HT Walton — Passion for Life

Holy Trinity Walton, Aylesbury, has long been a flourishing Evangelical Church. Since the 1860’s as a mission to workers on the nearby Grand Union Canal, it has grown disciples who wanted to make a difference in the world. It’s had various particular mountains to climb in the past few years. Not least among these has been a deeply problematic building.

People look at Victorian Churches and think they'll last for ever, but check the foundations first — often the Victorians rather skimped on these whilst reaching for the sky in rubble-filled knapped flint. This is a particularly serious problem when the ground underneath is dodgy as well, with underground streams and other chalky downland delights. Real architectural creativity and technological skill have gone into this project to make good some of the proboems about the site and existing building.

At one time the only option looked like a complete rebuild. Still, with inspirational leadership from Andrew Blyth, the Vicar, the building is now structurally sorted, with some real enhancements to the whole site tying things together and providing extra facilities for Ht’s many people and groups. There’s still substantial internal fitting out and reordering to be done, but the structural horror story is sorted. Like the best structural projects this one was tithed for overseas projects, and the local campaign to raise £900K has built new Churches in Pakistan and the Sudan, along with as other spin-off benefits.
The vibrant sense of hope, joy and community spirit in was overwhelming when I went to reopen the building the other week. We placed stones, as signs of faith and hope, in a well which has come to light under the new reception area — a rather symbolic unexpected find. So, for Walton, this year’s Christmas present is a structurally refurbed building for Church, playgroups, community organisations and passers by — I noticed a shower suite in what used to be the porch for the use of people off the streets.

With substantial new building of all kinds in the Holy Trinity parish, it’s good to see a flourishing, growing local parish Church doing what it’s there for with real passion, prayer and commitment. Get the internal relationships and processes working together, say your prayers, grow a culture of generosity, and very good things can happen...

Britwell Rising

Last time I was in St George’s Britwell, it was a building site. Last night I was there for baptism and confirmation, and The Princess Royal will be round to open the new Church formally next week. The new baptismal pool was in use, and the building performed really well packed out with 250 people. This project shows what can be accomplished with a lot of prayer, help from friends and some inspirational leadership from John Chorlton, vicar, and others. John has logged the various stages of building on YouTube.

The challenge with this kind of building is to accommodate all the various things that go on in a busy urban Church flexibly, but without it feeling like an old-fashioned scout hut. This means a conscious choice not to cut corners, to include various designated areas among a lot of versatile space, to include first class social infrastructure (WC’s, kitchens, etc), and not to skimp on materials. This last point was especially relevant at St George’s, because it had a 1960’s Church which had to come down because it was build of various miracle substances of the 1960’s, including Sick Concrete and asbestos. That all seems a long time ago now, and it’s especially good to see a growing congregation usually nudging three figures of a Sunday where all was, certainly in the early years of this century, blood and guts.

Two immediate thoughts struck me, seeing it all up and running:

1. Lighting makes an enormous difference to a building. This one has all sorts of bells and whistles built in, including solar power generation off the roof, and the ability to light the areas you are using properly brings the whole place alive in use, along with high quality wired-in services.
   
   
2. We often say, in new housing areas, “of course we shouldn’t be thinking of new build because the Church is people not buildings.” Theologically this is fine — we don’t need to build, but the half truth looks slightly hollow when you see first class building in a context that had been branded a failing estate. It may seem noble and somehow incarnational not to invest in buildings, but they can be endeavours that catalyse faith, generate as well as spend energy, and bring people together. It is also incarnational to invest sacrificially in an area’s renewal. Failing to consider at least the possibility of such investment in a challenging urban parish runs the risk of colluding with the whole culture of failure, grot and crappada that stalks the streets anyway. Christianity is not a religion, as much as a process of social and personal transformation, and it is good to see a distinctive sign of this transformation, corporately and concretely, at work on the streets.
   

Church Building and Building Church?

Outsiders often love Church buildings, where insiders often feel more of a love/hate thing about them. Insiders know all the pitfalls and challenges, as well as appreciating their place in the local skyline. It's been fascinating to spend two days with the Ecclesiastical Law Society, contemplating buildings as mission opportunities.

