There’s been much talk of rebuilding of late – building back better, to coin a phrase. Whether it’s the need to rebuild our whole global economy along greener lines, off the back of the COP-26 resolutions passed yesterday; or the need to rebuild our public finances with a levelling-up agenda in mind, following the dual challenges of Covid and Brexit; or the need to rebuild confidence and mental wellbeing in the lives of so many, as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic; or the need to rebuild our church communities after the toughest twenty months of ministry that many of us have ever experienced; rebuilding is the name of the game. Of course there’s another strand of Biblical imagery which speaks of tearing down the walls that divide us – and that could form the basis of a rather different sermon. But for nowlet’s stick with Nehemiah and the imagery of walls as shielding and protective. ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’. Rebuilding requires both realism and hope: the realism to recognise that something is broken and needs fixing; the hope to believe that fixing it is possible. Rebuilding calls on both the heart and the head: the deep passion which releases fresh energy and enthusiasm for the task; the clear thinking which turns that passion into positive strategies, so getting the job done. Naming the elephants in the room is key to any rebuilding process, because until the elephants are named, complacency will always win out. But simply naming the elephants without offering any solutions or fresh perspectives will equally fail to inspire, leading to the kind of fatalism which – like complacency – results in inaction. Complacency says, ‘Why change? Things are fine as they are’. Fatalism says: ‘Why change? It won’t make any difference’. Common to both is the question, ‘Why change?’So back to our text: ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’.Nehemiah, the wine-taster to the mighty Artaxerxes, King of Persia, recognised the need for change. He had heard about the terrible state of his Jewish compatriots who had been allowed to return to Jerusalem but found it unprotected and a heap of ruins. The news had shattered him: ‘When I heard these words’, he wrote, ‘I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of Heaven’. There’s no question that from that moment, his heart was fully engaged. But during that vital period of mourning, fasting and praying – a part of the vision process which we omit at our peril – Nehemiah began to recognise the part he could play in answering his own prayers, given his close proximity to the king. For those of us who remember the story of Esther, as I’m quite sure the vicar of this parish does extremely well (!)this was Nehemiah’s Esther moment. His unique position at the king’s side had been granted to him ‘for such a time as this’. Having got the permission of the king to visit Jerusalem, then, we read of his night-time investigation of the state of the wall around it. What was the extent of the brokenness? What needed fixing? How could Nehemiah shake the residents of Jerusalem out of their complacency or fatalism – probably more fatalism than complacency – so that they might build back, even build back better?Later in the book we learn that that was a spiritual question as much as anything: but at this point, Nehemiah needed a direct, practical approach to his fellow Jews. First, he named the elephant in the room: ‘You see the trouble we’re in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burnt’. And then he offered a solution: ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace’. It was a straight-forward challenge, and it worked: what had seemed a completely impossible task to a whole lot of disparate individuals became a very possible task as they came together under Nehemiah’s inspiring leadership and started working, as our reading puts it, for the ‘common good’. The same would be true of the 11 disciples gathered around Jesus to hear the words of his so-called Great Commission in our gospel reading: a more impossible taskstill, to make disciples of all nations – and yet made possible as they worked together, with the presence and power of the supremely authoritative Jesus inspiring them along the way. I love that ‘us’ in Nehemiah’s words – ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’. No words of blame there, no questioning of why the inhabitants of Jerusalem hadn’t got off their backsides earlier, no ‘them and us’. Just ‘us and us’ and a cheerful invitation: ‘Come, let’s get going together on the rebuilding work, on this exciting new venture of faith’. And as we begin this new triennium of Diocesan Synod, at a time when rebuilding is the name of the game, there’s much here to challenge and inspire us. For one thing, there’s the challenge of naming the elephants in the room – that in amidst many wonderful examples of church life at its best across the diocese, our congregations as a whole are still shrinking just a little and ageing just a little year by year, and Covid has probably accelerated that process a little further. Meanwhile the morale of many has taken something of a battering, andleadership isn’t easy when some whom we lead remain deeply cautious and others are living as though the threat of Covid is firmly behind them.Next