Welcome to the Benefice of St James The Great East Malling St John the Baptist Wateringbury St Peter and St Paul Teston

Welcome to the Benefice of St James The Great East Malling St John the Baptist Wateringbury St Peter and St Paul Teston

Welcome! Thank you for sparing the time to find out more about the Benefice and the opportunity to lead us spiritually. We hope you find much to interest you and please contact us if you would like any further information. Contact Clive Mansell Archdeacon of Tonbridge clive.mansell @rochester.anglican.org 01892 520660 Websites East Malling and Teston stjames.eastmalling.net Could it be you? 3 Who will flourish in this role 5 Worship in the Benefice 6 Working across the Benefice 7 Our schools 8 Our support 10 Where you will be 11 Parish profiles East Malling 12 Teston 14 Wateringbury 16 Services 18 Wateringbury wateringburychurch.org.uk 2

Could it be you? The Benefice of East Malling, Wateringbury and Teston is looking for a new vicar; could it be you? Our Churches show the world God s love through their roles at the heart of their vibrant village communities. The three Parishes form a coherent Benefice, whilst retaining the distinctive character of each Parish. East Malling, Teston and Wateringbury are beautiful English country villages in Kent that are close to London and Maidstone, the County Town. Walk into any of the Benefice Churches for a service and you will be greeted with a warm welcome and a bustle of activity as churchwardens, sidespeople, vergers, Sunday school leaders, readers, choir members, coffee servers and others prepare for our worship. As well as our Sunday services all three Churches are flourishing with occasional offices. These are far from being isolated rural parishes; rather they are dynamic, evolving communities where many people are attracted by the mix of village life and excellent communications. 3

Could it be you? We can offer our new vicar: active, engaged and enthusiastic congregations and communities with humour and an adventurous spirit, willing to work alongside our Ministry Leadership Team; loyal lay ministry and worship teams; amazing support, friendship and fellowship; strong and active PCCs; a modern four bedroom vicarage with a large garden; communities blessed with excellent local amenities, beautiful valleys, woods and rolling countryside; convenient, easy connections to London, the South East and the Continent; a variety of schools available locally including schools with strong Christian characters; good Deanery and Diocesan support; and it s said we have plenty of sunshine! 4

Who will flourish in this role Superman or Superwoman! Be under no illusion, this is a full-time calling requiring terrific reserves of infectious enthusiasm. It is also very do-able and is a deeply rewarding role that offers tremendous opportunities for a vicar to develop themselves and have a huge amount of fun. The Benefice has an open mind about who it is looking for; hopefully the following comments will help you discern whether this role will suit you. You are a prayerful person who asks for God s power to guide, support and heal the people in your parish and people everywhere. You are a man or woman who is called to engage at all levels of village life and help people in East Malling, Teston and Wateringbury engage with God and move forward in faith. You welcome a broad range of worship styles and are comfortable leading a Common Worship Eucharist, traditional choral evensong, or a baby and toddler praise. You have an open and welcoming outlook that reflects the diversity of people you will serve and work with in this role. You support the ministries of men and women in their varying kinds. You are a teacher who encourages faith development, biblical teaching and vocations for all ages, and brings imagination and enthusiasm for developing ministry to young people and younger adults. You are a collaborative leader who is not afraid to routinely seek assistance from retired clergy, ministers outside the Benefice and many gifted lay people. You will be sensitive to the particular needs and identity of each Parish but will encourage collaboration between the Parishes to make the most of the tremendous resources available across the Benefice. You have the desire to engage with a variety of schools, including a Church voluntary aided school as an ex-officio governor, and their leadership teams. You are IT-literate, comfortable with Parish accounts and are realistic about time management and work-life balance. You will be sympathetic to the Parishes existing styles of worship but are also keen to explore and develop other additional expressions of worship to broaden the Churches outreach still further. You are able to develop and articulate a vision for the Churches mission to their parishioners in occasionally demanding contexts. 5

Worship in the Benefice Style While the Churches style of worship will be familiar to those with a broader Anglican background, all three Parishes are defined by their warm welcome of all people and the regular inclusion of many members of the congregation in worship. Generally speaking, other than the Benefice services, people worship in their Parish s Church. Services Weekly The table on pages 18 and 19 sets out the current pattern of services in the Benefice. Festivals and civic services Throughout the year each Parish has a full programme of services to celebrate major festivals and commemorate significant events. These are consistently wellattended and are very important to villagers. Sunday school and crèche We provide a range of activities for young people at Sunday services across the Benefice. Ministers and assistants The levels of ministry in the Benefice prior to and during the interregnum are made possible with the generous support of retired clergy. This would be expected to continue. The new incumbent will need to raise up new lay ministries and ministers. Authorised lay ministries East Malling Alan Bramley (Reader) Teston Dawn Page (Reader) Wateringbury Barry Fisher (Reader) Alastair Byron (Reader) Becky Bowie (Pastoral Assistant) Edna Craig (Pastoral Assistant) Pauline Welch (Evangelist) 6

