the Parish of St thomas' Brampton, Chesterfield

St Thomas' Brampton and St Peter's Holymoorside, Chesterfield

Rector's Letter February 1981-January 1982

Our vision statement: Sharing the love of Jesus

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The Rector's letter is printed in each edition of the Church Magazine

February/March 1981	April/May 1981
August/September 1981	December 1981/January1982

February/March 1981

1981 is a year of Jubilee for St. Thomas.

The Parish Church was opened for worship in July 1831 and consecrated by the Bishop of Lichfield, of whose diocese Chesterfield was then a part, in August 1832. From autumn of this year to the summer of next year celebrations will be held to mark the 150th anniversary of St. Thomas' Church.

Jubilee will be proclaimed on Saturday, September 19th. A festal service at 3 p.m. will be followed by tea in an adjoining marquee. The Bishop of Repton will preach at the service; and the Duke of Devonshire, whose predecessor laid the foundation stone in 1830, hopes to attend.

The season of festivities will end with a parish Eucharist on the eve of St. Thomas' Day, Friday July 2nd 1982, when the Bishop of Derby, in which diocese we are now included, will preside.

During this nine month period of jubilee we plan to celebrate the life of the parish in all its aspects. The parish church no longer has such great significance for people as it did in the 1830's; but it remains the church of the people, not just the meeting place of those who are its committed members.

God is not merely the God of the Church and of Christians; he is the God of all creation, of all people, all life. Um celebrations will not therefore be confined to churchy things of concern to the congregation only, but will embrace the whole life of the district.

The arts will feature prominently in the festive programme, and a number of musical and dramatic items have been arranged. Events featuring painting, parish history, local industry and the schools are also planned.

And what of the church building itself? In the past, each successive genera¬tion has had the courage to modify the building to meet the needs of the day; when that process ceases, the church itself will die, for evolution and adaptation are essential to survival. Dare we celebrate the 150th anniversary by asking the questions: what is the appropriate use for a parish church building in the closing years of the 20th century? How can we provide a building that meets the needs of `the next fifty years?

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the February 1981 edition of the magazine

April/May 1981

'Now listen to me, you that say, 'Today or tomorrow we will travel to a certain city where we will stay a year and go into business and make a lot of money'.

You don't even know what your life tomorrow will be....What you should say is, 'If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that'.

Good, pious, old-fashioned stuff, that quote from the epistle of St. James but hardly in keeping with the mood of twentieth century man. In time past no God fearing person would presume to write about his plans for the future without obeying the biblical conjunction literally by adding the qualification "d.v." - deo volente, God willing. Not to do so would be to tempt providence. Anyone who follows this practice today risks being thought a sanctimonious ass. Yet there comes a time for most of us when we find ourselves abruptly confronted by the stark reality of the truth which James was impressing on his readers: that we are not quite so much in control of our lives as we like to think.

My moment of truth came recently. One day I was the busy parish clergyman, who enjoys perfect health, with exciting plans for the time ahead. The next day I found myself unceremoniously bundled into hospital, into the very ward I had seen parishioners suffer and die. There, with devastating swiftness, I was bedded down, plumbed in, and wired up to the electronic apparatus which gives a TV picture of how the heart is functioning.

The general idea, it appears, is that the heart should continue to beat - and keep nice time, to boot. If the picture on the telly degenerates into a straight line the alarm is given and the whole place erupts into a fury of disciplined activity as the combined energy and skills of all doctors and nurses within range are concentrated on saving a life. I know, because it happened while I was there - not to me, I rejoice to say, but to another patient. In this case the efforts of the staff were in vain; and one of the medical staff had the sad duty of breaking the news to the relatives waiting in the hall for visiting time.

I myself was duly assured that there had been no heart-attack - only something called angina, which appears to be rather like what happens to the car when the carburetor has a clogged main-jet. Not enough juice can get through to provide the power needed. An inconvenience: but not necessarily a disability. So it looks as though the good folk of St. Thomas' parish will be saddled with me for a little while longer.

The chap who has declared his intention not to come back to Church while I am Rector will be disappointed; but the large number of messages of good will encourages me to think that there are many who will be content enough. My heart¬felt thanks to all our readers for their prayers and good wishes.

