By the time you are reading this our Rector will have retired and moved to Newent but will no doubt continue to give ministry as time and invitations allow. Nine parishes means a lot of work and so I guess adverts for a new Priest will stress the positive side of country living rather than the long hours involved.
I hope that the new Rector is like our previous one a country cleric. I say this not because town clerics are not nice energetic people, but because they seem to have different views to those whose hearts are rooted in the countryside. Despite there being many things in common, differences between town and country can be enough to make living as neighbours harder than it need be.
My wife and I originated in Nottinghamshire but came to Gloucestershire via the USA forty odd years ago, and nowhere was the welcome as generous as when we moved to this benefice. Despite it being a cold December we were warmly welcomed into people’s homes. and encouraged to participate in the activities of the church, village hall and countryside. We held an open-house soon after arrival and joined the carol singers a week later. The following Spring a kindly farmer brought us some fine ewes and lambs, and our old life became a distant memory as each day brought new joys and our roots grew deeper into the rich red soil of this unique part of the County.
It is of course possible that the new Incumbent will be a hunting shooting & fishing type of the old school but that is unlikely. This means that he or she may need help with all kinds of country skills such as preparing rabbits and poultry, gutting fish, catching vermin, extracting honey and butchering lambs. Skills which were all acquired by recent clergy. Indeed, one local cleric and his wife from Somerset used to spend three weeks on the night shift during lambing for a church warden farmer of the parish. Another of the clergy was a farm manger who trained at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, prior to becoming a grain trader.
It is likely to be some time before a new Rector is installed and tradition dictates that during this interregnum, (now called a vacancy) the retiring Rector is not allowed to take services in any of her churches. This seems odd to me and although generally speaking I am in favour of traditions, there are times when I wonder if some of them are outmoded. This is one such occasion.
Talking of traditions and of attitudes being changed, takes my mind to St Paul and of how he travelled all around the Mediterranean teaching, healing and preaching. He frequently wrote letters to his new friends explaining how he had first trained as a Pharisee and had been a keen supporter of killing any follower of Jesus, but that his attitude towards them had changed so much, that he would himself be eventually killed because he was a Christian.
Paul lived at a time when there was not as much difference between the lifestyle and attitudes of townsfolk and countryfolk as there is now, and so it is interesting to speculate on what impact he might have were he to apply to become our new Rector. I wonder what modern Bishops would think of someone as independently minded as Paul. I doubt they would feel comfortable with him and I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t give them an oath of obedience.
Thinking about moving home and changing jobs however, reminds me of the time when early in our married life we had just bought a semi in a nice part of town, but then had to move unexpectedly when a place at college in the USA came up. In those days the Building Society gave us a small mortgage book into which a clerk entered each monthly payment, and when we sold the house the estate agent conducting the valuation looked in the book. His face took on a disapproving sneer as he totted up the figures and asked why we were asking £100 more than we had recently paid for it. His morally superior demeanour prompted me to reply that he could choose. He could sell it at cost with no commission or he could have his £100 fee and sell it at my price.
He took his money, and I broke even.
View from the Pew 