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Planting for growth: new ideas for countryside churches

26 October 2006

 

Churches in the countryside should consider setting up farmers’ markets and using school buildings after hours to organise café-style events to reach out to rural communities, argues a new book released today by the Church of England.

It comes a week after a report supported by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs showed that vibrant rural communities are sustained and enhanced by the actions of people of faith.

Mission-shaped and Rural, written by the Revd Sally Gaze, sheds light on how traditional models of the Church’s work in the countryside should be complemented by emerging forms of ministry in order to meet the needs of today’s rural communities.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has praised the book’s insights: “Rural faith today is in the process of finding its own distinctive voice in a climate of enormous cultural change and economic challenge. In this informed and inspiring guide Sally Gaze affirms the distinctive and complex quality of rural life today while courageously exploring new possibilities for ministry.”

Mission-Shaped Church, first published in 2005, has already been credited with sales of more than 20,000 copies – a record-breaking number for a non-liturgical Church of England publication. This follow-up book seeks to transform the aspirations of the original report into further reflection and recommended actions specifically for those engaged in rural ministry. This contribution to the debate, following the publication of Mission-shaped Children earlier this year, marks another important step in the Church of England’s approach to mission through creating a ‘mixed economy’ Church where ‘fresh expressions’ of being church are developed alongside more traditional models.

Sally Gaze, team rector of a number of parishes in Norfolk, draws on her decade of experience in rural ministry to survey recent periods of “substantial and unsettling change” in the countryside, driven both by major national crises in the agricultural sector and changing patterns of population and tourism. Against this backdrop, Sally urges today’s Church to ‘prune the vine to bear more fruit’, in a ‘careful, prayerful, and discerning’ way, in a direct challenge to increase the use of church buildings for a range of purposes other than worship and to reconsider elements of existing church structures such as multi-parish benefices.

Through a range of case studies illustrating new worshipping communities - such as mid-week Communion services in local pubs - Sally also vividly demonstrates how rural churches are challenging stereotypes: “Country parishes are often perceived as more traditional in outlook than those in cities but my experience suggests that there are many examples of rural churches creatively using their slim resources to help serve their surrounding communities,” she says.

Mission-shaped and Rural: growing churches in the countryside (ISBN 0-7151-4084-1) is priced £7.99 and available from Christian bookshops including Church House Bookshop, 31 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BN, tel. 020-7898 1300, e mail bookshop@c-of-e.org.uk, or on the web (mail order available).