Celebration, led by the Bishop of Bedford, to inaugurate the new
Ouzel Valley Team Ministry at
St Barnabas Linslade. This has involved the parish
leaving our diocese and going into St Albans. The County boundary changed in 1966, and it’s plainly been the right way to go. Church Property shootouts are fun, but we don’t really do turf wars over here.
The pre-1966 county boundary had its uses, though. Someone was telling me that the licensing hours were different in Buckinghamshire to Bedfordshire, and people used to nip across the river our way to get another pint in at closing time!
St Barnabas serves what the Victorians used to call an artisan parish. There’s a sad First World War memorial. A lot of “pals” joined up together from the Church, leaving a dirty great long list of names, and two crosses on the wall from the original field graves of a choirman and one of the servers, killed in 1918. On a brighter note I was once preaching there of a Sunday morning and someone said to afterwards, “You know what, bishop? You’d make quite a good vicar!” — which I took as a real compliment.
It was a great joy to thank people for 162 years of faithful life and service in our diocese (it was Lincoln until 1846) with all its ups and downs, and to share the parish’s joy, offering love and prayers as it embraces a new future. During the service +Richard licensed Fr Bernard Minton to the new team ministry. Sadly Bishop Christopher of St Albans was ill and unable to be with us, so it was just +Richard and me. Having paid good money to see the three wise monkeys, all people got was the two stooges!
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Joy at the weekend to join over 2,000 in the Abbey to welcome Alan Smith, new Bishop of St Albans, my new episcopal next door neighbour. The sun shined as we all packed into St Albans Cathedral, site of the earliest Christian martyrdom in England.
One local paper caught Saturday’s celebration nicely. Thousands of joyful people celebrating together is of zero interest to most English media, who have their own agendas to pursue, but it is an amazing enterprise and tremendously moving to be part of such a thing. Jeffrey John and colleagues did the whole do proud — no mean achievement. It was an icon of the civil society that we take for granted, in the same way as we tend to assume all the wiring in our homes is there and works, without anyone having to pay any attention to it. In a way that's the whole idea, but it’s fascinating to see it all laid out in one place.
Bishop Alan spoke of the Church as a community of ordinary people, stirred by a willingnes to go deeper into God to do extraordinary things that make for a life based on generosity and care. It is this that transforms communities and makes disciples. It isn’t about institutions and empire building, but personal renewal and hope — discovering a different resource for life. At the end of the service balloons were released in prayer and blessing for the City and counties of the diocese. With no sudden release of helium indoors, we did not get to hear 2,000 people sounding like Mickey Mouse, but then you can’t have everything...
