Church Times Letter

'Nobody told Hilda that the boiler was fixed'

This St Gargoyle's cartoon appeared in the Church Times this week.

Our benefice made the National Press last week ....well may be that's a slight exaggeration  - my letter was published in the Church Times. I wrote it after our rather cold  (in temperature - not content) benefice day and in the light of the discussions on growing rural ministry that were to take place at General Synod last week.

Sir,

As the general synod discusses reform and renewal of the Church this week, I suggest that all this discussion will not throw light on how we are to cope with our beautiful rural churches and grow the Church at the same time.

We held a very successful benefice morning with our six churches, carrying out a healthy-church audit – to help shape the way forward for the Benefice. We ran it in one of our churches which could accommodate 60 people working at six long tables.

We turned the heating on to constant the day before (estimating that this was going to cost us £300 to get the church to a reasonable temperature – which it wasn’t). A wise ministry team member brought bags of blankets to wrap up our elderly congregation members. They just about survived.

For the Sunday morning services the temperature had dropped to 9 degrees again. We wouldn’t put babies or elderly people outside in this temperature; so why do we think they should have to endure church for an hour on a Sunday? I am fed up of freezing in church each Sunday (and I have six to choose from).

We are not a backward looking benefice as the church we were using has an award winning south aisle converted into a meeting room, kitchen and disable facilities. Our churches have worked hard to provide lavatories despite the cost. Our benefice cannot afford to rebuild the churches to make them energy efficient – nor, I expect, would we be allowed to. Nor do we have the luxury of church offices or halls.

So we cannot be surprised that the young families don’t want to leave their centrally heated houses and come to church regularly. We can provide activities, events and facilities to welcome them but we can’t keep them warm.

What do rural churches have to do to survive beyond being beautiful buildings? We had so much enthusiasm at the benefice morning, and yet we will always be defeated by our beautiful, cold buildings. You have to be very hardy to attend church here in rural Dorset!

Harriet Ryan

Benefice secretary to the Winterborne Valley and Milton Abbas Benefice
The Rectory
North Street