there’s the encouragement here to pray (with mourning and fasting as appropriate!) in the recognition that unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain who build it; butequally that with God all things are possible. Prayer helps to engage the heart – but also opens up the head-space to think more clearly and move forward with strategic intent. And here’s where Nehemiah’s night-time expedition (or a daytime equivalent) naturally follows: carefully investigating the state of the wall, so as to see just where it’s broken and what might be needed to fix it.Working independently at the next stage is unlikely to achieve very much. A strong ‘them and us’ narrative – whether ‘them’ is the rival parish next door or that strange, amorphous bureaucracy called ‘The Diocese’ – is only going to hamper our efforts. Instead, the message is ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’: us and us, not them and us; and it’s that message, in a sense, that encapsulates the vision for all that we’re seeking to do through the work of the Diocesan Synod over the next three years. And so members of this Synod will be feeding our thoughts and prayers into rebuilding strategies like the renewal of Transforming Church, Transforming Lives, our Health and Viability programme and the Parish Needs Process. We’ll be looking at how we invest in those strategies, though the annual budget cycle and some longer-term financial thinking. We’ll be seeking a way forward in areas of church life where relationships are strained, especially in the area of human sexuality; and we’ll even be seeking to play our tiny part in restoring our broken eco-system through a radical reduction of our carbon footprint. These are real grounds for hope here, even as we seek to grow the church against the odds. As recently as 2019, we saw an increasing numbers of weekly worshippers across the diocese, and a rather marked increase in the number of children and young people engaged in our church communities. And yes, a lot has happened since then, with both the challenges and the opportunities that Covid has thrown up for us. But now’s emphatically the time to step up, not give up. It’s all put rather beautifully in the verse of hymn that many of us will have sung two weeks ago:And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song,And hearts are brave again and arms are strong. Alleluia. Or, as Nehemiah put it once more, ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’.
Thank you so much for inviting me to speak to you today. Main thanks must go to Lord Plumb, who has championed the interests of farmers as well as young people interested in farming on the local, national and international stage for so many years.There is, of course another reason I’m very glad Lord Plumb is here today. When Pope John Paul II was heckled whilst speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Lord Plumb - in his position as President - ordered the heckler out of the room.So, I feel comfortable today knowing that Lord Plumb will surely defend me against anyone who might dare interrupt.It’s a real pleasure to be here and to be seeing so many people properly in person again rather than over a screen. I’ve been watching a lot of screens - I got into watching Clarkson’s Farm over the last 18 months. I don’t know how you feel about it – maybe for you watching Jeremy Clarkson feels a bit like me watching anything with a vicar in it: either you can’t stand it or you get completely addicted.But I take away from Clarkson’s Farm not just how much I enjoy watching it, but how hard, extraordinarily stressful and deeply complicated and scientific farming and agriculture is.Additionally I am deepened in my wonder at the natural land, wonder throughout my life, increased by 7 years as a rural vicar. It reminds me of a passage in the book of Job –Job is facing real challenges, disaster and despair:and God says: ‘ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.’The context and the challengesThe farming community has faced many challenges of its own over the past years. These challenges, both good and bad, that farmers face are global, national and local. They are both immediate and longer term.We haven’t yet begun to see the impact of Covid, or the fallout of working from home, different working patterns, people moving into the rural areas as working from home becomes easier, and even different ideas about how and where we should live at the deepest levels.Throughout the pandemic it’s been shown that communities the size of rural communities flourish – villages did extremely well in comparison to urban areas in terms of community help and weathering the pandemic.They are wonderful places for people to live, and they have an exciting future, of which I hope the church can be at the heart.Community is clearly the key to unlocking the potential of that future: community means building relationships that enable us to support and encourage one another during difficult times, and celebrate and empower one another in better times.Many things are unclear right now as the dust only just begins to settle, but what is indisputable is that this is a time of rapid change, and that change has been accelerated by the pandemic -We have seen change scientists did not expect to happen for decades , change that at the