April 2022Dear Friends in the Uttoxeter AreaAs I write this Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe has just been released after 6 years some of them in prison some in house arrest. It is fantastic to have some good news about freedom. We have lurched from news filled with Covid statistics, and now perhaps like me you can hardly bear to watch the news bulletins and the devastation that is happening in Ukraine, so it was particularly good to hear of Nazanin’s release.How do we react, how do we pray and how do we respond to items on the news?Having travelled to Kyiv when my brother lived there, Kyiv doesn’t feel so far away. It is somehow easier to deal with tragedy which feels a long way off, but this Russian invasion of Ukraine is far too close and the pictures that we see from the brave reporters of innocent civilians are particularly harrowing.A letter in the Guardian the other day suggested that prayer was making no difference to the situation, but the very next day a correspondent said how much worse it might be if we weren’t praying. You could try praying using a map of the country, praying for those pictured on the TV and those in similar situations. Being shot at or bombed is a horrendous type of captivity, a loss of life and precious freedom.Perhaps it doesn’t matter how we pray but it matters that we do.Freedom is often taken for granted, publicity was crucial in securing Nazanin’s release and yet she may find her new choices and her fame challenging to deal with. Let’s pray that she and her family get the support they need, and the lack of attention that will feel like normality.The Bible talks a lot about freedom and Jesus proved the ultimate freedom by rising from death on the cross. Here are some well-known quotations - encouragements and challenges: 2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 1 Peter 2:16 Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. John 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.As we celebrate Easter let us appreciate our freedoms, and praise God that we can turn to God in prayer through all the tragedies of the world, and will ultimately experience the complete freedom that God offers us through the resurrection of Jesus by the power of the Spirit.Happy Easter to Uttoxeter Area - we are free indeed!LucyLucy Toyn Reader Uttoxeter Area
Hello,I was born and brought up on the east Suffolk coast, in a village called Kessingland, nestled anonymously between Lowestoft and Southwold, in turn the most deprived and most affluent towns in the county. One of the features of that coastline is that it is changing shape over time, sometimes dramatically overnight during a storm, sometimes almost imperceptibly at each high tide. One of our traditions as teenagers was to race down to the sea at midnight on New Year’s Eve to greet the waves in the way that hopefully only teenagers do. The distance was anything between 10 metres and 0 metres, as the waves crashed up against the sea wall at high tide. My brothers and I did it again in our early 30s and only one of us made it without stopping, as the sea was now 100 metres further out, as the sand washed up from down the coast had built up against the groynes. A few miles walk along the beach is a village called Cove Hithe. In 1672 the parishioners decided that they could no longer afford to maintain the 14th century church building and so got permission to re-use the stone to build a smaller chapel within the old walls. I didn’t realise this until last week when I watched a programme called Kate Humble’s Coastal Britain on My5. To be honest I hadn’t given it much thought at the time and just assumed that the building had collapsed over the years and something smaller built inside. But no, the parishioners (and by that it may only have been the few who probably attended) made an active choice to change what they saw as church.Today, 340 years later, the church still has a service every week, served by a House for Duty priest who has three other churches. She will retire in December and what will happen then is unknown. The Churches Conservation Trust own the ruins and the Tower, so it is only the small nave chapel which is owned by the Diocese. People gather from up to 25 miles away to keep worship alive.In 2022, St. Andrew’s, Cove Hithe faces an even greater threat to its existence than affordability. The sea is encroaching at a rate of 3 metres every year and the church sits just 100 metres from the cliff. The path I walked along as a youth has been washed away. What will the churchgoers do once the actual building no longer exists? Will the gathered church gather at another church nearby, or individuals go to their local church? Will that particular church community still choose to worship together as a house church? What will ‘church’ be in 30 years’ time when the stones and mortar have washed up onto Kessingland beach?What inspires me about this story is that 340 years ago churchgoers made an active decision to remain ‘church’. They made a realistic decision about what they could afford and used what they had (the larger building) to make something new.We are facing questions about our existence today, partly because of COVID but also because of a fall in church attendance over many decades and overly ambitious church building over several centuries.What decision will we make as individuals, as individual churches and as an Area? How can we try and ensure a community of faith exists in our villages in 340 years’ time, due to decisions we make over the next few years? How will the people ensure that ‘church’ remains where they live? Because in the end it is the people, not the Church of England governing bodies who will be church. Priests come and go, as do bishops, but in the apocalypse, when Synods and diocese no longer exist, it is the people on the ground who will have power – if they have the courage – to be a community of faith.This is not a letter championing the closure of churches. Indeed, that is not what happened in Cove Hithe. This is a letter championing brave decisions, imaginative and realistic thinking and local people making local decisions both for themselves and for generations to come.Peace and prayers, JoeRev Joe Cant, Team Vicar UAP.
