In large font for the sight impaired or those reading on mobiles. In heart and stone My wife and I have enjoyed a few days in the Cotswolds, visiting places we have mostly been to before but not since we moved to Sleights! It was tourism courtesy of Shearings Holidays whose coaches we see regularly on their way to the Royal Hotel in Whitby. These 3 days there has been an unexpected spiritual thread through what we have experienced that speaks of God s work through both people and buildings. We visited Burford first and wandered the High Street and then towards the partially hidden church. We were stopped from going in by a sign and a verger. A funeral, I thought. Quite the reverse. The church was closed because of the weekly Toddler group. The church has so many visitors that they have a daily rota of vergers to meet and greet visitors, many from overseas. It is a church meeting local needs and those of a much wider community. We next visited Bourton-on-the Water. It is a delightful little town; a miniature Venice with stone pedestrian bridges criss-crossing the river running through the centre. En route from the coach park to the town centre we passed a picturesque black and white beamed building which housed The Rainbow Shop. It was a Christian bookshop displaying a rainbow fish symbol. We went inside to browse and discovered a café too where we had a snack. Interesting; there were no prices shown on the menu only a box for donations. It seems that the café is a Christian service to both visitors and the local community. On a wall in the bookshop is a world map with numerous pins showing regions and countries from which visitors have come. Clearly the shop has an eye to welcoming people, with that map being a conversation starter. It
certainly started me in a conversation to discover more about this bookshop. Who, what, when, where and why? A lady, Jennie Hemming, had a vision for a Christian bookshop in Bourton-on-the-Water and in 2000 this building was one of many being auctioned off by Barclays Bank as being unsuitable for 21 st century banking needs. The short version of the story is that over the next 3 months funds were amassed to try to bid for the desirable freehold building. July 19 th 2000 was A-Day and Jennie was travelling by train to London for the auction when transport connections were halted due to a bomb scare. What to do?! All she had was a mobile phone and the opportunity to pray, If you want us to buy this property for Your purposes, then it s over to you Lord. From a train carriage she arranged back-up telephone bidding; had to confim the bidding limit to the auctioneer by solicitor s fax (fortunately remembering her solicitor s telephone number); and endeavoured to reach London by shared taxi ending up in Heathrow Airport. The terminal building was crowded and noisy but the time for the auction was nigh. She sat on the floor and could barely hear the auctioneer. She was forced to ask him to do her bidding! One other person was strongly bidding against her and the price rose reaching her bid limit. Confused she heard the hammer go down but then the auctioneer said, It s yours!. What a God, she praised. Three months later the shop was stocked and open and it still is 15 years later. A building for God and a lady s heart for God. We visited Bath Abbey. Amongst the numerous tombstone plaques on the wall was one I happened to study. It was to Jacob Bosanquet of the City of London who died in 1767. A truly good and honest man; A tender husband; Affectionate father; And faithful friend; Not more industrious in acquiring a fortune Than generous in dispensing it; Thus happily furnished with every social
virtue He lived beloved and Dyed lamented. Maybe he was a merchant banker? Whatever he was he seems to have been the kind of man we might like to have at the helm of business. He amassed a fortune, but seemingly used it to good effect. I wonder what our tombstone might record for us? However, I noted Jacob s inscription said nothing about his standing with God. Bath Abbey is impressive, set in a large flagged concourse that connects it to the Roman Baths and the shops. Inside it has beautiful fan vaulted ceilings in creamy, smooth Cotswold stone. Dating to 15?? there is an earlier Norman church beneath. In the Abbey Shop at the exit I got into conversation with the enthusiastic lady in charge. She described the ambitious plans the Abbey has for new development under the title Footprints. There are hundreds of thousands of tourists who enter the Abbey each year, cameras at the ready. There is also a thriving congregation and a local community who use the Abbey every day. With large hidden voids beneath the flagged floors, innefficient heating and no toilets there is no shortage of major work to be tackled just to maintain the Abbey for present use. However, what interested me was their focus not on preservation, but on expansion enlarging their footprint physically and missionally. Prevented from simply building out, they are intending to build under and across to other buildings they own which cannot be connected to the abbey complex other than by tunnel! Moreover, they see the need to create new learning spaces underground, a refectory, kitchens and, yes, toilets. Oh, and planning to use the heat source of the nearby hot springs! In a near 20m project they want to achieve an adaptable Abbey for the varied and changing needs of the community the Abbey serves. It is the same goal that many churches of all sizes have, in town and country, in order to take the good news to