Sir Roy Strong sees no future for parish churches as mere museums or clubhouses, bottled up in formaldehyde. They have to engage everyone who relates to them to have a future; and if this means toilets, then so be it. He is interested in the long-term history of Churches before our eighteenth and nineteenth century forbears turned them into one day a week places. We need to recover a longer perspective; and be slightly careful about amenity societies and others, if they ever exercise power to comment without responsibility.

Charles Mynors and Richard Giles led us through legal and structural possibilities for buildings. I came away from Richard’s talk in particular feeling that where things sometimes go wrong is when congregations themselves lose the script about their worship. It’s a trap to engage architects before you know what you’re trying to achieve and why — results can be disappointingly muddled and incoherent.

Andrew Mottram and Paul Bayes then led us through the concept of buildings for mission. It’s mad to start with design, before you know what you’re trying to design. This comes back to the need for clear thinking from the outset. All sorts of people way beyond our conventional constituency are seeking out special, holy places in their lives. Look at those shrines you increasingly see lovingly kept see by the roadside, where people have died. When people oppose change, it’s easy to grumble about them — but what is God saying to us through them about where we need to be? People can be very positive about their parish churches, but not if they are only fitted for gathered communities with high exclusion thresholds various. he gave various examples of different groups relating to buildings in surprising ways, sometimes very positively and creatively.

Tonight? John Mummery, Justice of Appeal and Chairman of Tribunals under the Clergy Discipline Measure. Stern and thrilling stuff awaits, perhaps...

Interim ministry on the edge of eternity

I first visited SS Peter & Paul Dinton a while ago, to help out when David Cooke, its rector of 30 years (coterminous with 37 as Vicar of Stone), was ill. David was our last “lifetime freeholder” in Bucks, appointed before retirement ages came in. He’s now retired, and lives in Aylesbury. A fellow Francophile, he was away on the other side of the channel yesterday — not gloating about the rugby, I hope. That wouldn't be nice.

I was there yesterday to give new licences to David and Nancy Wallace, who are serving the nearest thing we've got to what Americans call interim ministry in Stone & Dinton. There’s massive expansion happening up the Stone end, and some realignment among the schools and in other ways to the South. The plan is that David & Nancy will hold things over the next year or two and help the benefice work through its geometry and future set-up with their deanery pastoral committee. David's got a long professional background (outside the Church) in change management. The knack will be to capture the best fruit of the last rector's long, faithful ministry, whilst scoping things afresh in a fast-changing bit of Bucks. It's a vibrant, resourceful and really friendly community, and I'm very positive that good will come of this.

The Wallaces led worship and I preached and relicensed them to the Deanery. Music was led by Christine (organ) and Ray (Drums) — a combination I've not experienced before. I wondered how that would sound, but it's amazing! To make it work you need two musicians with a high level of basic instinctive musicianship, who actually listen to each other! They've certainly got that in Stone.

Finally, on a rubberneck note, the building is utter joy for anybody with any historical imagination at all. For a start it’s got one of the finest outlooks in England. It's basically 13th century, but with a large and astonishingly well preserved Norman south door. This carries an amazing tympanium showing two dragons, eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one (St Michael?) brandishing a sword. Just opposite in the porch are the Village Stocks (the real thing — this isn’t a theme park — but thankfully retired.) I could go on about this place all day. As I was helping with the chalice, I noticed under my feet an early brass of 1424 — what they call treading where the saints have trod. There's a beautiful millennium window, at the top, and tapestry, with some fine Victorian glass froom the 1860’s. There’s an early seventeenth century pulpit. Oliver Cromwell worshipped here. His friend Simon Mayne, was lord of the manor, and Mayne's servant John Biggs is reputed to have been the executioner of King Charles I. There are one or two brilliant over-the-top eighteenth century memorials. I saw lovely work by the children in the Sunday school. It reminded me that to be the good shepherd Jesus has to be “numerate” — a nice bit of national curriculum speak!

I'm just going to end with a few snapshots, and sincere thanks to David & Nancy, and Tony who looked after me so well, and everybody else who left me awed by the privilege of being allowed to work in a place like that, with people like that...