The Rural Strand of the Diocesan Vision and Strategy
FOREWARD
Bishop Christine set out her vision for the future of our Diocese: growing church bringing hope. As part of this strategy 5 key strands of activity were identified, of which the reimagining of the rural church was one; now known as “the rural strand”. The Archdeacon of Lindisfarne, the Venerable Peter Robinson and the Bishop’s Rural Affairs Adviser, the Rev’d Canon Jonathan Mason convened a series of rural conversations in 2016 to begin the task of scoping out the work of the rural strand. In 2017 this led to the formation of a Guiding Coalition, formed of a mixture of lay and ordained members of the rural conversations network, and chaired by local businessman and philanthropist Stephen Purvis.
Newcastle Diocese’s rural areas embrace not only rural Northumberland but also the Cumbrian town of Alston including the villages of Garrigill and Nenthead and the County Durham settlements of Hunstanworth, Edmundbyers, Muggleswick and Waskerley. The initial work of our group was deeply rooted in understanding the complexity and variety that exists in the identity of not only the rural church but also in rural areas themselves. Much work was undertaken to understand what was required to ensure a positive and sustainable future for the rural church in this diocese. It was clear from an early stage that with a scale of geography as challenging as that posed by our rural areas, we would require specific case studies in which we could explore and assess potential new methods of rural ministry that may be applicable more broadly across the rural church.
The purpose of this document is to distil many months of thinking, prayer and reflection into a single text that can be used to guide the reimagining of our rural church. We are particularly grateful to the members of the Guiding Coalition who have given so much of their time and thought to this important work. We have been blessed to share this journey with the Rev’d Dr Helen Savage, Rev’d Steve Wilkinson, Rev’d Dr Rob Kelsey, Dr Hilary Elder, Barbara Davidson and many others along the way. We are extremely grateful for all of the contributions that have led us to this point, and grateful in advance for the continuing effort required to drive this strategy into a delivered re-imagination of our rural church. The Guiding Coalition is grateful to Helen Savage for drafting this document.
The rural church has its challenges, but in undertaking this work we emerge confident in a strategy to discern God’s will for the rural church in Newcastle Diocese, that it may continue to be a growing church bringing hope.
With very best wishes
Stephen Jonathan Peter
Stephen Purvis Jonathan Mason Peter Robinson Chair Rural Affairs Adviser Archdeacon of Lindisfarne
WHERE ARE WE NOW AND WHAT IS RURAL?
As we started our work as the Guiding Coalition we asked what are the characteristics of the rural setting in Newcastle Diocese which encompasses the whole of rural Northumberland but also small parts of Cumbria and County Durham? In other words, where are we now and what is rural?
Rural life is changing fast. More efficient personal transport and improved technology has opened up the possibility of new settlements, working and industrial (agricultural) patterns. One consequence of this is that there is a decreasing number of jobs in rural areas.
The UK countryside is now less distinctly ‘rural’ than it was even a generation ago. Despite some evidence of a new commitment to the ‘local’, those who live in the countryside increasingly look beyond the immediately local for their services; yet significant pockets of deprivation also remain in rural areas.
Rural communities are extremely diverse with discrete needs and distinctive character. They include former industrial settlements, remnants of medieval rural settlement patterns in addition to ones that have emerged more recently (for example linked to forestry and water industries), estate villages, commuter estates and market towns.
A nostalgic romanticism persists about country life that does not correspond to its reality, present or past. This is perpetuated equally by people who live in rural areas as well as by those who don’t.
Third sector and Voluntary organisations are not advantaged. In the countryside they face the same problems as voluntary organisations everywhere else: it’s hard to persuade people to join and those who are involved are getting older.
Deep personal and community relationships matter. It is possible to get to know people in a small community in a deep way, which facilitates a persistence of neighbourliness and a clearer focus of ‘community’ identity.
WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF OUR RURAL DIOCESE?
In our own rural settings there are particular features of the rural that mean we have our own identity and understanding as a diocese:
• Northumberland has a highly distinctive pattern of land ownership. Four estates own 50% of the National Park (Northumberland Estates, The Ministry of Defence, Lilburn Estates and College Valley Estates) and a number of smaller estates have further significant and historic holdings across the county. An unusually high proportion of agricultural land is thus farmed by tenants, including around 65% of the farms in the National Park.
• Northumberland is home to the second-largest and least populated national park in the UK. Northumberland National Park covers over 1000 km2, a quarter of the County, and includes 220 farms together with the largest area of protected night skies in Europe. The diocese also includes two areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty: Northumberland Coast AONB from Berwick down to Amble and a large part of the North Pennines AONB, the second-largest AONB in England.
• The military has a significant, long-standing impact on local communities in Northumberland. Otterburn Army Training Estate was established in 1911. It covers 242 km2 of North Northumberland, 23% of the National Park, and is the UK’s largest firing range. Other major military establishments are RAF Boulmer and Albermarle Barracks near Stamfordham.
