Parish Stories

The discussions we've been having for a while about encouraging vocations in churches which aren't quite from the Evangelical end of the spectrum bore some fruit yesterday when a group of clergy and laypeople gathered at a church not far from Swanvale Halt for a mini-conference, as we'd decided, not based around the model of plucking out likely victims who their incumbents think might have a vocation to do this or that, but to encourage the whole people of God in their missionary life. My role was to give a presentation thinking about the relationship between faith and locality. 

I started with Fr Wilson and the way he felt, and taught, about Haggerston, and rampaged through a book from last year Marion the curate lent me, Revd Andrew Rumsey's Parish, examining exactly the area I wanted to think about. I added a set of thoughts about how the doctrine of the Incarnation affects the way Christians, especially from the Catholic tradition, think about what they are doing in their mission, and how it provides a grounding for an approach to the idea of place and the local church community. We aren't called to have the kind of utter, absolute commitment to place and people as contemplative religious are (I gave the Sisters of West Malling as an example), but we are called to have something like that commitment, and to discover our spiritual identity through those attachments and relationships. I was told after I'd finished how radical the idea is; it shouldn't be, as it's no more than what people actually do, but to say it does row against the tide of the modern world, and, very often, of the modern Church. Everyone seemed very taken by my thoughts but there were only about 30 people there; we'll see where it all goes.

Over coffee I wandered into one of the side chapels and noticed for the first time an engraving showing what it looked like in 1841. In the background, if you look carefully, there is just visible a Doom painting on the arch: on the left, souls being weighed by St Michael the archangel, and to the right hand those found wanting being ushered Hellwards by devils. 

Now, the whole church is painted white, bleak and chill. What happened to the Doom, I asked the incumbent? He told me that in about 1962 the plaster in the chapel was flaking and stained by bat poo. The churchwardens and incumbent at the time decided that the most cost-effective way of proceeding was to scrape all the plaster off, throw it away, and paint the walls with white emulsion, which is how, after at least seven centuries, the Doom met its doom. Now all that remains is a couple of curlicues spiralling down one of the stone ribs of the roof. 'I have often had reason to rail against the diocesan authorities responsible for authorising changes to churches,' said the vicar, 'but I can see why we have them.'