turn of the millennium seemed like science fiction.Autonomous forms of transport are now practical, not only for cars but also for ships, aircraft and indeed, tractors.Artificial Intelligence is advancing very rapidly. It raises existential questions for people regarding their identity, purpose and what it means to be human.Communications are unrecognizable, hugely powerful, and immensely subversive of existing orders and structures of many societies and institutions. They are also very unequally distributed, a profoundly moral failure and not only a logistical one.Medicine is advancing ever more rapidly as the decoding of the human genome begins to bear fruit.Social tensions grow as traditional societies and structures either resist or seek to adapt to change.For most of us – including the farming community - the impact of these changes will be revolutionary – for jobs, development and life expectancy and quality. And, of course, there is the overarching threat of climate change, which will define not just the livelihoods, but the lives, of every single one of us and our descendants if rapid action is not taken.But change can mean opportunity if we seize it, shape it, mould it.The past 20 months have also forced us to be aware of the connections that we didn’t always see but which are vital to our communities. We stayed home to look after one another, in recognition of the fact that our welfare is dependent on that of our neighbour.But we also gained a new understanding of how our society works, or rather who we really depend on to keep our country functioning.No one will have failed to see the news or notice the ramifications of some of the things that happened over the past few years: concerns about supply lines, headlines about empty shelves and labour shortages, and worries about food prices mean people might have a new awareness of what goes into the things maybe we previously took for granted and expected to magically show up on our shelves and our tables.We peeled back the skin of our society and we were faced with the inequality and injustice that has made a home in our country, but we also paid tribute to the hard working people who keep our country going.It is obvious, but during the pandemic we saw first-hand that farmers are key workers. We saw how precious and valuable their work is, and how we need to look after them as we emerge from the pandemic.Challenges that farmers face: mental health, health and safety, isolation and deprivationAt the same time, we know that this is a tough time for many involved in these jobs. The Farm Safety Foundation ran a survey which found that 88% of farmers cite poor mental health as the biggest hidden problem facing the industry – an issue that will only have been exacerbated by the pandemic and shows no signs of abating.The ONS reported that 133 people working in farming and agricultural trades took their own lives in 2019-20.[1]Health and safety in the farming community is a real issue – it’s one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.Agriculture continues to have the worst rate of fatal injuries of all the major industrial sectors, around 20-times higher than the average five-year annual rate.In the last ten years, almost one person a week has been killed as a direct result of agricultural work. Many more have been seriously injured or made ill by their work. Just over one in a hundred workers work in agriculture, but it accounts for about one in five fatal injuries to workers.[2]We know rural communities face isolation and serious deprivation. We know that the number of families categorised as homeless in rural local authorities has risen to almost 20,000 – an 115% increase from 2017/18.[3]The storms they have weathered over the last few years have been deep and often very painful indeed.Now we are at a juncture, and the future can go two ways:Will we treasure and support our farmers, provide them access to good health care – especially mental healthcare, bolster community support, campaign strongly for education, equipment and legislation that enables farmers to do their jobs safely and profitably?Will our rural areas be active, lively places where the future will happen, full of energy and innovation? Or will they be areas of rest and recreation, preserved in aspic for those who are able to afford it? Facing challenge, building opportunity?Now we are looking to build a bold, exciting vision of Britain, a vision fit for the 21st Century and beyond. Farming will be, in many ways, the backbone of that. And that’s for 4 reasons, all of them interlinked:Firstly, our heritage and communities.As we look towards who we want to be, we need to have a strong foundation of where we’ve come from, who we are and how we live together.To do that, we need to build and support rural communities which flourish, ones which serve every generation, with access to services and opportunities that unlock people’s potential and bring people together.Secondly, providing a reliable source of nutritious food available to everyone. This is, without doubt, indispensable.It is the first priority of every farmer, and it must be an integral part of government policy at every level, from the local to the national.Third, the climate. I have said – and it’s not controversial to say – that climate change is the biggest