Working across the Benefice Ministry Leadership Team The Ministry Leadership Team supports ministry in the Benefice at a more strategic level and in the past included not just priests and lay ministers from the Benefice, but also those involved in delivering worship, such as the choir directors. This enables the vicar to change the format of worship if they need to do so. Supporting spiritual growth The Parishes share in a course for the seasons of Lent and Advent at different times/places in the Benefice. Holy Week is celebrated with activities rotating day by day in each parish ending with Children s Projects. Confirmation preparation classes are held for the Benefice as a whole as is preparation for children to receive communion under the Diocesan Policy. An annual Benefice residential event is attended by over thirty congregational members who visit different Christian sites or communities each year. Mothers Union The Benefice Mothers Union was founded in 2002 and has 22 members. The members meet monthly and share a short act of worship followed by a talk on varied topics, including the work of other charities. Mothers Union worldwide activity is supported by fund raising and the members enjoy a network of fellowship. Music Music and choral music in particular has a very strong tradition in the Benefice. All three Churches are blessed with RSCM affiliated robed choirs that come together during the year for Benefice services and a Palm Sunday musical devotion. Both East Malling and Wateringbury have organists. Teston does not presently have an organist, but successfully uses backing recordings in services. Village carol singing in each Parish is a firm tradition. 7

Our schools Wateringbury Church of England Aided Primary School The school is at the heart of Wateringbury village, nurturing 250 children and as vicar you will automatically be an ex-officio governor. Admissions are determined by distance rather than Church attendance and pupils typically come from Wateringbury, Teston and the neighbouring parish of Nettlestead. We asked pupils to describe their new vicar The school recently established a closer link with our Church becoming voluntary aided and we have a particular responsibility in ensuring it has good governance. Many families and children of the village know the Church through the vicar s regular presence leading assemblies, chatting in the playground and in the staffroom and attending Governors meetings. Our Church has a life in the school, with the school and for the school. tagxedo.com 8

Our schools Pre-school St James the Great Academy, East Malling While not a church school, St James the Great Academy has strong links with the Church in East Malling. With the out-going incumbent vicar as a governor, the Church has been a consistent presence at the school over the - last decade, taking assemblies and holding end-of-term services in the Church and helping us reach out to people in the Clare Park developments. We give all Year Six pupils a pilgrim s scallop shell when they leave to remind them of St James and the Church s presence in their school lives. A new head teacher is in post for 2015/16 and with services and assemblies in the diary, we hope our relationship with the School will continue to thrive. In East Malling there is the Busy Bees nursery where with the staff we ve established an annual carol service at the nursery for children, parents and staff and we and the nursery are keen to see this continue. There s also the Teston and Wateringbury Nursery Group, based in Teston village hall and there are opportunities to develop the relationship with the Churches. The Malling School, East Malling In recent years we have managed to establish regular contact with The Malling School in East Malling, a secondary school with around 650 pupils. This is a relationship which would be well worth developing. 9

Our support Our new vicar will find themselves living in a beautiful location and well supported from across the Benefice and the wider Diocese. We pay for a Benefice administrator who works one and a half days a week. There is also a volunteer Benefice treasurer. Four volunteers from the Benefice provide weekly Parish Office support for booking weddings and baptisms, again from the vicarage. Vicarage PCCs The vicarage, which is in East Malling, is a well-maintained four bedroom 1970s house in a peaceful cul-de-sac next to the church. It has a double garage, parking for two cars, a substantial lawned garden and would easily accommodate a family. Benefice Office The Benefice Office is currently run from the vicarage. Once completed, the Apple Tree Room will provide an excellent venue for meetings with parishioners. Each Parish has its own PCC with various committees looking after worship and mission in the Parishes, the fabric of our church buildings and organising Parish events. In addition to each Parish s APCM, each PCC meets six times a year and the vicar chairs these meetings. The committees meet regularly between the PCC meetings and the vicar does not usually attend these meetings. Minutes and other documents are circulated by email. The vicarage Finances The Parishes produce separate accounts but work together to financially support each other. Finances are managed prudently and, at present, each Parish is able to pay its way. Accounts for each Parish are on the Parishes websites (see page 2). Deanery Our new vicar will receive tremendous support from the Deanery and will be expected to play an active role in the Deanery, supporting the Rural Dean and in developing the Deanery Mission and Ministry plan. 10

