A conversation that explores how we shall now live and who it is that is our neighbour

Here's the sermon I shared at St Andrew’s Wickford this morning:

St Paul began a discussion when he stood before the Areopagus and spoke about an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god’ (Acts 17.22-31). The Areopagus was the rock of Ares in Athens, a centre of temples, cultural facilities and high court, and also the name of the council that originally served as the central governing body of Athens, but came to be the court with jurisdiction over cases of homicide and other serious crimes. In speaking to the Areopagus Paul was giving a guest lecture, whilst also being, in some senses, on trial.

Pope John Paul II likened the modern media to the New Areopagus, where Christian ideas needed to be explained and defended anew, against disbelief and the gold and silver idols of consumerism. Understanding how St Paul did so in the original Areopagus can assist in understanding how we might initiate or contribute to debate and dialogue in our own day and time, whether virtually or in person.

Paul began where people were by referring to the altar to an unknown god which was to be found amongst the cluster of temples around him. He didn’t criticize those to whom he was speaking. Instead, he commended the breadth of their engagement with religion. He didn’t tell them they were wrong by suggesting they were pagans worshipping the wrong god or gods. Instead, he overaccepted their religious story fitting it into the larger story of what he believed God was doing with the world. Nor did he dismiss their culture. Instead, he made it clear that he had heard and appreciated their poets by making connections between those poets and the message he had come to share. In these ways, he began a dialogue with them about the nature of faith and its engagement with their lives and culture. We read that some scoffed but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this’, and some joined him and became believers.

Paul was able to be in Athens because he had a trade – tentmaking – which enabled him to be supported financially as he travelled and which opened doors and provided contacts that might not otherwise have been open to him. In each place to which he travelled he formed new congregations led by those who came to faith. In each place that he visited he went to the synagogue and sought to speak with those at the heart of the Jewish community, but also welcomed those who were on the edge, often Gentiles, slaves and servants.

Over the past year we have been making use of the HeartEdge model of mission in this parish. It’s called the 4Cs – compassion, culture, commerce and congregation. It is a pattern for ministry that we share with other churches throughout the UK, and the world, through the movement to renew the church that is called HeartEdge. HeartEdge is about churches developing these 4Cs. Generating finance and impacting communities via social enterprise and commerce. Culture, in the form of art, music, performance, that re-imagines the Christian narrative for the present. Congregations that develop welcoming liturgies, worship, and day-to-day communal life while also addressing social need and community cohesion. Nurturing each of these is essential for renewal of the church.

HeartEdge churches are seeking to begin and develop a conversation with our communities and nations, as Paul sought to do in Athens. As one example, St Mark’s Church in Pennington, within the Diocese of Winchester, used their churchyard hedge as a site for yarn bombing to focus the attention of their community on Holocaust Memorial Day, Holy Week and Easter, and the VE Day anniversary. Organising online community events and services combined with the organisation of knitting and crochet work for the different yarnbombs placed St Mark’s at the heart of their community while connecting many who were isolated because of the Covid-19 lockdown. St Mark’s demonstrated that the boundaries of ‘church’ should be much more porous than they had previously imagined. Rachel Noel, the Vicar of St Mark’s, said she hoped that we will all get so used to worshipping with, and being led by, a variety of people, that we will always seek to find ways to include and value diversity and richness.

As with Paul in Athens and HeartEdge churches like St Mark’s Pennington, we are seeking to connect compassion, culture, commerce and congregation to draw all engaged in those forms of community into a conversation that explores how we shall now live and who it is that is our neighbour.

What we have done over the past year has begun a conversation where the ‘good news’ of community compassion and culture, with church at the heart and on the margins, can be heard and is being valued. We are inviting others to join that conversation, to have their say, so that the margins can speak to the centre that we might encounter God in everyone.

As we do so, we will together find a story which connects a series of otherwise inexplicable circumstances, begin to live in that story and then act our part within it. In this way, like those who joined Paul in Athens, we, too, may discover it is the story of what God is doing with the world that reveals where we are and what we are to do.

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Pissabed Prophet - Waspdrunk.

'How to Try', 'Growing online communities' & 'Faith in the future'

‘Living God’s Future Now’ describes a series of online seminars, discussions and presentations hosted by HeartEdge. They are designed to equip, encourage and energise church leaders, laypeople and enquirers alike, in areas such as preaching, growing a church, shifting online, deepening spirituality in a congregation and responding to social need.

‘How to Try’
17 and 18 June. 11am to 1pm (EST).

Design thinking is a process for creative problem-solving. Design thinking has a human-centered core. In other words, it encourages congregations to focus on the people they're serving, which leads to better experiences, ministries, and impact in our world. Harvard Business Review says that "design thinking works."