• Farming is the dominant economic activity across large areas of the diocese. Hill farms, the vast majority tenanted, are based on historic flocks of sheep hefted to their fell, and owned by the landowner, not the tenant. In the Tyne Valleys, mid Northumberland and along the coastal plain, mixed farming dominates, with stock rearing and, especially along the coastal plain, arable farming.
• Forestry is a major contributor to the rural economy in the diocese and covers 22% of the national park alone. Kielder Forest Park, which includes Kielder Forest, the largest woodland in England, stretches into Cumbria with almost 250,000 hectares. Other major areas of managed woodland include Wooler Common, Hepburn, Thrunton, Harbottle, Harwood and Slaley.
• The Water industry is highly important to Northumberland. Kielder Water is the largest artificial lake in the UK and includes the largest hydro-power facility in England. The Derwent reservoir in the south of the diocese forms another major, linked scheme.
• Historic industries have long played a major part in the economy, culture and landscape of the rural parts of the diocese and are still a significant factor in its settlement pattern. Coal mining is now solely open cast; lead, zinc and fluorspar are all mined in the North Pennines which saw its population soar briefly in the mid nineteenth century, followed by a long slow decline. Farming, forestry and tourism today are complemented by pharmaceutical industries, advanced engineering, manufacturing and the food and drink industries.
• Tourism is a highly significant feature of rural life in the diocese, with around 13% of all local jobs. We enjoy a rich and varied historical legacy embracing Hadrian’s Wall and the great medieval castles together with an exceptionally powerful ecclesiastical heritage, which includes Holy Island and Hexham. The Alnwick Garden alone attracts over a third of a million visitors each year.
• Northumberland is sparsely populated, with just 63 people per km2, but of these just less than half the population live in the 97% of the county classed as rural. The border parish of Falstone with Greystead and Thorneyburn, by far the largest parish in the diocese, has a population density of just 1.5 people per km2.
• Rural poverty is often hidden and dispersed but real and is defined by low wages or pensions, poor access to transport and other services and a severe shortage of affordable housing – all in a significantly aging population, an increasingly high proportion of whom are aged 55 and over, a figure well above the national average.
HOW READY IS OUR RURAL CHURCH TO ENGAGE?
If this is our setting then how ready is the present rural church to engage with the vision, aims and objectives of the rural strand?
Ageing congregations Sacred spaces
Financial & personnel capacity? Powerful and effective allies Diocesan resources Lots of Messy Churches Capacity to come to the countryside Good rural leadership (ordained and lay) Resistance to change
Openness to change Changing demographics
Changing demographics Lack of possible office holders
Rural conversations network Too many isolated parishes
Excellent connectivity to local Not enough Local Ministry communities development
It is interesting to note that, at the moment, there appears to be a somewhat individualistic approach with the parish priest as ‘franchise holder’. There is a developing argument for the simplification of structures in order to provide alignment to a single broad strategy for the rural church; hence the production of this document. It is also already apparent that there are pockets of excellent practice that must be celebrated and shared as a catalyst for change.
PURPOSE, ROLE, VISION, GOALS AND VALUES
PURPOSE
The purpose of the Rural Strand of the Diocesan Vision and Strategy is to serve the rural communities of the diocese so that benefices and parishes, laity and clergy, local communities and worshiping communities in the rural setting, including our market towns, flourish and have a lively future which is faithful to the Gospel.
ROLE
The role of the Guiding Coalition is to promote the diocese’s vision for the rural church by acting as a catalyst for necessary change and by drawing the many strands of rural church development and changing society together, creating an environment where the culture change we wish to see in the rural church is modelled and shared.
VISION
The vision is for a rural church that will become a growing church bringing hope and in doing so make its distinctive contribution the life of the whole diocese. Through our goals and values we wish to see the rural church deepen its co-operation with God’s existing work within the rural setting. We are the tree in the growing church bringing hope logo!
GOALS
In five years’ time we plan to have fulfilled our goals and therefore we will have enabled the diocesan vision to come into being in the rural areas of the diocese. These goals might be called our ‘Wildly Important Goals’ (WIGs). In five years’ time the rural church will be:
1. Worshipping locally and with openness to new patterns of worship, new styles of worship and fresh types of congregation;
2. Confident and engaged with developing the church’s life and mission (this will include training for lay and ordained, the development of discipleship, the nurture of lay worship leaders and the growth of clergy able to focus on delivering the vision);
3. Regarded by other institutions, communities and individuals as a significant partner/player in the development of local communities;
4. Valued - by itself and by others - as sacred space that holds and shares the Christian story and its heritage in Northumbria and beyond;
5. A church that has embraced a holistic and varied understanding and practice of growth: in numbers of people who value, respect and engage with their parish church; in numbers of those who are positively impacted by the church; and in openness to how church growth might happen.
VALUES
The guiding coalition commits itself to the following set of values as it carries out its work with the rural communities and parishes of the diocese:
1. Being attentive to local communities and generous in response to them.
2. Respecting the past in order to re-imagine the future.
3. Being faithful to, confident in and committed to sharing the transforming nature of the Gospel.
4. Being courageous in re-imagining the church that is coming into being.
ACHIEVING AND MEASURING SUCCESS
In order to achieve success we must have effective methods of measuring success, both proactively in lead-measures and reactively in lag-measures. Lead measures are things that the Guiding Coalition can influence in order to achieve the desired outcome, and lag measures are those things that have already happened that serve to evidence the desired outcome. Without effective assessment criteria we risk delivering little more than a talking shop, our bias must be to action.
