News From The Rectory
The Rector’s Pint - Last Orders
November 2025
By the time this is read I will have celebrated my final service in the Benefice, 10 years and one week after I was licensed here as the Rector. There is a tradition that incoming parish priests ring a Church bell, if there is one, at their licensing service, with the number of tolls corresponding with the number of years they will be in post. It is not binding of course, but at St Mary’s I consciously rang the Bell ten times, I always planned to be here ten years. If any of you go to the service welcoming my successor, whenever that will be, count the number of times the bells are rung!
I don’t for a minute regret coming here, even though at times it has been very challenging. The first year was a very big adjustment, having left a single Church with several substantially larger congregations. Whilst of course I would love to see our churches filled and thriving, I have also grown to love the intimacy of this ‘ministry in the small’ - to know every person who worships and be able to administer communion by name has been a privilege. If a rare visitor comes along, I make it my business to find out their name. I have though, particularly enjoyed being a parish priest with a focus, and not simply on the Church.
The management of Church buildings has never been my first love, and I have been so grateful that that has largely been taken off my hands. I realise that they are precious, and I love the history they contain, and the centuries of prayer they have absorbed, but there is a constant danger that our buildings take priority over the people who use or visit them. I believe they should be signposts to something else, something that is not built in stone; they were never meant to be the final destination!
There have been high points and low points. Getting the latter out of the way first, most will be aware that I had to take a few months off a few years ago, the result of an accumulation of circumstances. Oddly, one of the high points was in fact during Covid, when we were not able to be in our buildings at all. It was an extraordinary experience, from the first fumbling days we tried it, to welcome so many people to our zoom services, all conducted from my study desk. Who among those who came will ever forget the Shepherd yodelling for her sheep (My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me, John 10, 27-28). You had to be there!
There is so much else to say, but I will end simply with a huge thankyou to you all, from Cath and me, for your friendship, your acceptance and your love. We look forward to a new phase of our lives, but leaving this one will not be easy.
Simon