Learn and practice the core concepts of design thinking for a church setting from TryTank—the experimental lab for church growth and innovation.

They’ve designed this two-day workshop to give you a foundational, practical understanding of the essential design thinking skills and mindsets.

Register here: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07egqoqu2h880a7475&oseq=&c=&ch=.


Growing community online - Part 3:
Friday 19 June, 4.30pm (BST), livestreamed at the HeartEdge facebook page

Sally Hitchiner, Lorenzo Lebrija and Rachel Noel explore 'how to' build community online for churches.

Practical tips, stories, keeping in touch, sharing insights, finding support, promoting your services - via the mainstream press, and websites including 'ChurchNearYou' for the C-of-E, or across denominations Find a Church. With news of apps, websites and resources plus alternative approaches and structures. Watch the first two workshops at https://www.facebook.com/pg/theHeartEdge/videos/?ref=page_internal.

Sally Hitchiner is Associate Vicar for Ministry at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Her work includes liturgical and organisational aspects of the church. She currently leads ministry to the dispersed congregation of St Martin's via a confidential online community space and pastoral care groups. Sally set up an online Christian community as a university chaplain and founded the Diverse Church initiative with over 1000 participants across the UK. Diverse Church grew from one community to a community planting organisation, launching a new community of 60-100 Christians across the UK and Ireland each year.

Rev Rachel Noël, known locally as the Pink Vicar, Priest in Charge of Pennington Church, a HeartEdge church in the Diocese of Winchester, an estate church on the coast of the New Forest. Creative, artist, priest, contemplative, neurodiverse, leading a church that is flourishing online this season, and engaging deeply with the local community including through a large community yarn bomb of the Easter Story on the churchyard hedge.

Fr. Lorenzo Lebrija is founding director of the TryTank, the experimental Lab for church growth and innovation. He is responsible for the entire process of development and implementation of experiments for innovation in the church. (It's a staff of 1, so don't be that impressed!) Prior to launching TryTank, Lorenzo was the Chief Development Officer for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. He served as the Pastor on behalf of the Bishop at St. John's Episcopal Church in San Bernardino, CA, and as priest associate at St. Athanasius Episcopal Church at the Cathedral Centre of St. Paul in Los Angeles.


Faith in the future - Friday, June 19, 2020, 3:00 p.m. ET (8.00 p.m. BST)
Pay what you can (see link for details)
Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/webinar-faith-in-the-future-registration-106147760810.

What is the church of the future? Will church—as we know it—even exist? 

Author and noted futurist Bob Johansen, a distinguished fellow with the Institute for the Future, will join Dr. Lisa Kimball, the Associate Dean of Lifelong Learning at Virginia Theological Seminary to look at current trends, beyond those trends, possible disruptions, and why a new way of thinking is required for leaders of the church. 

Rather than a fearful future, we should embrace it as an opportunity for new spectrums of meaning-making. It’ll be a fascinating, yet practical, conversation where your questions will also be considered.

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C.O.B. - Chain Of Love.

Conrad Noel: Paycocke's House & Thaxted

Paycocke's House and Gardens is a stunning Tudor merchant's house in Coggeshall. Visiting Paycocke's and Thaxted forms a mini Conrad Noel pilgrimage.

In 1904 Paycocke’s was bought by Lord Noel Buxton, a direct descendant of the previous Buxton owners, who oversaw the restoration making the house as one again and returning it to what he believed was its original state.

This was an ambitious task that took 20 years to complete and during the restoration, Noel Buxton’s cousin Conrad Noel and his wife Miriam lived in the building rent free. Noel was born in Kew and as a boy was "incarcerated in two public schools", as he later wrote. He went as a student to Cambridge but only stayed for one year in which time he acquired the Socialist beliefs that shaped the whole of his subsequent career. His early career was chequered; he was initially refused ordination because of his political beliefs and in 1906, with Reverend Percy Widdrington and others, formed the Church Socialist League.

Noel described living on a building site yet being enthralled by the new discoveries that were continually being made: "We lived in an atmosphere of dust and white-wash and broken plaster." Miriam was an extremely keen gardener and whiled away many hours in the little garden which stretched down to the river. Inspired by the contemporary Arts & Crafts movement, she set out the entire garden in that style, installing a central path, a circular feature, stepped terraces, a writing shelter and a dovecote. The site even included a tennis court.

By 1910 the main restoration work on the house had been completed and that year Noel was appointed by the Countess of Warwick to the living of Thaxted, remaining its vicar until his death in 1942. In this rather remote corner of Essex, Noel preached his own version of Socialism and the Anglo-Catholic gospel. He brought life and controversy to the town though his outspoken political views and his enthusiastic encouragement of music and traditional rural customs.