Where you will be In common with much of Kent, place names are often not pronounced as they are written. So East Malling is pronounced as in hall and Teston is pronounced tea son. Finding the Benefice The Benefice is in an excellent location, close to the county town of Maidstone in Kent. The M20 and A20 run to the north of the Benefice, linking you to London, the M25, Maidstone, the Medway towns and the Channel ports. The A26 runs to the south, which connects Maidstone to Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells. It is a short drive between the three Parishes. The vicarage in East Malling is a short walk from the mainline station with services to London in under an hour, Maidstone and the Channel ports. Wateringbury also has a station which is on the railway line between the Medway towns and Tonbridge. Amenities In addition to the schools mentioned earlier, parents in the Benefice send their children to various schools Church of England, Roman Catholic, mainstream state and private in the communities surrounding the Benefice as well as Maidstone and Tonbridge. Kent operates a selective elevenplus system. The Benefice is close to shopping centres in Maidstone, Bluewater, Tunbridge Wells, and London and we have plenty of choice for groceries with Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury s, Tesco and Waitrose all within a short drive. The usual provisions for healthcare can be found locally. The Benefice is home to a variety of pubs, restaurants and cafés as well as working men s clubs and there are many other amenities close by in West Malling, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and London. There are leisure centres with swimming pools, gyms and classes in nearby Larkfield and Kings Hill and plenty of children s indoor play areas locally. We are blessed with nearby castles, abbeys, and country houses as well as the vibrant cultural life around Kent. 11

St James the Great East Malling Worshippers, villagers and guests have been welcomed to the Church in East Malling for hundreds of years. This warm welcome continues with the Church opening for well over five hundred scheduled activities both religious and secular every year. About our village The 6,000 people of East Malling live in the old village around the Church, the Clare Park developments of 1960s and 1970s social housing and the modern Bradbourne Fields development of private houses. The congregation comes from all three, as well as a significant number who live outside the Parish. The Church Our community The Church and its vicar play a central role in the life of the community. We play an active part in large community events, such as the Christmas lights switch-on and Picnic in the Park, which attract many hundreds of people and the new vicar will need to build and maintain warm relationships with local politicians, publicans and businesses. As well as a church choir, we have enthusiastic and committed teams of bell ringers, flower arrangers, volunteer church cleaners and stewards for Church opening, while a flourishing baby and toddler group routinely attracts twenty preschoolers (and their parents!) The Church of St James the Great is an exceptional Grade I-listed Norman, Medieval and Victorian building. It is very important to many local people and our new leader will need to appreciate this vital link to the wider community, not least to ensure we can continue to meet the substantial costs of upkeep. 12

St James the Great East Malling Volunteers also run a blessing bags scheme supporting local people struggling to cope with difficult circumstances. East Malling has thriving uniformed youth groups who regularly attend services, a popular WI and the East Malling Singers who routinely sell out concerts in the Church every year. The Apple Tree Room Planning and fundraising are well advanced for a new building in the churchyard that will provide the Church with toilets, a fully accessible meeting room and a kitchen. Our new vicar may well wish to use the building for meetings with parishioners. The Friends of St James the Great We are blessed with The Friends of St James the Great, a fundraising body that works tirelessly to raise funds for capital projects at the Church and successfully harnesses the support of the wider local community. 13

St Peter and St Paul Teston Our village Teston is a small village of about 600 inhabitants. The village sits above the beautiful Medway Valley, four miles from Maidstone, where the River Medway is spanned by a medieval bridge, surrounded by mixed farming and woods. Development of the village has been contained within the village envelope, apart from on its western end where the village merges into the neighbouring village of Wateringbury by ribbon development. There is no school here. Most of the dwellings are privately owned, and a high proportion of the population is at the older end of the age scale. Many are in single occupancy. But there have been green shoots of new-born babies recently! A history of mission The village is known locally as The Cradle of the Abolition for its connections with the British Anti-Slave Trade Movement through its eighteenth century incumbent, the Revd. James Ramsay. Our Church The Church of St. Peter and St. Paul is small and vibrant and our pattern of worship is varied. Numbers at our services have become small, but we celebrate the major festivals with imagination and enthusiasm, through word, music, flowers and the arts. 14