threat we face, one that will become a fate if we do not do anything about it soon.The Government has committed to net-zero by 2050.The Church of England has gone a couple of steps further and set 2030 as our target.The NFU has a 2040 target.Net zero will not happen in this country without the farming community.And fourth and final: our relationship with the rest of the world, our trade deals, and how we show leadership on the global stage.In a post-Brexit era, a time of such globalisation, our farming communities can lead the way on food standards, animal welfare, trade and exports that make people’s lives better and more prosperous around the world.These are both the challenges and the opportunities on a very macro scale, where those involved in farming and agriculture have a real role to play.How do we get there?So, how do we get from where we are now, to this vision of rural communities as lively, flourishing, exciting, prosperous places to live and work?Many of the answers, I believe, lie in traditioned innovation in rural communities that equip them to be areas that make use of their history and heritage to meet the challenges and opportunities of today.This will need to happen in 5 main areas: food production; housing; community generation, through churches, schools and other community hubs; communication infrastructure and adaptability to new science and education; and training in and adoption of new technology which is sustainable and economically viable.I spoke of change earlier. It’s something we are all experiencing – farming communities and also the Church. Change unsettles. Jesus spoke of being worried about the future in one of his parables (apologies: There will be some Jesus in this because I’m the archbishop of Canterbury and it’s sort of my job.) The thing about the parables is that many of them are agricultural, because that’s the community Jesus lived in. The Bible is full of rich language about our relationship with the land – and good, fertile land is often synonymous with a good life and blessings. You could say that understanding farming helps you understand the Bible.In this parable, in Luke 12 16-34, a man wonders what to do with his bountiful harvest. God tells him‘do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.’This worry about the future is common to the human experience – what will become of us? Will I be a success? Will everything go right?God’s response is to tell us not to worry about it. Not because if you’re a Christian then everything goes absolutely perfectly all the time – I know personally that that’s absolutely not the case - but because we can have faith in something bigger, and we’re not alone on the journey.This God is not just a God of Sunday mornings in the church pews. I believe he’s the God of everything – of our work, of our rest, of creation and the smallest and biggest things.So what does a vision for the future – what I believe is God’s vision for our future – look like in relation to farming?Justice, Value and Relationship – a vision for farmingWhen I spoke of the five areas of traditioned innovation – food production, housing, community regeneration, communication infrastructure and training in new technology –I think they roughly fit under three broader categories, which I think are essential as we think about the flourishing of farming and rural communities going forward – and these are value, justice, and relationship.Value:Firstly, there is inherent good, inherent value, inherent worth in our land, our livestock, our crops and in ourselves. In that previous parable, we read ‘life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap…and yet God feeds them… consider the lilies, how they grow…even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.’The basic things matter to God, the Bible tells us.The food we eat, and the people who get it on our tables, matter. We need to start appreciating that value. I’ve seen headlines recently about farmers having to slaughter pigs because of labour shortages – this is the exact opposite of being able to treat livestock and labour with the value it requires and deserves.We need to pay fair prices for work and produce.Justice:When you appreciate the value of things, you want them to be treated fairly. You hunger for justice.Food justice is a major issue. Everyone should be able to afford good, nutritious, healthy, sustainable food. Schools should supply it, obtained in the UK, as part of our normal education in healthy living.One thing that was absolutely clear about Covid was the risk of underlying health issues – obesity Cost of diabetes by 2025 will outweigh the cost of cancer. How we live and what we eat is absolutely vital to our welfare, to our health and the health of the NHS in perpetuity.Secondly, the need for labour justice. The seasonal and agricultural workers who contribute so much to this industry deserve to be treated fairly, but it’s an area ripe for exploitation. The Clewer Initiative is a partner of the Church of England, working within all 42 of our dioceses where it seeks to combat modern slavery in all its forms. They have developed an app, the Farm Work Welfare app, to help combat labour exploitation and modern slavery in the rural and fresh produce supply chains, where people – businesses, locals or workers, can flag concerns or seek help if they suspect there is exploitation going on. It educates worker about their rights, and provides farmers and growers with information and tools to combat this evil[4]. Thirdly, climate justice. We’ve already mentioned the Net-0 commitments and the need to cut our emissions. We will need to eat locally, seasonally and more consciously. We need to cut our food waste - household food waste costs over £19 billion a year in the UK, emitting over 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gases.