Despite his patron's hope that he would use Thaxted as a base from which to propagate their shared socialist beliefs to a countrywide audience, Noel remained stubbornly faithful to and diligent in his work for the people of his parish, refusing her wishes that he should preach the gospel at large by "careering up and down the country giving Socialist lectures" as he later described it. In 1911 he was a founding member of the British Socialist Party but left it in 1918 to found the Catholic Crusade. He was also a member of the Independent Labour Party. But, for Noel, the parish was always the focal point of the priest's work, though his Catholic Crusade did carry his ideas to a wider public. 

A major event in Noel's life for which he is well-remembered was the "Battle of the Flags". As he later wrote, in Thaxted "we date everything from before or after the Battle of the Flags". Towards the end of the First World War he displayed in Thaxted Church the Sinn Fein flag, the Red Flag and the flag of St George, each of which was provocative and anti-establishment. Noel looked upon the Union Jack as the emblem of Britain’s "cruel exploitation" of the peoples of its Empire. With the rise of post-war Irish and labour troubles feelings polarised, and in 1921 a "battle" broke out, bringing Thaxted and its "Red Vicar" national notoriety. Cambridge students journeyed to Thaxted and ceremoniously pulled down the flags. Fighting broke out inside the Church and there were other disturbances. Questions were asked in Parliament and Noel was accused of sedition. Eventually, a Church of England consistory court was convened and Noel complied with its order to remove the flags.

Noel was a man of enormous charisma, energy and talent, all of which he brought to bear in making Thaxted a centre of religious, political and cultural activity, the last in particular for the English Arts and Crafts movement. His insistence that Christianity was about beauty and ritual attracted well-known artists and musicians to Thaxted, which became a place where folk traditions were encouraged. Noel was a strong influence on Gustav Holst during the years that the composer lived in Thaxted.

In 1923 Holst spent a summer at Paycocke’s House with his family. Having suffered a personal injury, Gustav saw Paycocke’s as the perfect retreat to recuperate in the country. His daughter, 16-year-old Imogen, spoke of her stay in letters to her school friend: 'This house is absolutely too wonderful for words...it is a dream. And it is great fun living in a dream...The house is supped to be the best example of the period in the whole of England, and artists and architects make pilgrimages from all over the country to see it. We are tremendously proud of it, and as it isn’t our own we can swank about it to our heart’s content.'

Under the influence of Noel and his wife Miriam, musical festivals, folkloric gatherings, maypole and Morris dancing all became part of local life. The Noels were experts in these traditions and encouraged everyone to be part of these activities. A folk revival was happening across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Morris Ring, the national organisation, was founded at a meeting in the town in 1934. English Morris Dancing still sees Thaxted as its home and the town boasts the country's oldest continuous existing 'side'.

Noel loved the medieval poem ‘The General Dance’, also known as ‘Tomorrow Shall be my Dancing Day’, and sometimes read it from the pulpit instead of giving a sermon. The poem describes the ministry of Christ as a dance, to which will call his ‘true love’, Christian believers who will dance with him in joy. Holst composed a new setting for Noel, dedicated to him as a birthday gift. 

A version of The General Dance can be found in the church in coloured manuscript, framed in carved wood. It hangs over the chest by the entrance door. This chest was carved by Arthur Brown, with panels, beginning with the preaching of the Gospel from Thaxted pulpit, resulting in the treading down of dynasties and crowns; the hammer and sickle adorn the third panel, the symbol of artisans and labourers coming into their own, and the fourth panel represents the music of the spheres, which will be the music of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. On this hutch rest the delicately shaped “Praying Hands” by Eric Kennington, flanked by two shapely candles in black.

When Noel died in July 1942, he was buried in the churchyard, close to the high altar inside the church. Inside, he is remembered by a bronze head in the crossing, facing the high altar. His tombstone carries the words "He loved justice and hated oppression".

Noel's legacy continues with Thaxted Morris and the Thaxted Festival. In 1951 his legacy also led to Thaxted being part of the fortnight-long Three Villages Festival for the Festival of Britain. The Essex Rural Community Council chose the three Festival villages in Essex with care. Great Bardfield had been an artists’ colony since Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden fell on it in the early 1930s; Finchingfield, with its archetypal village green, was full of ‘theatrical settlers’ such as Val Gielgud (and Dodie Smith); Thaxted prided itself on its musical life, since Holst had lived there and Noel held concerts in his luminous, lofty medieval wool church.

Today Thaxted Church has a thickly textured monochrome moon portrait by Stanley Clifford-Smith who painted many religious works and was greatly influenced by the French expressionist Georges Rouault. Clifford-Smith was an active member of the Great Bardfield Artists community during the mid to late 1950s and became the Honorary Secretary of the group.

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Gustav Holst - Thaxted.