HelloI was born and brought up on the east Suffolk coast, in a village called Kessingland, nestled anonymously between Lowestoft and Southwold, in turn the most deprived and most affluent towns in the county. One of the features of that coastline is that it is changing shape over time, sometimes dramatically overnight during a storm, sometimes almost imperceptibly at each high tide. One of our traditions as teenagers was to race down to the sea at midnight on New Year’s Eve to greet the waves in the way that hopefully only teenagers do. The distance was anything between 10 metres and 0 metres, as the waves crashed up against the sea wall at high tide. My brothers and I did it again in our early 30s and only one of us made it without stopping, as the sea was now 100 metres further out, as the sand washed up from down the coast had built up against the groynes. A few miles walk along the beach is a village called Cove Hithe. In 1672 the parishioners decided that they could no longer afford to maintain the 14th century church building and so got permission to re-use the stone to build a smaller chapel within the old walls. I didn’t realise this until last week when I watched a programme called Kate Humble’s Coastal Britain on My5. To be honest I hadn’t given it much thought at the time and just assumed that the building had collapsed over the years and something smaller built inside. But no, the parishioners (and by that it may only have been the few who probably attended) made an active choice to change what they saw as church.Today, 340 years later, the church still has a service every week, served by a House for Duty priest who has three other churches. She will retire in December and what will happen then is unknown. The Churches Conservation Trust own the ruins and the Tower, so it is only the small nave chapel which is owned by the Diocese. People gather from up to 25 miles away to keep worship alive.In 2022, St. Andrew’s, Cove Hithe faces an even greater threat to its existence than affordability. The sea is encroaching at a rate of 3 metres every year and the church sits just 100 metres from the cliff. The path I walked along as a youth has been washed away. What will the churchgoers do once the actual building no longer exists? Will the gathered church gather at another church nearby, or individuals go to their local church? Will that particular church community still choose to worship together as a house church? What will ‘church’ be in 30 years’ time when the stones and mortar have washed up onto Kessingland beach?What inspires me about this story is that 340 years ago churchgoers made an active decision to remain ‘church’. They made a realistic decision about what they could afford and used what they had (the larger building) to make something new.We are facing questions about our existence today, partly because of COVID but also because of a fall in church attendance over many decades and overly ambitious church building over several centuries.What decision will we make as individuals, as individual churches and as an Area? How can we try and ensure a community of faith exists in our villages in 340 years’ time, due to decisions we make over the next few years? How will the people ensure that ‘church’ remains where they live? Because in the end it is the people, not the Church of England governing bodies who will be church. Priests come and go, as do bishops, but in the apocalypse, when Synods and diocese no longer exist, it is the people on the ground who will have power – if they have the courage – to be a community of faith.This is not a letter championing the closure of churches. Indeed, that is not what happened in Cove Hithe. This is a letter championing brave decisions, imaginative and realistic thinking and local people making local decisions both for themselves and for generations to come.Peace and prayers, Joe Rev Joe Cant, Team Vicar UAP