As I was trundled in a wheelchair out into a snowstorm to go to X-ray, I was reminded that Chesterfield Royal Hospital is tatty, antiquated and inconvenient for the staff, who surely can't wait to get into the new buildings at Hady. And that led me to reflect on the affluence which we now take for granted as we fulminate against anything which may be regarded as diminishing our 'standard of living'. There are many countries in the world where the best medical attention available to most of the population consists of a few sheds with mud floors, where one doctor assisted by a couple of half-trained orderlies minister as best they can to the needs of those patients who have managed to survive the 50-mile journey on foot.

After leaving the heart unit I was transferred to a single ward. It had two windows; one looked out at the College of Further Education, the other overlooked the mortuary. I could look in one direction and contemplate the hive of activity at the tech: layer upon layer of cells, lecture roams where young people were preparing themselves for a career, their lives ahead of them. Or I could gaze through the other window and consider the mortuary with its store of lifeless corpses; and from time to time the rattle of the trolley would announce another customer for the cold store.

So nicely poised between life's beginning and its end, I was ideally placed to reflect on my own. That is the great opportunity of an enforced stay in hospital: it concentrates the mind wonderfully, enabling the patient to get life into perspective: to desist from the proud and futile business of worrying about the future (which is beyond his grasp) and the past (which is unalterable) and to live in the only time where the opportunity for choice exists - the present moment.

Living is a matter of becoming one's true self in the present moment: of responding to the voice of God as he speaks to me through the circumstances of each successive now. For there is no doubt that he is speaking, and speaking word of love. The central truth of the Christian faith is the cross and resurrection of Jesus: that event which demonstrates once and for all that God is Master of every situation, and that he speaks through every situation.

Probably the greatest step forward which anyone takes in the life of faith comes when he begins to grasp that everything that happens to him becomes the will of God for him if he can accept it as such. The abandonment to the divine providence (to use the phrase of the 18th century spiritual teacher de Crusade) makes every successive present moment a sacrament in which God gives himself to us in love.

And what was God saying to me? That is something which I may be able to interpret to others in the course of time, when I have understood the message more clearly and done my best to obey. Certainly, something about priorities: priorities of living - being is more important than doing; priorities in my daily programme - time must be made for leisure and reading, and of course for prayer; priorities in ministry - there must be the wisdom to distinguish the important from the unimportant things, and the courage sometimes to refuse to fulfil people's expectations and demands.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the April 1981 edition of the magazine

June/July 1981

No 'Rector's Letter' in this edition

August/September 1981

Marriage

This month's theme is marriage; of that there can be no doubt. The royal wedding has added a welcome dash of colour to the drab canvas of contemporary events; but I'm not thinking only of that. There have been two other significant happenings. A few weeks ago, the church of England's General Synod decided that, under certain circumstances, divorced people could be remarried in church. And, nearer home, the Bishop of Repton, Stephen Verney, who is a widower, created quite a sensation by announcing his marriage to a woman who had been divorced. (The bride is a Baptist, and the marriage took place in her church.)

It is a sad prediction that most of us, having used the royal wedding for our own enjoyment, will now begin to take the marriage for granted, expecting Prince Charles to be constantly available, adapting to any situation and saying exactly the right thing on every occasion: and expecting Lady Diana to be consistently pleasant and charming.

Charles has learnt, and Diana will soon learn the accomplishment which all the Royals must acquire: like good clowns, they must look happy even when they feel grim. And there will be times when they fell grim - especially when their marriage isn't going very well. In the fairy tales, the prince and the princess get married and live happily ever after.

In real life a royal couple are at even greater risk than the rest of us - and that's saying something. The difference in age and in life experience, the aloneness, the tyrannical demands of public service will not make life any easier for Charles and Diana. Nothing will equip our future King and Queen for their task better than a happy marriage; and nothing will cripple them more severely than marital stress. The Prince and his bride need the prayers of all men and women of faith during the years ahead, and the 'state prayers' in church can take on a new and urgent meaning.

The Church of England's attitude to remarriage after divorce has been more rigorous than that of any other Christian Church. The 'Free' churches allow the remarriage of divorced people under certain circumstances; and the Roman Catholic Church, while asserting that marriage is indissoluble, gets round the problem by finding reasons to 'annul' a marriage - that is, to declare that the marriage wasn't valid in the first place. The Church of England alone has given an unequivocal 'no' to those who seek remarriage in church.