St Peter and St Paul Teston We also have a Church-run open youth group, The Teston CMS Pioneers, which meets weekly during term time. This is also supported financially by the Parish Council. The Church is very active in the community, providing many and varied social activities, which provide the finances for maintaining the Church s presence in this place. Every week the Church opens on a Tuesday to provide refreshment, and an opportunity for social interaction and friendship for villagers and visitors alike. Once a month we hold a special Tea at Three, again in the Church. We have + a welcoming and friendly congregation + support from the wider community who still see the presence of the Church within the village as important We are + few + hard working and enthusiastic + ageing but young at heart! We would like + to feel valued as a small, but individual Parish within a larger Benefice + someone who could address the smallness of our congregation + someone who will apportion themselves time to spend within our community 15

St John the Baptist Wateringbury St John the Baptist is a vibrant and busy Church, a part of the life of the village with a special link with Wateringbury school. Our village Wateringbury is a thriving community of over 2,000 people with numerous clubs and activities including cricket and football teams, catering to every age group. Our church, our worship Our regular congregation stretches from vibrant newborn to vivacious octogenarian. Our worship, supported by our choir, reflects the breadth of that age-range: a balance of continuity and change from, for example, Prayer Book Matins (bi-monthly) through Common Worship Communion to an experiential all-age act of worship. That balance between continuity and change is reflected in the church building which has been significantly adapted and improved in recent years to meet current needs. The current project being investigated responds to the need for additional space to accommodate the growing numbers and wide age range of Sundays Cool. We have a strong tradition of lay contribution to our worship from our two Lay Readers, two Pastoral Assistants and Evangelist, as well as experienced members of the congregation. Relating to the community We have a PCC/School Liaison Committee which plans arrangements for our Church Aided school activities in church and vice -versa. The incumbent plays a key role as Ex Officio member of the Governing Body and simply being a regular visitor at the school. We are pleased to be able to present all Year Six leavers with bibles. Our Mother and Toddler group meets in the Guide and Scout HQ because it is central to the village. 16

St John the Baptist Wateringbury We encourage the use of the church for concerts and the Wateringbury Players productions. At the Millennium we challenged each village organisation to make a banner which now decorate the church. Links with the community are kept through the Friends of Wateringbury Church who raise funds for the building's maintenance and improvement. Our service for the most needy We sensitively consider the more needy in our community with an outreach for older people through our coffee club, blessing bags support for families in challenging circumstances, food for the homeless and toys for the local women's refuge. We send groups of younger people to Diocesan and London meetings supporting campaigns to address poverty and climate change. Areas for Development We have set up a Poverty Action Group to focus on and develop our activity in this area. We are looking at ways of encouraging our congregation's spiritual and faith development through teaching, sharing scripture and discussion groups. 17

Services East Malling Teston Wateringbury 1st Sunday 8:00am BCP Holy Communion 4 adults Services in the Benefice follow this pattern. Typical attendance (outside festivals or civic services) is indicated. Currently, most non-eucharistic services are led by members of our Lay Ministry and Worship teams. Over-lapping Eucharistic commitments are managed with the help of retired and other local clergy. 2nd Sunday 3rd Sunday 4th Sunday 9:45am Family Service 65-70 adults 10-15 children 9:45am Sung Eucharist 60-65 adults 5-15 children 9:45am Sung Eucharist 60-65 adults 5-15 children 9:45am Sung Eucharist 60-65 adults 5-15 children 9:45am Family Service 10-15 adults 2 children 9.45am Children s Church 5 adults 5-10 children 6.30pm Evensong or Evening Praise 7-15 adults 9.45am Children s Church 5 adults 5-10 children 6.30pm Parish Communion 7-15 adults 9.45am Children s Church 5 adults 5-10 children 6.30pm Parish Communion 7-15 adults 10.00am Matins or Morning Praise 40-50 adults 2-10 children 10.00am Sung Eucharist 50-60 adults 10-15 children 8.00am BCP Holy Communion 9 adults 10.00am All Age Service 35-45 adults 10-15 children 10.00am Sung Eucharist 50-60 adults 10-15 children 18

Services East Malling Teston Wateringbury 5th Sunday 10:00am Benefice Sung Eucharist at one of the Benefice Churches 100-120 adults 10-20 children Sunday (quarterly) Tuesday (monthly) Tuesday (bi-monthly) Thursday 6:00pm Choral Evensong 25-35 adults 9:00am Holy Communion 6 adults Healing service at one of the Benefice Churches 7:30pm Evensong 10-15 adults Occasional offices (2014 figures) Baptisms 23 2 9 Weddings 17 1 10 Funerals and cremations 16 2 3 19