[5]We will need to develop and adopt new technology and take advantage of opportunities to produce renewable energy.Some fascinating scientific developments are pointing us towards more climate friendly and efficient production, like technology that monitors in high fidelity the nitrogen content of soil [6], or genome editing which can increase the efficiency of cows’ milk production [7].Lastly, economic justice for rural areas. This includes the need for affordable housing, education centres, schools, broadband and other opportunities to learn and do business.Earlier this year the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, set up by myself and ++Stephen Cottrell, issued their report. They focussed on the vital importance of building not just housing, but community and looked at how church land might be used for the provision of affordable homes. They looked at a case study: Keswick Community Housing Trust in the Lake District [8], where local people were living in substandard housing, with unaffordable rents or being forced to commute long distances whilst property prices sky-rocketed, many being sold as second homes or holiday lets. In that situation, the Church worked with partners to form a Community Land Trust, to provide affordable homes in perpetuity (and affordable according to local earnings, not market rates!).Research from English Rural, a non-profit housing association in rural communitieswhich has partnered with the church on multiple projects] suggests that investing in affordable rural housing is key if we want to ‘level up and turbo-charge the rural economy’[9]We have not even begun to feel the fallout yet of population moves resulting from the pandemic and high costs of living in the city. We need to ensure that rural communities are not priced out of their homes, to make sure there is sufficient affordable housing that supports stable communities.Relationship:This leads us on nicely to the urban/rural relationship. We need to encourage urban communities to understand better the value rural Britain offers, the challenges they face, and what is behind the food on their plates. There is often so much ignorance about the realities of farming and rural life.But it’s not just urban/rural relationships that need support. The lack of social interaction recently has taken its toll on so many of us. For rural communities, where village shows and livestock markets are so often a chance to chat and interact with others, the loss of this time has been really difficult. To have flourishing communities and community generation, you need something that provides life and health within that community– churches, schools, Further Education colleges, businesses and skills development. All of these hubs need to be supported and accessible for local communities.65% of Church of England churches and 66% of our parishes are in rural areas of England. [10] The Church of England has agricultural chaplains - and just appointed a first Hedgerow chaplain! [11] - connecting people with rural areas on their doorstep.I want to take this opportunity to say that the local church is there for everyone in the parish, whether they are a church goer or not, and are intimately bound up in the community. This is a challenge to and for the church as to how we ensure churches in rural areas flourish and support local communities. We need to change, to reclaim the vision of being not only the Church of England, but also the Church for England, every part, rural and urban. It cannot be achieved only by spreading clergy more thinly.When we are unable to be face to face, rural communities need proper communications infrastructure to enable them to be connected for business and social interaction.During the pandemic, the need for WiFi became a necessity, for work, for school, even just for staying in touch with friends, family and neighbours. A communications infrastructure company called WiSpire, founded by the Diocese of Norfolk, aims to provide better broadband service to rural areas, using parish church towers amongst other things to deliver high speed wireless internet access. [12] So that’s relationship and community at home, but farming communities also need to be at the forefront as we forge new and maintain current relationships abroad.Making the most of the overseas market post Brexit is crucial. We need to get our trade deals right to protect the world-class British standards of farming - bad deals risk exporting environmental and animal welfare harms and destroying farmers livelihoods.Government needs to partner with farmers to build global ambition and increase the British food brand identity across the world to grow global markets.The new Agriculture Act means there is an opportunity for British farming to become a global leader in