LEAD MEASURES
The lead measures of the rural strand are:
1. Recruiting, training and supporting new mission and ministry teams within rural multi-parish benefices and also within an increasing number of multi-church parishes;
2. Creating new partnerships between parishes, benefices and deaneries to enable more effective mission and ministry;
3. Commissioning, monitoring and evaluating specific case studies from which the wider rural church can learn, new actions can be developed and exemplars of good collaborative practice shared;
4. Stimulating conversations about the church’s engagement with God’s mission in rural communities and society;
5. Creating a sense of excitement about a re-imagined rural church and the possibilities this brings for mission and ministry;
6. Sharing the overall learning of the Guiding Coalition and the Rural Conversations group widely within the diocese and beyond;
7. Monitoring and evaluating the seven ‘lag measures’ set out below.
LAG MEASURES
The Guiding Coalition will be looking for, monitoring and evaluating the following lag measures as a means of knowing whether the lead measures for the rural strand are coming into being. We wish to see:
1. A service taking place every week in every rural settlement of significant size;
2. Growing and confident congregations discovering at least one thing that they can do well and not feeling they have to do everything;
3. A benefice or parish-wide mind-set emerging where parishes, districts and congregations support and care for one another across the wider area;
4. Simplified structures grow with more single-parish benefices;
5. Each parish have a trained and equipped focal leader (lay/ordained, stipendiary/self- supporting) working together with churchwardens and others, under the oversight of an incumbent;
6. A cross-benefice engagement with the needs of children and young people and also with those who are socially and geographically isolated.
7. Fresh expressions of church in a wide range of rural contexts.
18 MONTH ACTION PLAN
The rural strand Guiding Coalition will oversee the delivery of 4 case studies, in parishes and benefices around the diocese, to measure and assess the implementation of our strategy and to investigate specific new methods of collaborative ministry. The case studies will:
1. Develop learning about the processes need to set up a mission and ministry team within parishes and multi-parish benefices;
2. Experiment with a variety of local training models;
3. Understand how a tailor-made mission and ministry team might contribute to the reimaging of rural ministry and the re-shaping of the rural church’s engagement with society.
CASE STUDY ONE: Morpeth Deanery: looking specifically at solutions to the challenge of multi- parish benefices in vacancy. The United Benefice of Kirkwhelpington with Kirkharle and Kirkheaton, and Cambo is now sharing its priest-in-charge with the neighbouring benefice of Bolam with Whalton, Hartburn with Meldon, and Netherwitton. Ministry is being delivered by a diverse team of 4 including: the stipendiary priest-in-charge, and an honorary assistant priest alongside an ordained SSM and a Reader who share half a stipend. This represents the first stipendiary Reader in this diocese and a ministry team that demonstrates a wide variety of lay and clerical skill sets. In addition, teams are being established to work in a number of areas across all the parishes, among them; a Good Neighbours scheme; children and schools; care of buildings; communication; liturgical provision and patterns of worship.
CASE STUDY TWO: Bamburgh & Glendale Deanery: our second case study is in the early stages of initiation and is looking at a particular model of creating a mission and ministry team across a large and remote rural area. It involves two newly created benefices in the Glendale area of north Northumberland which have committed to working with each other to create a Mission Initiative. The two incumbents lead this mission initiative that will shortly be given a legal framework by a Bishop’s Mission Order. Known as Mission Initiative North Northumberland, a group of laity and clergy will give shared leadership to joint mission projects that will be effective across all the parishes. In the first stages, lay and ordained will share in giving leadership to community engagement work and training of the laity for mission, including pastoral and liturgical projects.
CASE STUDY THREE AND FOUR We are keen to look at a case study that focusses on the unique challenges of our rural market towns. We are also planning to investigate the most rural Northern part of our diocese perhaps in the context of collaborative ecumenical working.
RESOURCE CHURCH The current bid for resource church funding by the diocese represents exciting and complimentary strands of activity. We continue to work closely with the Bishop of Berwick and his team to see how the rural strand and resource church can support each other. Thought is being given to the concept of a rural resource cluster that may even grow to become its own resource church in time.
CHURCH BUILDINGS, TRAINING, RURAL SCHOOLS, AND THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
We are working on how our rural church buildings are aligned to the delivery of the diocesan strategy in rural areas and will publish a document in due course demonstrating how this might happen. We are developing a training programme for rural mission and ministry teams and to support this and have created Ministry Training and Theological Reflection group. Much work is currently being done on the future of rural schools in the diocese and the rural strand will link in with the Joint Education Team. We have begun a series of ‘contextual practice workshops’ that is helping our rural networks engage with the broader themes of the rural setting and exploring how the rural church might respond to a fast-changing rural context.
Rural Strand Guiding Coalition Version 1 (March 2018)