The Rector Writes – April 2010
Dear Friends
You will be familiar with Aesop’s story of The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’. A young shepherd enjoyed observing the panic which was caused by shouting out that there was a wolf coming so much that he did it too often, with the result that when there really was a wolf no one took him seriously and the wolf destroyed the flock.
Over the past few years I have felt like that boy whenever I have raised the hopes of the congregation at Emmanuel, our daughter church in Pen-y-Ffordd, over the prospect of improving the facilities there. Now it does seem that the sale of the land behind the church is proceeding, and contracts should have been exchanged by the time you read this.
The land will be used for building social housing on – starter-home flats in this instance, with semi-detached housing on the adjacent land being sold by Flintshire County Council Housing Department. Work to extend the church slightly and modernise the building is due to commence in the summer.
People sometimes ask me what I do with my time, obviously thinking that my work is limited to taking services on a Sunday and activities related to these. I have thought of offering a series about various aspects of my work, and I will begin with the following.
In November 2003 our former Bishop, the Right Reverend John Davies, invited me to become the first Area Dean of the newly-formed deanery of Hawarden, which consists of the parishes of Bistre, Buckley, Hawarden, Hope and Shotton. This was for an initial period of five years and I am about to hand over these responsibilities to the vicar of Bistre, the Rev’d Martin Batchelor.
The aspect of this work which was most demanding I also found most gratifying, in that caring for a vacant parish required extra effort but it also gave me the stimulus of working with different groups of people who conducted themselves in different ways. I was heartened by the enormous amount of goodwill extended by both retired clergy and officers, such as church wardens. These often only required a prompt reply to their queries for them to continue with the task of running a church before the appointment of their new vicar.
I like to think that there was a benefit to our congregations in that sometimes I would take services in the vacant parish whilst the clergy who would have gone there came here, so offering a variety of styles of preaching and leading worship. In all cases our efforts were rewarded by the appointment of excellent incumbents who were well worth waiting for.
Church members often have less understanding of the deanery. They know about the parish, with its own vicar or rector, and they appreciate the diocese, presided over by the bishop, but they cannot so well comprehend what the deanery is for. Month by month the clergy of the deanery meet together for mutual support under the Area Dean, who is a first-among-equals. Three or four times a year representatives of the parishes in the deanery meet to discuss matters of mutual concern at the Deanery Conference.
The deanery may organise events which no parish on its own could justify, such as the Fresh Expressions Vision Day two years ago or the training day for those responsible for leading and preparing all-age worship last year. The annual Lent Talks are another example – no parish would be likely to offer sufficient support for some of our visiting speakers to travel so far.
For completeness I could add that our diocese is divided into three Archdeaconries, which are presided over by an archdeacon, but the only people to be aware of this in parishes are church wardens who attend the archdeacon’s visitation, when they sign up for the coming year’s duties.
As you may have read in the Bishop’s letter in the diocesan magazine, Teulu Asaph, I have been invited to accept the post of Diocesan Ecumenical Officer. I take this as a great privilege as I will be representing the diocese, if not the Church in Wales in some respects, amongst members of the wider Church.
My predecessor has observed that each of her predecessors has had their own emphases, and time will prove what mine will be, but judging by the past, I will give as much priority to working with independent churches as with established denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and Baptists. I envisage that my contact with other traditions will contribute at least as much to my ministry in this parish as it takes.
Yours sincerely
Martin Snellgrove