October Meeting

Ministry on the Edge: Rural Ministry in the Urban Shadow / Urban ministry and the rural hinterland

Tuesday, 30th October 2012

NOTE:  NOW at Colden Common Vicarage - see directions below

11.30am until 3.00pm

A warm invitation to share in a Hampshire Rural Group (HRG) discussion prompted by the issues raised in Archbishop Rowan Williams' Theological Reflection on the essays in Changing Rural Life: A Christian response to key rural issues, ed Jeremy Martineau, Leslie J Francis and Peter, Francis (Canterbury Press, 2004).

The text is available to download here (pdf, 767 KB).

Previous HRG discussions have noted differences between rural and urban/suburban/town ministry. Relationships are built in different ways in suburban and rural churches. Worries in different types of churches reveal the theology being applied: the minister who acts as chaplain to the congregation may be anxious about church numbers –  such a church may become event-driven in order to generate visible growth. Many villages report an increasing influx of urban/suburban migrants, some of whom do not ‘understand village life’. But we have also recognised that people are people, and ministry is ministry in whatever setting, and there will be many common features in churches urban and rural across our county. There is individualism in every setting.

Rowan Williams urges that the rural church's insights are needed to complement and enrich those of the urban. "The most basic question that has to be addressed by the Church in the countryside is how is it equipped both to hear and to communicate good news. ... That is to say, no bit of the Church is going to know everything about the gift of God in Christ: the challenge is to manage the variety of human context and experience in the Church in such a way that it becomes a sharing of Christ with one another and so with the wider world."

All are welcome. It would be particularly good to have representatives of urban / suburban / town churches which are in mixed urban/rural economy benefices.

To get to the Vicarage at Colden Common, approaching from Twyford on B3354, passing Holy Trinity church on your left, there is the old school car park on the right, just past the church, on the other side of the road.  Please park in the old school car-park, cross the road, and enter a track that has its entrance between the telegraph pole and the bus stop.  About 20m along the track branch left into the Vicarage gate.  For sat-nav users the post code is SO21 1TL and house number 157.

Our host is:-
Rev'd Jonah Watts,Vicar of Twyford, Owslebury, Morestead and Colden Common,
The Vicarage, Main Road,Colden Common,
Winchester, HantsSO21 1TL

01962 711216

If you are coming, please let the convener know for catering purposes:
Canon Martin Coppen,   01264 738308   church@1and3.org.uk

Bring your own lunch: drinks will be provided.