sustainable, climate-friendly, high-standard food production.The reach of the NFU is not just in the local communities and the farmers it represents, it’s global. Now is the time to harness these challenges, from the local to the global level, and transform them into opportunities.To grow you don’t make sharp turns: you do progressive change embedded in virtues and traditions.That turn is initiated through relationships - not policy or large radical changes, but by gently knowing someone and suggesting something.Both the church and the farmers have been in this country for centuries, and we plan, God willing, to be here for centuries more. If this country wants to be a leader in the 21st century it will need to take a leaf out of the farming communities’ book, characterised by adaptability, resilience and, above all, hope and a bit of faith.God tells us that he is with us in all seasons, of feasting, fasting, of sowing and reaping, and in fallow times.We can put down firm roots in values and communities, and those roots enable us to be resilient and flexible when any storms come. They are what will help us - the country, our farming communities and the church - to be ambitious & innovative as things change.That way we can ensure we fulfil our potential and flourish together, as the farming industry cares for our wellbeing, our environment and our economy for many years to come.
Schools in England will be required to keep uniform costs down from next autumn by taking steps such as removing unnecessary branded items. Statutory guidance published by the Department for Education on Friday will instruct schools to ensure their uniform is affordable. Schools will be expected to have taken steps to follow the guidance before parents buy uniform for the academic year starting in September 2022.The school uniform bill, which makes guidance given to schools about the cost of uniform policies legally binding, was passed in April this year. It was first introduced by Labour MP Mike Amesbury and it received cross-party support. Under the guidance, schools will have to make sure second-hand uniforms are available. They will also be advised to keep branded uniform items to a minimum and encouraged to allow more high-street options, such as supermarket own-brand uniform. Mark Russell (see photo) chief executive of The Children’s Society, said: “For too many years the cost of school uniform has been a heavy financial burden on many families, causing money worries and even debt, so these new guidelines to make sure school uniforms are affordable are extremely welcome.” “Until now, too many parents have had to fork out for expensive branded items rather than cheaper alternatives, while having to cut back on essentials like food or heating. “So, we hope schools are able to start working with the guidance, which should ultimately make it much easier for families to kit out their children for school without breaking the bank.”Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said: “School uniform provides a sense of identity and community for children and young people, and should be a real source of pride. But it must never be a burden for parents or a barrier to pupils accessing education. “This new binding guidance will help to make uniforms far more affordable for families by driving costs down as we work hard to level up the country.” The guidance will require schools to use competitive and transparent contracts with suppliers, and to publish their uniform policy on their website.
The Revd Claire Lording from Pershore Benefice has praised the opportunities offered by LLF and encouraged others to get involved and to share with fellow parishioners the wealth and breadth of material covered by LLF LLF is a suite of resources exploring questions of human identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage, launched on 9 November 2020.The resources – which include a five-session video course for local groups – are designed to facilitate open, honest, and gracious learning and discussion among churchgoers across the country.The four churches that make up the Pershore Benefice are described as “middle of the road” by Revd Claire Lording. She said the churches were keen to get involved with LLF to “think more deeply about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.”The course was run for the benefit of the ministry team and then offered via Zoom to parishioners.Of the 14 people who took part in the course over the spring, Revd Claire Lording noticed an “increase in people’s ability to respect people who held a different opinion.“I was also really moved by how touched people were by the video stories. “Hearing real life people talking about their real-life relationships and experiences with a church made a difference to how people thought about what they believed.”She added: “It was an incredibly worthwhile process. “People felt liberated to be able to talk about these issues, realising that they had never talked about them with other people before, let alone to church people. “Participants spoke of it being a valuable exercise and educational. “They also felt strongly that everyone in church should take part in the course, especially as our congregations are becoming more diverse and because we wanted to be the best version of a welcoming church that we could be."
