrove Tuesday was the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before embarking on the Lenten fast – and obviously pancakes are the perfect way of using up these ingredients.

The call to confession was signified by the ringing of the church bell which became known as the ‘Pancake Bell’. The ‘Millenium History of Finmere’ quotes J.C. Bloomfield’s ‘History of Finmere’ where he notes that in 1880 Finmere Church still rang the Pancake Bell at 11.30 am on Shrove Tuesday, but that its religious function had declined and it had become a signal for the preparation of pancakes!

The Millenium History also describes the pancake race that used to be organised by the WI from about 1959 through to 1977, when it was replaced by a pancake party in the village hall. It was a matter of fierce competition between the Wis from Ambrosden, Bucknell, Finmere and Stoke Lyne. In Finmere, the race was from the Jubilee Tree, up Mere Road to the school. The winner was presented with a shield for their WI, and something like a new frying pan or a recipe book.

Wikipedia tells me that the pancake race is credited as having begun in Olney in Buckinghamshire, when in 1445 a woman of Olney heard the shriving bell while she was making pancakes and ran to the church in her apron, still clutching her frying pan. The Olney pancake race is now world famous. Competitors have to be local housewives and they must wear an apron and a hat or scarf. Each contestant has a frying pan containing a hot pancake. She must toss it three times during the race. The first woman to complete the course and arrive at the church, serve her pancake to the bellringer and be kissed by him, is the winner.

Father Alex was telling us how about how in Zimbabwe people empty their pantries before Lent of all the disturbances that would hinder their fasting. They bring to the church any luxuries or foods that they have in excess, any wine, and any clothing that they don’t want to keep. And after Mass, they all go into the hall and feast together on the foods they have brought. The clothing is given to those in need as an act of almsgiving. This practise of feasting before the start of Lent is symbolic of emptying the heart or mind of all the events that can be a disturbance in walking or journeying with the Lord.

That got me wondering about the things in my life that are a disturbance or a distraction in my walk of faith. Lent has become for most of us something we give little thought to. We might give up something like chocolate or alcohol – possibly more for health reasons than for spiritual ones, and we might perhaps try to do something positive – give some money to charity, for example. But if we stop and think about the things that really disturb or distract us from our spiritual path, we might well come up with some rather different and probably more difficult to give up ‘habits’. The constant distraction of our phones? The tendency to fill every moment of the day with activity? Our tendency to be looking to our own needs or the needs of our family to the exclusion of all the other need and injustice in the world? I wonder what it would be for you?

For the Christian, Lent can provide a good opportunity to do something about some of the disturbances that distract us from following Jesus and living faithfully. But whatever your world view, perhaps Lent is a good time to pause, reflect and clear out some of the unhelpful distractions or disturbances from our lives. Perhaps Lent is a good time to rebalance.

Whatever you do, however you do it, whether from a faith perspective or some other, may you have a very blessed Lent, one where you can refocus on your spiritual path.

February

Almost as soon as Boxing Day is over the Christmas lights have been turned off, the decorations have been put away in their boxes, and bare Christmas trees lie forlornly on the roadside waiting for the local authority to take them away for recycling. Yet ecclesiastically speaking the season for rejoicing lasts for 40 days and only ends on 2 February when we celebrate the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This day is often called Candlemas because traditionally, during the church service, the congregation would process around the church holding candles representing the baby Christ “a light to the Gentiles and the glory of his people Isreal”.

Soon after Christmas, on 6 January, comes the feast of the Epiphany which marks the visit of the wise men to the baby Jesus. Where churches have a nativity crib set up, the figures of the wise men often do not get placed in the crib until 6 January. Instead, they can be seen in different places in the church, slowly making their way to the stable. Epiphany tide is a time rich in symbolism – we too are on a faith journey; we too have been led by a ‘star’ – whatever vision or dream that prompts us to seek God; we too wander in a world fraught with sorrow and danger wondering whether we have taken the right path, or not. “In this season of Epiphany”, says the introduction to the Epiphany Carol Service for Church choirs across the Thames Valley, which was held on 18 January in Christ Church Cathedral, and which members of the Shelswell Choir attended -

“we celebrate the glory of God made visible in Jesus, the child of Bethlehem born to be God with us. The three Magi, guided by a star to worship the holy child, represent God drawing every nation into the family of grace. Yet this is a story in which the gift of God is rejected as well as accepted: the Magi who come from lands far away to worship Christ are juxtaposed with Herod, to seeks to cling to his own power through slaughter. Our celebration of the Epiphany is of the revelation of God in Christ, who provokes both faith and hostility; and of the love of God, which can never be destroyed. As we consider both the pain and the joy of the Epiphany story, we know that our lives are also composed of intermingled pain and joy, and yet in these very ordinary and very human lives, God can be revealed”.

This is probably my favorite season of the year because everything speaks of the mystery of God - the hymns, the carols, the readings; and of the challenge of faith - “we are called to trust that in a world peopled by tyrants, God remains with us; in a world suffused by evil, God’s healing is at work”. Amen, let it be so.

January

WALK WITH JESUS ( LUKE 19:1-10)

Life is lived in a futuristic way but with a lot of reference to the past. People prefer to stay with what they know rather than to imagine the future. Many of us can talk about Covid for example, because it affected or infected us in one way or the other. It is an experience that we know. But the old year is gone and the new has come. We are in a new year and we thank God for the gift of life and health. Let not the negative experiences of 2024 continue to affect us in 2025.

In the gospel of Luke 19:1-10, we are encouraged to leave our past, turn over a new page and walk with Jesus. The story of Zacchaeus is very relevant to those who want to choose Jesus as their master and Lord. Zacchaeus was a rich man; he was a tax collector and lived a better life than most of his fellow Jews although they were all under the Roman government. Although wealthy physically, Zacchaeus was very far away from salvation in the spirit.

Zacchaeus lived in Jericho and for a Jew, the further away you were from Jerusalem, the more unholy you became. But when Jesus was passing by Jericho, it seems Zacchaeus had heard of the miracles that Jesus had performed and wanted to have a glimpse of him.

Scholars suggest that because of his wealth, pride and way of life, Zacchaeus may have had no intention of talking to Jesus - he just wanted to see what Jesus was like from a distance. Since Zacchaeus was short, he had to find the highest point in Jericho and it turned out to be a tree. Rich people don't climb up trees but when Jesus comes into your life the impossible becomes possible.

The main issue about walking with Jesus is not climbing up the tree which Zacchaeus did, but swallowing one's pride and accepting to come down and listen to and walk with Jesus.

I don't know the kind of tree you were on in 2024 or are still on in this new year but Jesus is saying come down and let's walk together and your life will be great. Don't remain on a tree of hatred, malice, jealous, gossiping, fear or not having faith - come down and meet Jesus.

We pray that leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and Israel silence the guns and come down to the table for peace.