Until now, the Church of England's position has been confused. While the majority of its teachers agree that a marriage can become 'dead', and acknowledge that often a second marriage can succeed and may be 'blessed by God' , the Church's law-making body, General Synod, has consistently voted against allowing remarriage in church on the ground that to do so would compromise the Church's witness to the life-long nature of marriage.

Meanwhile, the divorce rate in this country has increased alarmingly and is now the highest in Europe. It hardly seems, therefore, as though the Church of England's policy has had the desired effect. What it undoubtedly has done is to create the impression that the Church is unsympathetic towards marital difficulty and judgmental towards divorced people.

I constantly despair to see how people whose marriages are in trouble are reluctant to seek out their minister and share the problem with him. More often than not, I don't hear about the problem until it's too late to do anything to help. I believe that many people have a feeling in their bones that the church condemns them. This feeling is reinforced when a couple, one or both of whom have been divorced, come to me to ask to be remarried in church, and I have to say that my church does not allow me to do it. The situation is complicated by the fact that they probably know that there are some clergy who exercise their right in law to conduct remarriages of divorced people in defiance of their own Church's ruling, and they can't see why 'I should do the same for them'. I am sure that sometimes a couple in this situation feel that I am discriminating against them and acquire a grudge against the Church.

Not only does the Church give the impression of being unsympathetic; it also gives a hint of hypocrisy. Although the divorced may not be remarried in church, there are few clergy who are not willing to conduct a 'service of blessing' after the civil ceremony. Here is a flagrant example of double-think. What we are implying is that to have the legal ceremony in the register office and the blessing in church is O.K., but to have both the legal ceremony and the blessing (that is, the marriage service) in church is not.

I for one feel that this attempt to have one's cake and eat it is a threat to my integrity.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the August 1981 edition of the magazine

October1981/November1981

No 'Rector's Letter' in this edition

December 1981/January 1982

My Dear Friends,
Well, you haven't seen me start an article like that before, have you? Quite like the old-fashioned parish magazine - the butt of the journalist's jokes. There was that awful occasion when an earnest Vicar began his monthly letter like that; but when the parish magazine came out, the 'r' .had been left out of the word 'friends' The Vicar protested that it was a misprint; but others wickedly suggested that it was a Freudian slip. (You see, I'm even adopting the 'dotty' style - that comes from too much reading of the Derbyshire Times).

But where was I? Ah, yes: My dear friends - Well, it is the run-up to Christmas - Advent, we call it in the church. Soon we shall all be caught up in the welter of celebration that is Christmas - the annual folk-festival of the English. May you and your family all have a really super time - I'm sure you will!

The trouble is that amid all the jollification it is difficult to reflect on that truth which the festival is supposed to celebrate.
"He came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all; And his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall.
With the poor, and weak, and lowly lived on earth our Saviour holy."

We are all children at heart. That is why the New Testament writers expressed the truth which they wanted to convey not in clever, philosophical propositions, but by homely stories about shepherds, wise men, and angels; and that is why Mrs. Alexander's hymn still speaks more clearly than the theologian's talk.

God is not just 'way out there: He is right here, in all the joys and sorrows of our lives:
"and he feeleth for our sadness,
and he shareth in our gladness."

In the slum quarter of Calcutta a little old lady works among the desperately poor people of that teeming city. In her hospice are many who are dying - Mother Teresa and her helpers care for these needy people with a devotion which never ceases to amaze those who visit her humble dwelling. The local people cannot really understand why this little community should want to take such trouble over people who have no hope of living more than a short time anyway, yet they recognise that here is Goodness: here is God.

Mother Teresa seeks no glory. Yet the glory of God is revealed in that humble house and shines throughout the length and breadth of the world. Here is Christmas - God becoming present in ordinary human situations.

So in all the extravagant spending and merrymaking of this season, try not to forget the Christ-child. How about a collection at your Christmas dinner for Mother Teresa? I shall be glad to forward it to the right quarter.

Gill and I send you our warmest greetings. And may 1982 be a year in which God leads us all closer to Himself.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the December 1981 edition of the magazine

Rector's Letters 1982