people from the four corners of the earth, including numerous Chinese visitors we saw in Bath. I overheard a verger describing the purposes of the Abbey and its role in births, marriages and deaths to a Chinese guide. Hopefully spreading the Word. This international, tourism role reminded me again of one of the roles of the Bourton bookshop. Footprint is an amazingly visionary project and they need 10m to match fund promised funding. They are one third of the way to that target with many in the congregation volunteering their unpaid time in their part of the tourism industry. A picture came to mind as I heard the plans to tunnel underneath the Abbey. It was of a tree pushing its roots deeper and further out to support a living trunk and foliage. Bath Abbey is an historic building for God with a congregation of heart to drive God s work forward. The next day was Gloucester Cathedral, with a very proactive guide who approached us. I say guide, but he also was happy to share about the Christian faith and the Anglican traditon. The Cathedral has much the same emphasis as Bath Abbey on education (many groups of children some on their backs in the quire looking at the high arches, some on a monastic journey dressed as monks and some studying the many effigies). The Cathedral had already progressed to remove pews (as is the future intention at Bath) to create much more flexible space (a recent exhibition of sculpture had brough many visitors in). I also saw a stone effigy (a modern carving) celebrating Kyneburga, Abbess of Gloucester and sister of Osric Prince of Mercia who founded the Saxon Abbey of St. Peter at Gloucester in 679. It was a double monastry for men and women just like Hilda s at Whitby and established at a similar period of course. Two great pioneering women, though the original buildings are long gone.
Nevertheless, the Abbeys and Cathedrals now built in stone represent continuity in the faith, standing not just as monuments, but living, breathing, working places of faith which all churches (people and buildings) should be. I was encouraged by these unexpected contacts. Each seemed to be grasping the opportunities to relate to people who come their way in busy tourist areas. There are many challenges, not least that a large proportion of those they meet (like me) will not cross their path again. But they are broadcasting seeds as they are able. Wonderful. This reminds me of Littlebeck Methodist Chapel, set in an idyllic valley near Whitby. It has a small Sunday afternoon congregation but they have the same opportunity and challenge as Bath Abbey to reach out to visitors who come through their doors during the week, often people on the popular Coast to Coast walk from many different countries. How are they reached? By prayers written in the visitors book or on a whiteboard, by prayer and text cards to take, by some beautiful wood carvings and by the means to make a blessed cup of tea. Maybe the message in all these stories is that we have to adapt to changing circumstances which is not easy and it calls for a lot of active prayer and faith. Don t give up, press on! This week we consider how this message applies to us. Is it worship? None of what we experienced was directly connected to corporate worship. But we encountered the spiritual in what was going on in these places and in the various people we met. Everything had a faith-based purpose, however, whether it be children rolling on their backs or a map on the wall of a bookshop. In our churches we do many things and
we sometimes separate the formality of worship from the informality of social engagement. I m not so sure that when done with thought, the latter is not also a sacrifice of time for God and acceptable worship. Maybe we should think through what we do and re-evaluate it in terms of why we do it and whether we might do it even better to the glory of God. Pray about it. Buildings We had these experiences because we entered buildings - abbeys, cathedrals, churches and a bookshop. Others from our coach party also entered these places (we saw some). Having open, available Christian places and spaces is a witness and opens up opportunities for conversation because of a shared experience. We probably do not worship in an abbey, but can we open up our buildings in a similar way, to welcome those outside of our own number. They may not come to admire our effigies (!), but maybe they will come to join in activities that take account of their needs as well as our own. Pray about being generous with what we have, both our church facilities and our homes. Please feel free to pass this weekly prayer letter on to others. They can request to receive it directly via whitby_prayers@yahoo.com. God bless you Corporate Prayer Team, whitby_prayers@yahoo.comthe message is s Administration, Graham Storer